Reader question roundup: Who’s doing well right how, how to prepare for the ATA exam, and more!

Reader question roundup: Digging into the mailbag

It’s been a while since I’ve done a reader question roundup! Here are three interesting topics that came up lately during my online course alumni calls. 

Who’s doing well right now? 

Question: “Based on your recent survey and your own experience, which translation specializations seem to be doing well at the moment?” 

Answer: In my opinion, and from talking to other people who talk to lots of translators, “who’s doing well right now” has almost nothing to do with your language pair(s) or specializations, and everything to do with who you work for, and your clients’ attitudes toward MT and AI. 

The only specialization that I see as being truly untouched by AI (unless you choose to use AI for the translation): certified translations of official documents, because ChatGPT can’t sign the certification statement. 

Otherwise, I think that most specializations have corners that are doing well and corners that are doing less well, but the real variable is the client. For example, I’ve heard multiple pronouncements that, “Legal translation is dead: DeepL did a huge marketing push to big law firms and they all bought in.” 

This is categorically not true. A couple of weeks ago, I got a project offer from one of my long term law firm clients. They’ve never mentioned technology in the 8+ years I’ve worked for them. They just want a good translation, and they don’t really care how I do it.

This week, I got a project offer from a boutique legal translation agency that I like a lot, and with whom I’ve worked periodically for at least five years. The offer was for a large MTPE project (and indeed, a DeepL translation!). I responded and told them, I don’t do MTPE but thanks for the request. They immediately replied and said the whole project wasn’t MTPE, and how much “from scratch” translation could I take? They sent what I requested, and it was really interesting to work on. 

The hard part: there’s really no way to tell how a client feels about AI and MT unless they say so on their website. Otherwise, you really have to poke around and find out, if post-editing AI translations isn’t your preference. But I can assure you that non-MTPE work is out there! 

How to prepare for the ATA exams? 

Question: What’s the best way to prepare for the American Translators Association certification exam? 

Answer: Take the practice tests!! I can’t stress this enough. The real test costs $525. The practice test costs $105 for members and $155 for non-members. Plus, you get your graded practice exam back with the errors marked, which you don’t on the real test unless you pay for a review. It’s amazing to me that so few people take advantage of this opportunity; go get it! 

How to avoid competing with your agency clients, if you’re marketing to direct clients? 

Question: If you’re doing direct client marketing, how can you avoid working with your agency clients’ end clients and potentially violating your non-compete agreement?

Answer: I’m a real stickler for abiding by my agency clients’ non-compete clauses, because agencies work incredibly hard to land and retain their end clients, whose work they then pass on to freelancers. 

For example, if I’m on an interpreting assignment through an agency and someone asks for my contact information because they want to hire me, I tell them to contact the agency I’m working through, because I wouldn’t be there without the agency.

If I were at an in-person networking event or trade fair and a potential client mentioned that they currently worked with one of my agency clients, I would do the same thing: move along, and don’t try to work with them directly. 

However, things get trickier when:

• You work for a huge company through an agency. Like if you work for the marketing department of Microsoft in Belgium through an agency, and you’re approached to write UX content by Microsoft in the U.S., should you refer them to the Belgian agency? Would that even work? That’s a situation where I think you have to use your own ethical compass because there’s not a clear answer. 
• Likewise, you can only avoid working for clients who you know to be clients of an agency you work for. The only way to completely avoid competing with your agency clients is to have them send you a list of all of their end clients, which they’re never going to do. This can get awkward if you start working with a direct client, and later find out that they jumped ship from one of your agency clients to work with you. Should you then stop working with them? Tell the agency? Again, this is something you have to work out if it happens, because I don’t think there’s a clear right or wrong answer. 

Have a great week, I hope these questions and answers are helpful!!

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