Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Marketing: as a daily effort or toward a specific goal?

Here’s a common question from other freelancers: How much time should I spend on marketing? A percentage of my time? A certain amount per day? Should I market even when I have tons of work?

The easy answer would be to say: spend 15% of your time on marketing, and you’ll always have just the right amount of work. But it’s not that easy, and as I’ve mentioned before, “just the right amount of work” is a goal that perhaps .01% of translators achieve. The rest of us have a little too little work, or a little too much work, and personally I’ll take a little too much, so that I’m not worrying about keeping the lights on.

My thought on this marketing question: if, in general, you don’t have enough work, then you need to market consistently, every single day. You have to work on it like practicing a musical instrument or exercising: you don’t shut down for the day until you do your 30 minutes of marketing, or you don’t get coffee in the morning until you contact three potential clients, and so on.

But if you have enough work all of the time or most of the time, or especially if you’re turning down work, it’s OK to market toward a specific goal. That’s what I do: I don’t market for 30 minutes every day; I market when I have a specific goal. If I want to find more clients in Switzerland, or translate another book, or any other specific goal, then I do a campaign aimed at that target.

That’s it! Over to you!


Corinne McKay

Working with individuals: why do so many translators avoid it?

The individual client market–working directly with people who need anything from a birth certificate to a book translated–is a legitimate segment of the direct client market. But still, lots of translators avoid it. Let’s take a closer look.

I do quite a bit of work for/with individual clients; mostly certified translations of official documents, but I’ve also translated business plans, real estate purchase and sale documents, and yes, even a book, for individual clients. I like this kind of work because (in no particular order):

  • It’s gratifying; people need the service and appreciate it. Sometimes they really, really appreciate it–I once received a lovely bottle of wine from an individual client who needed a translation in a pinch!
  • It’s usually very straightforward. For certified translations, I charge a flat fee per page, I do not negotiate that rate at all, and I do not do the translation until the person pays via PayPal. So there’s zero quoting or haggling, and zero risk of non-payment.
  • It’s lucrative as compared to the time investment. These small, one-off projects are generally projects that agencies don’t want, or for which agencies would have to impose a very high minimum charge in order to justify their overhead. As a freelancer, you can also create templates for the kinds of documents that you translate over and over again, to further streamline the process.
  • Not that many freelancers are interested in the individual client market, so you can generate quite a bit of business simply by putting up a dedicated web page for this kind of service.

My sense is that most freelancers avoid the individual client market for two reasons: they’re afraid of not getting paid, and they don’t want to spend a lot of time negotiating a rate and turnaround time for a $100 job. I would argue that the solution is simple: require that individuals pay in advance, and don’t negotiate. If they don’t want to pay your rate, they can look for another translator; or if they don’t want to pay in advance, they can look for another translator. And for the record, even the individual for whom I translated a book did pay in full, in advance.

I do agree that when you work with individuals:

  • You have to have some patience with people who know nothing about translation. Can you also translate my Lithuanian driver’s license? Can you convert my grades from the French to the US system? Can you just leave out the classes that I failed? You can’t blame people for asking, so you have to be willing to explain these things.
  • A fair number of people will ask if you can “just certify” the translation that they already did. “I already translated it, so how much would it cost to just put your certified translator stamp on it?” My response to this is always “The certification statement requires me to certify that I translated the document, so for liability reasons, I cannot certify a document that I didn’t translate myself.”
  • You need a way to take payments online, and that costs money. Lots of people love to gripe and moan about PayPal, and I agree that their fees are annoying on large amounts. But I’m willing to pay $3.50 to collect $100 from someone, and I’ve never had issues with things like chargebacks (where the client complains to PayPal and then gets a refund). Additionally, lots of people already have a PayPal account, so it’s easy for them to send you money. You could also try Square, Stripe, etc. My sense is that the fees for all of the online payment services is about the same.

Readers, any other thoughts on this?


Corinne McKay

Getting Started as a Freelance Translator- starts May 16

The next session of my online course Getting Started as a Freelance Translator starts on May 16, and it’s the final course in my winter/spring series. The two other winter/spring classes have filled up and had a waiting list, so please sign up soon if you’d like to participate in this session. The summer/fall sessions of my other courses (Beyond the Basics of Freelancing and Marketing to Direct Clients) are also open for registration, and stay tuned for the fall session of my new class, Breaking Into the Book Translation Market.

Getting Started is a four-week class for students with little to no translation experience, who want to launch and run a successful freelance business. It’s open to translators in any language combination, and the registration fee is $355 ($340 for ATA members). This includes:

  • Four sets of video lessons (one set per week) to watch at your own pace
  • Twenty “tasks of the day” to complete; I’ll give you individual feedback on your resume, cover e-mail/letter, marketing plan and billable hours/rates calculations
  • Eight live question and answer sessions (two per week) with recordings provided if you can’t or don’t want to attend
  • A private Google Group for class discussions

Here’s a comment from a participant in my recent “Beyond the Basics of Freelancing” class: Corinne goes above and beyond the call of duty, forever attentive to the needs of her students. Using her vast experience, she provides real insight into the workings of the profession and her course enables you to garner real gems of information as to how to proceed in your career. Best of all, she encourages you to be proactive, take control and assume full responsibility for your success.

Hope to see some of you in the May session of Getting Started!


Corinne McKay

An atypical dilemma: "I need less work"

Here’s a question I received from a colleague: “You’re always writing about how to find new clients and get more work. I have the opposite problem: I have work coming out of my ears and I’m trying to cut back.” OK! Thoughts on Translation is committed to addressing issues at all points on the freelance spectrum, so let’s give this one a try.

This actually is not the first time I’ve heard this question, primarily from translators in their 60s and 70s who still want to work, but not full-time and not under stressful conditions. But it also applies to some translators with young kids, or people with other jobs. Definitely worth a look.

If you’re in the “I need less work” boat, first you have to accept that maybe 1% of freelancers have just the right amount of work. The other 99% of us have to choose between a little too little work and a little too much work. And because I hate worrying about money, my preference is to have a little too much work, then take longish vacations where I don’t work at all. But if you’re bound and determined to cut down on your work flow, first ask yourself:

  • What do you want and not want out of your work situation? For example I’d say the typical person in this category says, “I want some income, I want some professional activity in my life, but I don’t want to be stressed out and I want a significant amount of free time.” Even if your answer is radically different, make sure to answer that question. What’s your priority? What do you not want to deal with?
  • How much of a factor is money? If you’re on the semi-retired end of the spectrum, money might be less of a factor; you might have the luxury of working for clients you really like, rather than the clients who pay the most. If you have young kids, it may be the opposite situation: money is paramount, because you need to earn a semi-full-time income while working around your family’s schedule.
  • How much of a factor is job satisfaction? Again, this varies from individual to individual. Perhaps you’re that semi-retired translator who’s working primarily or even exclusively because you enjoy it; perhaps you’re that new parent thinking “$%&^& satisfaction…the point is to make money.”

Then, pick a strategy. Of course, the path of least resistance is to raise your rates. A lot. Own it; tell clients, “If you’re looking for an inexpensive option, it’s not me,” or “I only work with the very high end of the market,” or “Call me when you have a bigger budget.” That should do the trick pretty quickly, but it may also eliminate clients you want to keep working with, especially if job satisfaction is a priority for you. So you could also try:

–Putting some parameters on your availability or your working conditions. You don’t work on Fridays, or you don’t work with clients who require you to work in their online TM portal, or you don’t work with clients who send out work offers via mass e-mail.

–Taking longer vacations so that you’re working less overall. I’ll be honest: I’ve tried the “I need to work less” system a few times (I’m going to take Friday afternoons off, I’m not checking e-mail after 5, I’m not finishing stuff up in the evenings, etc.), and it’s never really worked. So my preferred solution is to take longer vacations where I may be checking e-mail, but I am not actively working. By timing these to coincide with most of my clients’ slow periods (Christmas/New Years, July and August), I don’t know that I actually lose a lot of income, but I definitely gain sanity. Each year I take about six weeks completely off, which is pretty normal outside the US but almost unheard of within the US. So that’s my recommendation if you’re in a decent financial position: give yourself a month off this summer and do some digital detox.

–Doing the “does this spark joy” test on every project. If you get that knot in your stomach, turn it down, or stop working with that client. Only work on projects that make you feel excited about working.

Readers, over to you! Any thoughts on this?


Corinne McKay

New book translation published!

sherpa

I’m excited to announce that my translation of “Sherpa: The Memoir of Ang Tharkay” has just been published by Mountaineers Books. It’s a great read (even if you don’t know the translator!); Ang Tharkay was the sirdar (head Sherpa) on the 1950 French expedition to Annapurna, the first 8,000 meter peak to be successfully climbed. We all hear a lot about Sherpas and their role in climbing big mountains; this book provides some historical context to the present-day role of Sherpas in Himalayan expeditions, and it stands out as one of the earliest climbing memoirs to be written in a Sherpa’s own words.

The book was fascinating to translate, in part because its origins are a bit shrouded in mystery. It was originally published in 1954 as Mémoires d’un Sherpa, by the French publishing house Amiot-Dumont. However it was presented as having been originally told by Ang Tharkay to one “Basil P. Norton,” through the intermediary of an interpreter. From “Basil P. Norton’s” introduction to the first edition:

“The biggest obstacle was language. Ang Tharkay spoke only a little English, and I knew only a few words in Nepali. We both spoke Hindi, but neither one of us spoke it well enough to translate our thoughts into fluent English. In the end, we used an interpreter who spoke both Nepali and English…[who] agreed to transcribe Ang Tharkay’s story in English as he was speaking.”

Oddly, there is no record of any Basil P. Norton associated with the Annapurna expedition, nor with any other Himalayan expedition of that era, nor any explanation of why the book was then published in French. So in a sense, my translation may be a back-translation of “Basil P. Norton’s” interpreted rendition of Ang Tharkay’s story (how’s that for a linguistic game of telephone?).

As a Francophile and a Nepalophile (my husband and I spent part of our honeymoon in the region of Nepal where Ang Tharkay grew up), I was hooked on this book from the first read. It’s a very human perspective on what has come to be known as the “golden age” of Himalayan exploration, and it’s interesting to read Ang Tharkay’s impressions of his relationship with the French and British expedition leaders (who he refers to as “sahibs”). Special thanks to the great folks at Mountaineers Books–they were a joy to work with, and they’re a publishing house that’s committed to very high standards. My husband, who is a real publishing and typography nerd, commented that “This is the most beautiful book that your name is on” (including, for the record, four books that I wrote!), and I’ll have another translation coming out from Mountaineers Books in 2017…stay tuned!