Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

What is "the right rate" for your translation services?

After “How do I find some clients?,” I think that the most common question I get from beginning (and for that matter, experienced) translators is “How much should I charge?” My sense is that most people want an answer like “If you work for agencies, charge 16 cents. If you work for direct clients, charge 30 cents. Anything else I can help you with?” But of course, it’s not that simple. As I always tell the students in my classes, I can’t tell you how much to charge, but I can help you figure out how much to charge. Here’s a short course in how to do it:

If you want a step-by-step guide, check out Jonathan Hine’s pamphlet I am worth it! How to set your price, and other tips for freelancers. Jonathan’s advice is right on: first, figure out how much you want to earn, and what your business expenses are. Then, figure out how many hours you want to work (or, conversely, how much time you want to take off). Then convert that into an hourly rate, figure out how fast you usually translate, and that will yield your target per-word rate. Again, this is a major oversimplification, but you get the idea!

Most translators base their rates on factors like this:

  • Fear (of charging too much, of earning too little, of pricing themselves out of the market, of living under a bridge when they’re old)
  • Speculation (about what other people are charging, because most people won’t talk openly about their rates)
  • Vague notions of “what the market will bear,” or “what clients are willing to pay,” with little to no actual data to back that up

Whereas most translators should base their rates on factors like this:

  • The types of clients they want to work for (agencies, direct clients, or both)
  • The balance of supply and demand in their language pair or specialization.
  • Whether most of their clients translate things because they have to, or because they want to.
  • How much they want to work
  • What their financial and lifestyle needs are: kids, student loans, aging parents, a desire to be location-independent, a desire to retire early, a passion for high-level clients, a passion for running ultramarathons while still earning a good living, etc.
  • Actual conversations with other translators about how much they charge.

Here a few other Zen koan-like tips on how to decide how much to charge:

  • “The right rate” means that you and the client both feel that you’re getting a fair deal.
  • “The right rate” means that you are motivated to do an excellent job.
  • “The right rate” means that you can live the life that you want to live.
  • If 100%, or even 95% of potential clients accept your rates with no negotiation, it means that you could definitely be charging more.
  • The best time to raise your rates is when you’re too busy. Try a higher rate with the next new client who sends you an inquiry: if the client turns it down, you still have enough work.
  • How do you significantly raise your rates with existing clients? You don’t. You raise those rates a little bit, then you make the big jump with new clients.
  • Broken record alert, but here we go again: There is *lots* of good, high-paying translation work out there. Income of six figures is becoming more and more realistic, even if you work with some agencies and some direct clients. There are even clients who are *looking* for someone like you and don’t know where to find you. So you have to go and find them. But most people won’t do that. They’ll continue to take what lands in the inbox, while complaining that some (other) people have all the luck in this industry.


Corinne McKay

Getting Started as a Freelance Translator-starts Nov. 13

The next session of my online course Getting Started as a Freelance Translator starts on November 13; all other sessions this year have filled up before the start date, so please hop on over and register if you’d like to join us. It’s a four-week online course with a maximum of 10 people, and we focus on the basics of launching and running a successful freelance business. You leave the class with four main projects: your resumé and cover letter, marketing plan, rates and billable hours sheet and online presence plan. Everyone gets individualized feedback from me on all of those projects, plus we do a one-hour question and answer conference call every week (recordings provided if you can’t attend live). Whether you’re totally new to the industry or need a nudge to reach your business goals, I think it’s a good resource. The registration fee is $305, or $255 if you are a member of the American Translators Association. For a full description or to register, please visit my website.


Corinne McKay

ProZ.com community choice awards

Monday morning is looking up: ProZ just announced the winners of this year’s Community Choice awards. Congratulations to everyone who earned this recognition from their colleagues! I’m excited to share the “best podcast” award with my friend and colleague Eve Bodeux for our podcast Speaking of Translation. Note to our husbands: OK, we do sometimes talk too much, but sometimes people do listen! I’m also flattered to have won in the “best blog post” category, for Why do some freelance translators fail?. It’s gratifying to be recognized for these contributions, and to know that these resources are useful to the industry!


Corinne McKay

Some thoughts on MOOCs

Massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are the hot new trend in online education (at least in the US). I’m one week into my second MOOC through Coursera, and here are some thoughts on the experience.

In general, I think that MOOCs are a great option for motivated learners with a specific goal. The course offerings are far more specialized than what you’d find at a local adult education center or community college, and the price (most often free) is certainly appealing. You can work on your MOOC anywhere with an Internet connection, at any time of the day or night. Many MOOCs consist of online video lectures: great because you can pause the video, rewind it, look up a quick Wikipedia entry of a concept you don’t completely get, and so on. For example my MOOC goal is to learn more about the science behind the international development documents I translate, so I’m currently taking Epidemics: the dynamics of infectious diseases, offered by a team from Penn State.

The range of MOOCs is really staggering: right now on the Coursera home page, you can sign up for courses ranging from Jazz Improvisation (taught by professors from the Berklee College of Music), to Bioinformatics Algorithms (UC San Diego), to a French course on business valuation (HEC Paris). The schools that offer these courses are top-notch, and thus they present an opportunity to take a course that is logistically and financially out of the reach of many people. MOOC providers are also getting more savvy about what their students want: in the course I’m currently taking, you can get a certificate of completion (for getting at least an 80% on all assessments) or a verified certificate with distinction (for getting 100% on all assessments). Coursera’s newly launched signature program has already earned over $1 million, focusing on students who want to earn a credential from their MOOCs.

In just these two experiences, I’ve learned that all MOOCs are not created equal. The first MOOC I took was a general public health class and it was fine. It was certainly more interesting than reading a public health textbook, especially since I do not have a strong formal science background. However, the course was not really created for the online learning format: most of the video lectures were taken with a camera in the back of the room during the professor’s live lectures, and they were uploaded in fairly long segments. In addition, the fact that the in-person students seemed a little disengaged from the material (professor would ask questions and have to wait for answers, or no one would answer) detracted from the experience. By contrast, the Epidemics MOOC that I’m currently taking is outstanding. The class has a huge team of instructors and developers, and was obviously developed specifically for this purpose. The videos are short (about 6 minutes each) and have excellent animations that accompany them. The videos are narrated by a bunch of different people, so they don’t get monotonous. In addition, the staff seems to be spending a huge amount of time contributing to the online discussion boards for the class. So, a huge shoutout to the Epidemics MOOC staff!

In my opinion, here are some caveats about the MOOC experience: if, like me, you’re doing a MOOC because you realize that, uh-oh, you should have paid better attention in those “throwaway” core classes in college? You’re in the right place. I was too busy thinking lofty literary thoughts in college (and graduate school for that matter) to worry about the difference between macroparasites and microparasites. Now, I’m regretting that impulse, but Coursera has come to the rescue. In addition, I think that some of the classic criticisms of MOOCs, such as “there’s no interaction with the instructor,” “all of the assessments are multiple choice and graded by computer,” and so on, also apply to many of the courses one would take as an in-person student at a large research university. Many of my friends who went to such universities were largely taught by grad students during their first few years. If you took an in-person course with 250 students in a lecture hall, you would not get personal attention or individually-graded assignments, and you’d be paying a lot more than $0 for the experience.

Personally, I do not see MOOCs as a substitute for a solid, in-person, general education. I would not encourage my own daughter to bypass an undergraduate degree in favor of MOOCs. I agree that the human interaction element of education is important, and I even agree that grad students can be excellent teachers. But for those of us who already have that general education and want to fine-tune our knowledge, I think that MOOCs are a great solution.


Corinne McKay

Translation credentials: what are they and do you need them?

Here’s a very common question from my beginning translation students: “Do I need a…(Bachelor’s degree, Master’s degree, translation certificate, translator certification, etc.)” with corollaries such as “Am I better off getting a foreign language MA or a translation certificate?” “If I don’t have a Bachelor’s degree but I’m ATA-certified, is that OK?” and so on.

I can answer all of these questions with two words: it depends. There you go! That’s somewhat tongue in cheek, but it does really depend on your background, your goals, who you work for and what you do. And in this post, I’m talking about the norm, not the exception; I know a couple of self-taught conference interpreters who have tons of work, people without Bachelor’s degrees who are doing fine, and lots of people who are not ATA-certified and still make a squadrillion dollars a year. But here I’m talking in general, and I apologize in advance if this gets long!

Also, there are some very notable exceptions to these observations. For example let’s say that you want to be a court interpreter at the state level. In many U.S. states, the only pre-requisite to take the court interpreter exam is that you have to be 18 and legally eligible to work in the US. In theory, even a smart and motivated high school student could study for and pass the exam. And once you’re certified, everyone generally is paid the same rate. So in that case, and for that specific job, there may be absolutely no advantage to having a Bachelor’s degree.

Do you need a Bachelor’s degree? Yes, in most cases, I really think that you do. As with the court interpreter scenario above, of course there are exceptions. But at least in the US, I think that if you don’t have a Bachelor’s degree, you are seen as A Person Who Did Not Go to College; whereas whether you have a BA, MA, PhD, law degree, whatever, you are A Person Who Went to College. Corollary: if you’re not 18 and your parents aren’t going to fund this educational endeavor, is a Bachelor’s from an online university better than, say, a high school degree or an Associate’s, plus a certificate from a reputable translation certificate program? Honestly, I don’t really know. First, you’d need to find a reputable translation certificate program to accept you without an undergraduate degree, but that might be doable if your language skills are strong.

Are translation/interpreting MA programs worth the investment? You had to ask a tough one, didn’t you… Here’s my opinion: before you undertake a graduate degree, ask yourself, “What do I want to do, that I cannot do now, that I can do if I earn this degree?” If your answer is that you want a job as a staff translator or interpreter at a high-level entity such as the U.N., Department of State, European Union, etc. then yes, I think that a translation/interpreting MA, preferably from the top program in your country, is probably a good investment. If you are completely convinced that you want to do conference interpreting, ditto: go for the interpreting-specific MA if possible.

On the other hand, consider this: in the US, tuition, fees, meals and housing at a private university will run you about $50,000 a year; an MA will generally last two years. Schools in Europe generally charge less in tuition, but the cost of living in the European capitals will bump the total cost up significantly. And you also have to consider the issue of lost income, especially if your other option is to simply start freelancing right away. Statistics tell us that the average full-time freelance translator/interpreter in the US earns about $75,000 per year. So during those two years, you’ll forgo some $150,000 in income, giving you a total investment of about $250,000 in your degree. That’s a pretty big number by anyone’s standards, but it’s probably worth it if your heart is set on a staff position at a major international organization; hopefully you’ll get an outstanding education, you’ll be taught by highly experienced professors, you’ll make great contacts, you’ll probably have a leg up in terms of internships, and so on.

However, in my opinion, and I apologize if this verges on “rant” territory, most translation/interpreting MA programs do not offer nearly enough education in business and entrepreneurship, given the career paths that a lot of their students will take. Will some of their students work on staff at places like the UN for their entire careers? Sure. Are there enough of those jobs open every year to employ the majority of graduates? I would say not. So, realistically, a lot of people with translation/interpreting MAs, even from top-tier schools, will become freelancers.  A lot of people who earn translation/interpreting MAs want to be freelancers, whether in-house jobs are available or not. And if I invested a quarter of a million dollars in that type of degree, in an industry that is highly freelance-oriented, I would expect a top-tier education in language entrepreneurship in addition to my language skills education. Here’s an example: several top-tier music schools in the US have music entrepreneurship centers. The University of Colorado here in Boulder has one. So does Manhattan School of Music, with the lead-in, “In today’s marketplace, musicians need more than artistic excellence: they need the added edge of entrepreneurial skills to create opportunities and build successful, sustainable careers.” Substitute “linguistic” for “artistic” and I think you’ve got the idea of what our industry needs; and to my knowledge, none of the major translation MA programs in the US or Europe are really addressing this. (End of rant!)

How about certification? Being certified, by ATA or any other national translators association, will never be a negative. Compensation surveys tell us that ATA-certified translators earn more than non-certified translators.  I have also heard from several translation companies with government contracts that they are under more pressure to use ATA-certified translators whenever possible. If a client is browsing the ATA online directory, they will probably contact the certified people first. So I think that the ATA exam is absolutely worth attempting if it’s in your budget. However, translator certification, in any country, is not like the bar exam for lawyers or the CPA exam for accountants. Lots of people make lots of money without ever becoming certified. I would consider certification a definite plus, but not a must.

Translation certificate programs? Translation certificate programs are great, because they teach you how to actually translate. They’ll help you avoid the litany of mistakes that I, and lots of other beginning translators, committed early in our careers. They’re also a good deal less expensive and less time-consuming than graduate degree programs. Most translation certificate programs are taught by practicing translators and interpreters who teach in their areas of specialization, so you’ll get real-world feedback from the instructors. Caveats: expect to pay $700-$1,500 per class, and don’t assume that completing a translation certificate program will enable you to pass the ATA certification exam.

What about subject-area degrees or training? I think this is the cutting edge in terms of credentials in our industry. Subject-area knowledge has always been important, but I think it’s becoming more so. For example, translation now seems to be a popular option for career-changing lawyers: possibly because lawyers have some of the lowest job satisfaction rates and some of the highest rates of substance abuse and depression of any white-collar profession. Whatever the case, if you’re already established in the profession and want to take your credentials up a notch, subject-area training would be my pick. Whether you do free, online courses through an entity like Coursera or enroll in a full-on graduate program in your specialization, I think it would be energy well spent.