Greetings, Training for Translators readers!  A lot of new people have joined the T4T mailing list lately, so I thought it would be good to revisit a time-honored but important topic: Red, yellow, and green zone rates, what they are and why they are important!

AI for marketing: Master class on Thursday

This month’s master class, Turn AI into your freelance marketing assistant, is coming up on Thursday! Registration is $75 and includes the recording. Guest instructor Nora Díaz presents a two-hour class on how to use AI for repetitive and tedious marketing tasks, while maintaining your human voice and presence. 

New on the podcast: Before you quit freelancing, try these strategies! 

Episode #18 of the Training for Translators podcast is out! I’ve heard from more than a handful of freelance translators who are considering quitting and finding another career. If that’s the right decision for you, go for it. But if you enjoy freelancing and are just feeling frustrated, I have a few ideas for you. Subscribe to Training for Translators in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or listen on the T4T website. 

This week’s topic: Red, yellow, and green zone rates

“How much do you charge?” is a question that strikes fear in the hearts of beginning and experienced freelancers alike. I actually enjoy talking about money, and it’s still stressful. As freelancers, we run into situations such as:

• “I raised my rate by a very small amount with my biggest client, they seemed fine with it, and now they’re not sending me any work” (heard this from three students this week!)
• “I sent a quote to a new direct client; they immediately said yes, making me wonder if I could/should have charged more!” (this one is me!) 
• “A client negotiated me down to a rate that I now regret accepting. But was I really going to lose this project over one cent per word?? ” 

Sound familiar?? Part of this is just the reality of freelancing (if you want a guaranteed income, get a salaried job!) but I think that some of the stress can be alleviated by knowing your rate zones. 

First, you need to know how much income you need to generate, how many hours per week, how many weeks per year, in order to reach your target income. To do that, you could read Austin Church’s book Free Money, or buy JT Hine’s booklet I Am Worth It, or use my Deciding what to charge spreadsheet. Start there. A lot of freelancers have never really thought about billable versus non-billable hours, billable hours per month or per year, etc. I recommend running your financial calculations for three scenarios: bare bones (the minimum you can live off; you’re either not spending anything on “extra” expenses like meals out or travel, or you’re dipping into savings to cover those), middle of the road (you’re neither dipping into savings nor putting more money into savings, you’re essentially breaking even), and ideal (similar level of financial security to someone with a well-paying salaried job). 

The all-important red zone 

The Red zone is the rate below which you do not go. Just: no. Why is this important? Because a lot of freelancers have no red zone, which is how you end up like the example above (said yes to a rate, now regretting it). It doesn’t really matter what your red zone is: it could be two cents a word, 25 cents a word, $15 an hour, or $125 an hour. The point is that you must have a red zone to free you from the emotional angst that comes with deciding whether to take a project or not. 

Sometimes, I find it easier to tie my red zone to a client I’m already working for. For interpreting, my red zone is that I don’t work for any clients who pay less than the Colorado state court interpreting rates (currently $65/hr with a two-hour minimum). Why? Because they’re easy and enjoyable to work for, and they’re my lowest-paying interpreting client, so why would I work for less than that. Most of my clients, and particularly my conference interpreting clients, pay a lot more than that. But when a potential client comes to me and asks whether I will accept (let’s say) $45 an hour with a one-hour minimum, it’s painless to say no. 

The yellow zone: Not great, not horrible 

The yellow zone is your “not great/not horrible” work, or work that has non-economic advantages. For example, my work for the Colorado courts is a lot like a regular job. There’s no marketing, there’s very little preparation (the preparation was the year and a half it took me to study for the certification exam), they pay me by direct deposit, on time, and they offer work to me rather than me chasing after them. Additionally, probably 75% of my work for them is remote assignments lasting 30 minutes or less. So although $65 per hour is a lot less than my target hourly rate ($110-$130), they are a good yellow zone client. 

The key to the yellow zone: don’t get stuck there. If all of your work is yellow zone, you won’t reach your target income. And make sure that there is a business or personal case for taking yellow zone work. These include:

• Work that you particularly enjoy
• Work that is particularly flexible
• Work with a really long deadline (this is how I can afford to translate non-fiction books)
• Work that feels meaningful
• Work that furthers a goal of yours (breaking into a new specialization or service, etc.)

“The client is nice, I just can’t say no to them” is, in my opinion, not a valid reason to accept yellow-zone rates (and a lot of freelancers are doing this). If the client is nice, be friends with them outside of work. Ask yourself whether the client would give you a raise, or pay you more than their other freelancers, because you’re nice? 

The green zone: Ideal! 

The green zone is your ideal rate. This is where you want to be working most of the time: the rate that gives you the same level of financial security as someone with a well-paying salaried job. I don’t allocate an actual percentage of my work time to the green zone, but you could (i.e. 80% green, 20% yellow). 

An appeal of the green zone: When you’re working in the green zone, you know that you’re happy with what you’re making. So, when you end up in a situation where you have to be the first one to say a number (as in the example above), you use your green zone rate. That way, even if the client immediately says yes and you sense that you could have charged more (as happened to me recently), it’s OK, because you’re earning what you want to be earning. 

Rates are stressful, and rate zones really help me dial down the stress and focus on the business realities of what I’m charging each client and what I’m earning overall. To wrap up, here are a few other stats that I track in my business:

• Total income for this year to date versus last year to date (this is one click in QuickBooks, but you could also calculate it manually) 
• Income by client (so that I know who my top clients are, and what percentage of my income is coming from each one)
• Income by month (one of my goals for this year is to smooth out my income (as described in my 2024 year-end wrapup) and so far that’s going well) 

I hope these tips are helpful! 

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In episode 18 of the Training for Translators podcast, I talk about the “I want to quit” feelings that a lot of freelance translators are having right now, and I offer a few potential strategies to try before you make the decision.

You can subscribe to Training for Translators in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or listen from the link below!

To get our weekly posts directly in your inbox, sign up for the Training for Translators mailing list!

Year-end marketing sprint starts Monday!

Marketing your freelance business can be less intimidating if you a) do a bunch of marketing all at once, and b) have a supportive group for accountability and idea-sharing. Join the Training for Translators year-end marketing sprint, and plant some good marketing seeds before the year-end holiday season sets in. We kick off on Monday, registration is $75 and includes a set of marketing resources, daily marketing nudge e-mails, and four live sessions (recordings provided). 

Next up: Turn AI into your freelance marketing assistant, with guest instructor Nora Díaz on October 16. This two-hour master class will teach you how to use AI for market research, and to create marketing materials. Registration is $75 and includes the recording. 

 

This week’s topic: Does your freelance business need an AI usage policy? 

Thanks to my friend and colleague Veronika Demichelis for suggesting this topic! It’s timely and relevant, whether or not you use AI in your business! 

In my opinion, your freelance clients need to know if, how, and when you use (or don’t use) artificial intelligence tools. I had been pondering this idea in a vague way, but I hadn’t really formulated any coherent thoughts until Veronika suggested this as a discussion topic during a T4T online course alumni question and answer session. My own ideas on this topic are evolving; definitely reply to this e-mail and let me know if you have thoughts! Veronika perceptively pointed out that an AI policy is important because some clients are really excited about the possibilities that AI offers, while others are concerned about AI-related confidentiality, or just don’t want to use it for a variety of reasons. 

Most importantly: yes, I think you need an AI usage policy, in that you need to disclose to your clients if, how, and when you use AI, and what AI tools you use.  An important caveat: in my own business, it’s honestly very rare that a direct clients asks me about AI. The majority of my translation clients never cared much about technology, and still don’t. Clients aren’t obligated to care about your technology setup, and I’m fine working with clients who just want to throw money at a problem (translation) and deal as little as possible with the process details. This is how I feel about my accountant: I pay him so that I can think about accounting as little as possible. I assume he uses an array of technology tools, but I really don’t know or care, as long as my taxes are done accurately and on time. If your clients also feel like this, I think that’s also fine. Here, I’m talking about clients who may be interested in knowing about your AI use. 

An AI usage policy could be posted on your website, or you could send it to all new clients, or something else. I haven’t created or distributed a formal policy yet, but I’m working on mine. Here are a few ideas for crafting your policy: 

1. If you use no AI tools, just say so. “In my work for clients, I do not use artificial intelligence tools for research, translation, writing, or any other tasks.” Done! Your clients know where you stand on this. 

2. If you use standalone or integrated AI tools, state which one(s) and which version(s). For example, I use ChatGPT Pro (the lowest-level paid version) and I think clients should know this so that they can make an informed decision about whether they want any of their information fed into it. If you use an AI plugin for your translation memory tool (I do not), I think you should disclose this as well, and provide a link to the plugin’s own web page so that clients can read about it if they want to. 

3. If you use AI tools, state whether clients can completely opt out of having these AI tools used on their projects. Personally, I’m fine with this. I do think that ChatGPT’s research capabilities have improved, and certainly sped up, my ability to research complex questions, and I use DeepL regularly for interpreting prep, but I translated for 20 years without AI, and I went to graduate school for interpreting before machine translation was very useful. It’s completely fine with me if clients don’t want AI tools used at all on their projects, and they don’t need to give me a reason. 

4. If you use AI tools, I think (and this is perhaps not a majority opinion) that clients deserve to know whether you use them for first drafts, or not. I’m open to being disagreed with on this one, and I think the concept itself is one that sparks a lot of discussion among translators these days: I personally really dislike the way AI writes; even when I ask it for a specific tone or style, I find the writing robotic and just kind of cringe-y. Thus, I do not use AI tools for translation first drafts. But if you do, I think that your clients deserve to know that, if it matters to them. I talk to lots of translators these days who say that they run everything through DeepL because they’d rather have a starting point than begin from zero. I think you should tell clients this, especially if you’re putting their documents into a tool (like ChatGPT) where even the paid version isn’t truly confidential. 

5. To help clients understand, give a few examples of how you use AI. Mine might include:

• I may use the paid version of DeepL to pre-translate speeches that I’m going to interpret, particularly if it seems that the speaker will read the speech from a script. When I do this, I always use the translated speech as a reference document only, while listening closely for differences between the speaker’s script and their spoken words. 
• I may use ChatGPT for research purposes: to explain words or legal concepts, to search for reference documents online, to identify the most common translation or term of art for a specific word or phrase. 
• I may use ChatGPT to suggest a translation of a sentence or a paragraph. When I do this, if the text in question contains any identifying information about a client (even if not confidential: an example of this would be the client’s name when I do not have a non-disclosure agreement with the client), I manually re-type the text instead of copying and pasting it, so that the identifying information is never entered into ChatGPT. 
• I may use ChatGPT to edit or revise parts of a translation, or to comply with specific length or style requirements, using prompts like “Make this 10% shorter, keeping the main points and key words, but eliminating redundancies and wordiness.” “Rephrase this to eliminate passive voice.” 

6. Just to be safe, assure clients that you always comply with the usage policies of the AI tools you use, and that you verify and take responsibility for any output of the AI tools you use. Don’t end up like the Philadelphia Inquirer, publishing a summer reading list of books that don’t exist, because no one could be bothered to check the AI output. 

I also find value in talking to people about AI on a human level: I’m constantly surprised by ChatGPT’s ability to answer complex research questions in a few seconds, and by how often ChatGPT just makes stuff up! 

I hope these tips are helpful if you’re contemplating your own AI usage policy!

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Greetings, Training for Translators subscribers! I hope you’re all doing well as the seasons start to change! 

Medical marketing class tomorrow!

This month’s master class, Marketing with purpose: how medical translators and interpreters can attract the right clients, is tomorrow (Wednesday, September 24). Guest instructor Ana Sofia Correia will talk about how to improve your visibility and outreach (for agencies or direct clients), and how to market in a more focused way. Registration is $75 and includes the recording; we have a big group signed up and there’s still room for you! 

This week’s topic: Managing your schedule across different time zones

In a recent T4T online course alumni Q&A, we tackled a very practical challenge: how to manage your schedule across different time zones (thanks to Heidi L. for suggesting this topic!). Many of us live in constant fear of missing a meeting or deadline because of a time zone mix-up, and it’s surprisingly easy to have this happen (ask me how I know!).

Tip 1: Use both a paper and an electronic calendar

Think of this as a “belt and suspenders” approach.

• Paper calendar: You can write down appointments exactly as you want, with any notes you need. For example, if I know I’ll be on the East Coast for an interpreting job, I’ll write “Assignment XYZ, 9 AM Eastern.” The downside is that paper calendars can be lost, and they don’t send reminders or warn you of double bookings. To prevent disaster, I photograph mine regularly.
• Electronic calendar: These are harder to lose, and you can accept invites automatically, send reminders, and flag conflicts. The tricky part is time zone changes: it’s easy to forget whether your appointments shifted correctly when you travel or when daylight savings changes.

Tip 2: Double-check everything

This is obvious but essential. Many of my clients in U.S. Eastern time don’t send calendar invites, so I have to calculate the time difference myself. My system: say it out loud and then write it down—“This is at 9 AM Eastern, which is 7 AM Mountain. Writing it down for 7 AM.” That extra pause has saved me more than once.

Tip 3: Watch for unusual time zones and seasonal quirks

Some examples that often trip people (or at least me!) up:

• Canadian Atlantic Time (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island) is an hour ahead of Eastern time. If you think of Eastern as being the Easternmost North American time zone, it’s not!
• Greece uses Eastern European Time, even though it’s due south of Central Europe; I learned this the hard way when I showed up late to present a webinar to a group in Greece.
• The Navajo Nation observes Daylight Saving time, unlike the rest of Arizona. Maybe this doesn’t apply to many people, but I go to the Navajo Nation pretty frequently with our animal rescue group!
• Nepal runs on its own zone, offset by 45 minutes instead of a full hour. I’m including this purely because it’s interesting, and I didn’t believe it until I went to Nepal!
• During British Summer Time, BST is one hour ahead of GMT. 
• The U.S. and Europe switch between Standard/Daylight or Summer/Winter time on different dates. This year, Europe changes on October 26 and the U.S. on November 2, creating a one-week mismatch. Some regions don’t switch at all (Iceland, Belarus, Hawaii, and most of Arizona). This honestly would be my dream come true: I don’t have a strong preference for Daylight or Standard time, but I despise the switch! 

Tip 4: Use a world clock

Most smartphones include a world clock, though you may need to select a city (not just “Canadian Atlantic Time”). Websites like World Clock not only show you the time anywhere in the world, offer a meeting planner tool that makes this easier.

A simple tip from one of my alumni: on the day of a meeting, just Google “What time is it in London?” (or wherever) to be sure.

Bonus tip: Keep a second clock

When I traveled to Fiji for vacation in May, I didn’t want to calculate an 18-hour difference every time I checked my schedule. My solution: leave my sports watch set to Colorado time while my phone switched to Fiji time. Since the watch also displayed the date, it was easy to orient myself. If you often work between two specific time zones, keeping a second clock in your office can be a lifesaver.
I hope these tips are helpful! Have a great week!

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Greetings, Training for Translators readers! If you’re looking for something interesting to read or listen to (I’m not a big audiobook person, but I listen to a lot of limited-series podcasts), I just posted a few of my recent favorite books and podcasts on LinkedIn. 

Master class next Wednesday!

Guest instructor Ana Sofia Correia kicks off the T4T master class “school year” next Wednesday, September 24! Join us for Marketing with purpose: How medical translators and interpreters can attract the right clients. Registration is $75 and includes the recording; we have a big group signed up and there’s room for everyone who wants to join. 

This week’s topic: Balancing work and life, at times when there is no balance

If you’ve been freelancing for any amount of time, you’ve probably been through it: a phase of life (could be weeks, months, or years) when you’re aiming for work/life balance, and your life has absolutely no balance. 

For many of us, this happens when we’re in a significant caregiving role. I started freelancing when my about to be 23 year-old daughter was born, and I remember many nights when my final thought as I fell asleep would be something like, “If tomorrow goes really well, maybe I can cut my nails.” Entire facets of my life fell by the wayside: I’m a lifelong voracious reader, and it felt like years went by where I read “Hippos Go Berserk” (“A wild counting story about a hippo whose home is visited by first two hippos, then three, then four, until 45 hippos are partying all night long”) at least 1,782 times, and not much else. Things went similarly off the rails (minus the hippo book) during my husband’s two major health incidents (pacemaker, mountain bike accident; no relationship between the two!). And yet, I still think I made the right choices (for me) in those situations. 

A radically unbalanced time can take many forms: your own health crisis, an international move, a relationship breakup, a beloved pet’s health crisis, helping your aging parents, just any of the curveballs that life tends to throw our way. As freelancers, we’re in a unique position at these times:

• We often have the flexibility to keep working, at least part-time, during these unbalanced phases, and…
• At least in the U.S., we have no paid leave for these times, while we’re often called on to step in because of our flexible schedules, and we may financially need to keep working while juggling a lot of other things 

First, focus on choices and priorities

How do we maintain some semblance of sanity as freelancers, when things feel totally off the rails? And how do we know when we’re making the “right” choices for us and our businesses, when we’re in a really hard situation in life in general? These are really personal questions, but here are a few strategies I’ve developed, through more than a few unbalanced periods in almost 23 years of freelancing. 

Most importantly, to whatever extent you can, focus on your own choices and your own priorities, rather than what’s being thrust upon you (which is often a lot). This kind of reframe really helps me:

• “I usually stop working at 2 PM because I like picking my daughter up at school and spending the afternoon with her,” versus “I can’t work past 2 PM because I have to go get my kid.” 
• “My schedule is a little irregular right now because my husband’s having health issues and I want to go to the important medical appointments with him,” versus “I can’t really say from one day to the next what hours I’m going to be working because I never know how my husband is going to be feeling and he also can’t drive.” 

In these situations, I think we sometimes default to “can’t,” when we really should say, “choose not to.” I definitely could have put my daughter in an after school program or hired an after school babysitter; lots of people with young kids work until 5 or 6 PM, I just chose not to. And my husband is a full-grown adult who could have taken Uber to medical appointments and managed his health stuff on his own. That’s what people without a key support person do. But that’s not what I wanted for him or for my own role in the situation. 

So start there: focus on your priorities and your choices, rather than the constraints. 

Also, put all the options on the table

I use this strategy a lot in life in general. I think that one of the worst feelings in life is feeling stuck: as if you’re in a cruddy situation with no way out, which is rarely true. It can be a big help to lay out all the options, even if they seem weird, expensive, undesirable, or something else, because it helps you see that there are more solutions than you might think. Whatever your specific situation, maybe you can apply this type of thinking: 

• If you’re taking care of kids or aging parents, maybe you can hire a less expensive babysitter or caregiver who you wouldn’t necessarily leave alone with the kid(s)/parent(s), but who can hang out with them while you’re working at home. I know a few freelancer moms who did this: hired the neighbor’s 12 year old to play games with their kids for an hour or two after school. 
• Maybe you can give yourself a sanity window: decide that for the next month, you’re not working on Friday afternoons (or whenever). Then, you know that whatever else happens, you have that time to reclaim your sanity. 
• If you’re the one having the crisis (health, etc.), maybe, with your clients’ permission, you can outsource some of their work to a really trusted colleague so that you at least keep the clients. For example, I hire my own editors for a lot of my direct client work, and my clients know this. Maybe, in a pinch, the editors could translate and I could edit. Even if you had to forgo a lot of your profit margin, this would alleviate the fear of losing your clients entirely. 
• Maybe you could put some things in the “good enough is good enough” category. I actually do this fairly frequently with cooking dinner. I’m the main weeknight cook in our house (my husband is actually a better, but much slower cook than I am). I dislike takeout and food delivery for various reasons (expense, all the packaging), but I also like eating real meals, even when I’m having a crazy week. My go-to insta-meal is an enhanced Costco bag salad (take the bag salad and add some cherry tomatoes, avocado, whatever) topped with grilled meatless chicken breasts (meatless only because we’re vegetarians). This takes around 15 minutes to make, and it’s fine; it’s nothing elaborate, but it’s good enough. 

Review past unbalanced periods and what you would do differently 

Life just keeps on happening, and chances are that throughout your freelance career, you’ll go through periods when things feel very manageable and periods when things feel completely off the rails. The advantage (sort of?) is that you can learn from these experiences and apply the lessons to the next time. What, if anything, would you do differently? Of the available options, do you feel like you picked the best one for you? How can you get clearer on your own priorities for the next time?

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