Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

5 things to do before 2012

Hello readers! Thoughts on Translation is back from an incredible two weeks in Costa Rica: we visited Corcovado National Park and the Arenal volcano area and it was truly amazing. I highly recommend Corcovado Adventures Tent Camp and the Sirena ranger station for a truly off-the-beaten-track experience. Think wild tapirs wandering down the beach and 10-foot crocodiles floating in the surf (seriously!). We rented a small but beautiful house in Arenal and had a lot of fun rafting with Costa Rica Descents, paddleboarding with Desafio and zip-lining with EcoGlide; I skipped their famous Tarzan Swing but my husband and my daughter loved it! And now…it’s seven degrees here in Colorado and we have eight inches of snow in our front yard. I’m not completely sure why we came back from Costa Rica but there’s plenty of translating to be done, so I’m trying to focus on the positive and look forward to ski season!

While I was on vacation, I started thinking about wrapping up 2011 and setting goals for 2012. I’ve assembled a list of five things I think every freelance translator should do before 2012, and I hope that you’ll add your own in the comments! Addendum: In catching up on Google Reader, I just found this post on the same topic from Sara Freitas-Maltaverne. Excellent suggestions for those who read French!

  1. Do a searching and fearless assessment of 2011. Did you meet your financial goals or did you fall short? Did you finish the major items on your business to-do list or are they still taunting you from the sticky note on your monitor? Think about what needs to change. If you’re like me, some of the same goals appear on your goal list over and over. It took me years (literally) to realize that when that happens, it means that my current method for achieving those goals is irreparably broken. For example I had been trying to finish the second edition of my book for literally three years. Finally I decided that I just had to block out an hour a day and treat that time as sacrosanct, only to be used to work on the book. I won’t say it was easy to follow through on that, but the project got finished! So if you keep saying you’re going to… (upgrade your computer, learn a new TM tool, use your speech recognition software more, attend more client networking events, have a face-to-face meeting with at least one client a month, or whatever) and it hasn’t happened yet, don’t just write it on the list for 2012, make a new plan for actually accomplishing it.
  2. Make any end-of-year purchases or contributions. Before you make your final tax payment for 2011, it’s a good time to burn some money out of the business account if you have a surplus. If you pay your 2012 professional association membership dues before December 31, you can deduct them from your 2011 income. If you need a new piece of durable goods (printer, expensive software, office furniture, netbook, etc.), you can decrease your 2011 taxable income by buying it now. Ditto with contributions to most, although not all, retirement accounts. I have an individual 401K for my corporation, which has the advantage of having a very high contribution limit but the disadvantage that the withdrawals will probably be taxed as ordinary income once I’m old enough to take money out of the account. Other investment vehicles such as the Roth IRA work in the opposite manner: your contribution may not be tax-deducible, but your withdrawals may be. Definitely ask your accountant or financial planner about the pluses and minuses of various year-end contributions.
  3. Get your 2011 deductions in order. Make sure that if you are claiming more than $600 of subcontracting expenses to any one person or corporation, you get their tax data and send them a 1099. And make sure to claim every legal deduction that you can. I don’t like to stretch the rules, but I’m always finding new deductions that I was unaware of. This year’s: if you have kids age 12 or under, you may be able to deduct up to $3,000 of summer day camp costs per child as work-related dependent care. Make sure to get the camp’s tax ID information and make sure that you meet the requirements for the deduction; for example in most cases you cannot claim any work-related dependent care expenses (day care, summer camp or otherwise) if your spouse doesn’t work, and if your kids go to sleepaway camp, you may have to research whether the deduction applies.
  4. Decide whether you are going to raise your rates. I find that with my agency clients, it’s helpful to raise my rates a little bit every year rather than trying to impose a large increase all at once. If you’ve been thinking of raising your rates, the end of the year provides a good reason to do so. You can even prepare a rate sheet with your 2012 rates and send it out to your clients individually.
  5. And of course…start setting your goals for 2012! Whether it’s to earn more, work less, diversify your client base, upgrade your skills or attend some new conferences, now is the time to think about next year. Think about how quickly 2011 went: doesn’t it seem like a short time ago that you were setting your 2011 goals?

Overall I feel quite positive about 2011. In contrast with the larger world economy, the translation industry is still booming and I’ve had as much work as I could handle for most of the year. In terms of goals, I finally (finally!) polished off the second edition of my book, but I could have done more with my direct client marketing campaign. That’s the other advantage of reviewing 2011 in early December: still three weeks left to salvage those lingering to-do items!


Corinne McKay

On hiatus

Greetings readers! Thoughts on Translation will be on hiatus for the rest of November, but feel free to browse the archives in the meantime!


Corinne McKay

ATA conference topic: low payers

Amazingly enough in this economy, my sense from the ATA conference is that most freelancers are very happy with their work volume and income levels. Especially as compared with the gloom and doom of the US economy (maybe even the world economy?), I think we’re doing quite well. 2011 has brought me as much work as I wanted and I’m happy with my income despite devoting a fair bit of time to the second edition of my book and my new webinar venture.

Still,  low-paying agencies were a hot topic at the conference. Some freelancers feel that ATA should take a stand on this or somehow get involved (not likely to happen in any case), or that freelancers should come to some sort of consensus on how to handle these agencies. I don’t have the perfect answer, but here are some of my thoughts, and feel free to add your own:

  • The best defense against low payers is simply to be too busy to even contemplate working with them. When I receive lowball inquiries from agencies, I either delete them without responding or respond and say “My minimum rate is X and I’m very busy at that rate, so I will have to decline. Please keep me in mind if you have any future projects with a larger budget.” Part of me feels that an agency looking for a professional translator for 6 cents a word doesn’t even deserve a response, while the other part of me feels that it’s a public service to communicate that professionals charge real money and that we are very busy dealing with clients who pay real money.
  • There really is enough well-paying work to go around. Judy Jenner says this all the time, and I completely agree. There is more than enough well-paying work for all 2,000 people who were at the ATA conference and then some. Leave the low payers to their business model while you pursue yours: the market is there.
  • Most translators charge what their work is worth. You know how every once in a while you have this horrible sinking fear that there are people out there charging a tiny fraction of what you charge and producing well-researched, beautifully-written translations delivered on or before deadline with a smile? Well, I would let go of that fear. As demonstrated by Chris Durban‘s “Mystery Shopper” experiment (described in her presentation at the ATA Translation Company Division conference), agencies that compete on price alone generally produce unusably lousy translations, using some combination of non-native speakers, people who aren’t actually professional translators, machine translation or all three.
  • If you don’t want to deal with low payers, step away from the places they hang out. I’m not one to name names, but auction-style translation marketplaces are not the place to be if you want to earn real money. Instead, market to quality-conscious agencies: see my post on Using Payment Practices as a marketing tool for some ideas on how to do that.
  • Don’t expect associations to get involved. It’s not really ATA’s place to disrupt the free market or set freelancers’ rates for them. Even if ATA were legally able to get involved in rates, who gets to decide what constitutes lowballing? If you currently work for 15 cents a word, 7 cents is lowballing. If you currently work for 45 cents a word, 30 cents is lowballing, and so on.
  • Put your energy where it matters. I believe in fighting for what’s right, but you’re never going to put the Wal-Marts of translation out of business or convince them to quadruple what they pay their translators. So move on; let go. You know how they say that living well is the best revenge? Get your revenge on the lowball market by charging more than they will ever be able to!

In general, I can’t say that I spend a lot of time thinking about or dealing with the Wal-Marts of translation. They’re not my target market and I have more than enough work without them. Other thoughts?


Corinne McKay

Getting Started as a Freelance Translator: quick-start session

Just a quick announcement: From December 1-22, I’ll be offering a special four-week session of my online course Getting Started as a Freelance Translator. I’ve been teaching this class since 2005 and it has helped over 200 translators launch or grow their freelance businesses. This new and shorter session is for beginning freelancers who want to get a jump on their business goals for 2012, and we’ll be working on your translation-targeted resumé and cover letter, goals and marketing plan, rates and billable hours sheets and your online presence. I conduct the class entirely by e-mail, so you do not need to be online at any specific time to participate.

The cost is $250 with a $50 discount for ATA members through the ATA member-provider program, and everyone who participates will receive a copy of the second edition of my book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. Hope to see some of you there! For a full description or to sign up, here’s the link!


Corinne McKay

ATA conference wrapup

I’m back from last week’s ATA conference in Boston, and I’m happy to report that it was highly enjoyable! If you attended the conference and haven’t yet given ATA your feedback, here’s the online form, and if you fill it out by November 25 you’ll be entered in a drawing for a free registration to next year’s conference in San Diego. Jill Sommer also wrote an informative overview of the conference that you should check out!

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to tweet or blog much from the conference (WiFi issues, more on that later!), but I’ll give a brief wrapup here and then use future posts to summarize some of the presentations I attended. I was part of four sessions: Blogging 101 with Riccardo Schiaffino; Working Successfully With a Translation Partner with Eve Bodeux; the Smart Business panel with Chris Durban, Judy Jenner and ace moderator Jost Zetzsche and a freelancer-agency panel at the annual meeting of the Translation Company Division. If I’m not deluding myself, I think that all of these went well, with sizable audiences and positive feedback.

The ATA staff and officers deserve huge thanks and congratulations for organizing yet another successful conference. Those of us who organize regional conferences for 100 people can appreciate what it takes to run a national conference for 2,000 people, and ATA pulls this off every year with very few logistical glitches. Huge kudos to conference organizer (and now ATA President!) Dorothee Racette!

Some highlights from this year’s conference:

  • The hotel was beautiful and in a great location. Although I lived in Boston for 8 years I’m not a die-hard city person, and to me, the New York conference hotel (in 2009) felt very claustrophobic and hard to navigate. The Copley Marriott felt very spacious and modern, and the conference rooms were very pleasant!
  • I really like the trend toward more panels and co-presented sessions. It seems as if many of the Divisions are using their meeting time to discuss pertinent issues, and more presenters are willing to collaborate for a better presentation.
  • The sessions I attended were really fantastic. The presenters who I always look forward to hearing were great once more, and some of the sessions I attended on impulse got me thinking about new possibilities for my own professional directions.
  • Translators are just really cool, interesting and nice people. I know this sounds pollyanna-ish, but it’s true; translators are lots of fun to spend time with, especially when you have three uninterrupted days!

The very minimal lowlights:

  • Problematic WiFi. I’m still back in the early 2000s without a smart phone, so my only way to check e-mail, tweet or blog on the road is with my netbook. Normally not a big deal because the netbook has a great WiFi radar and it’s small enough to fit in my briefcase. The conference WiFi just was not great: in the hotel room, in the lobby, even at the WiFi hotspot outside the exhibit hall…ultra-slow connection or no connection at all. But hey, it was nice to spend a few days not worrying about constantly checking things online.
  • I agree with Jill’s assessment that the opening reception could be longer and the division open houses need their own rooms.
  • Every speaker needs to run a countdown timer so that they know when their session ends and how much time they have left. It’s a problem for the presenter and the attendees if the session runs late or the presenter has to speed through 10 slides in the last 5 minutes.

It was great fun to get out of the office for a few days and reconnect with colleagues and clients in Boston; any feedback from others who were there?