Spanish to English translator Nicole Lisa recently interviewed me for the Love Your Job blog, and the interview is now online here. You can also read the earlier interviews in Love Your Job’s “5 questions for…” series, with posts about an actor, an architect and a voice teacher who all love their jobs.
Potential clients and sticker shock
Wiktionary defines sticker shock as “Disgust, shock or fright upon learning the price of an item offered for sale,” and this roughly describes the reaction of many would-be translation buyers when they learn the price of a professional translation. This leaves the professional translator with a dilemma: how to handle a sticker-shocked client.
In my experience, sticker-shocked clients come in two basic flavors: translation buyers who are somewhat informed about the translation market and translation buyers who are not at all informed about the translation market. I feel that I can deal fairly well with the first group: generally low-paying translation agencies that are out of touch with what quality-conscious translators charge. Because I feel (or at least hope) that these translation buyers have some inkling of what good translations cost, I don’t tend to get overly involved with them. As in:
Agency: “Our budget for this project is X.”
Translator: “I appreciate the contact, but my base rate is X times 2.”
Agency: “You can’t offer a discount?”
Translator: “I’m fortunate to be very busy at those rates, so unfortunately not.”
I find it much harder to deal with potential clients who, through no fault of their own, are completely out of touch with how much a professional translation will cost. In these situations, I’m often unsure how to allow the potential client to save face while delivering the news that the project will cost two or five or ten times what the potential client has budgeted. As in:
Potential client describes a really interesting-sounding translation project that is right up the translator’s alley. Then, the conversation turns to money.
Potential client: “So, can you give me an idea of approximately how much this would cost?”
Translator: “Well, in order to give you a firm quote I would need to see the full text of the book and we would need to talk about your deadline, delivery format, etc.”
Potential client: “But just as a ballpark figure, can you give me an idea?”
Translator: “Right, just as an example I translated a book of similar length a couple of months ago and the total cost was $7,500.”
Potential client: “Sorry? You mean $750, right?”
Over the past year I’ve had several conversations similar to the one above. These leave me feeling terrible for a few reasons: often, the potential client is *really* excited about the project. Sometimes it’s a book they’ve written themselves, sometimes it’s their grandmother’s journal that’s just been found in the family attic, sometimes it’s a book on a topic they feel passionate about and for which there is very little information available in English. I’m also unsure how much it’s worth helping these potential clients from sticker shock to acceptance. Sometimes I empathize with them (“I know, if you’ve never used a translator before it’s a shock to find out how much it costs”), sometimes I try a little client education (“I’m sure that you can find someone cheaper or even free, but consider the risk of ending up with an unusable translation”) and sometimes I just try to end the conversation. However, I feel that there must be a better way to handle this and bring these clients around to an awareness of what professional translation costs.
Any sticker shock coping strategies from the readers?
A positive and a negative
Happy Monday! To start the week off, here’s some positive and negative news from the language world:
- Positive: I was just listening to NPR‘s Talk of the Nation while eating lunch, and today’s segment featured an interview with NPR’s longtime (and now retiring) war correspondent, Anne Garrels. Garrels started her career reporting in the former Soviet Union and was one of the few Western journalists to remain in Iraq at the height of the U.S. invasion, which provided the material for her excellent memoir Naked in Baghdad. My favorite moment from the interview (which you can listen to tonight on NPR’s website): a caller asks Garrels something along these lines: “Ms. Garrels, how about the role of foreign languages in your career? Especially now that foreign languages are being de-emphasized in American schools?” and Anne Garrels immediately responds “Knowing Russian changed my life” (seriously!). Garrels then went on to describe how she never would have been offered the chance to report from the Soviet Union had she not spoken Russian. At that time (I believe she’s referring to the early 80s), the only interpreters available in Russia were also employed by the KGB, so “unauthorized” reporting was done by the very few Western journalists who spoke Russian. I’m excited to see the transcript of this interview when NPR publishes it; a beautiful moment for language awareness in the US. Update: the transcript of this interview is online here.
- But then: If you want a less rosy take on the state of our industry, read Terena Bell’s blog post Is our industry disconnected from clients?. In this very thorough post, Terena describes her experience attending the recent Harvard Social Enterprise Conference and specifically the conference’s global health track. Warning: it’s depressing. Terena describes sitting in the audience as a professor from the Harvard School of Public Health dismisses medical “translators” (a.k.a. interpreters) as fundamentally incompetent and the Pentagon’s International Health Specialist Program director doesn’t realize that medical interpreting is a profession. There is also a lot of excellent information in the comments on Terena’s post.
Next session of "Getting started as a freelance translator" starts April 12
The next session of my online course Getting Started as a Freelance Translator starts April 12 and registration is open on my website. I’ve been running this course for about four years to help beginning translators launch successful freelance businesses. During the course, we cover topics such as how to write your translation-targeted résumé and cover letter, how to develop a marketing plan and profile your potential clients, how to develop translation specializations and how to set your translation rates. The course materials are six PDF lessons with homework exercises (I provide individualized feedback on all of your homework exercises) and a complimentary copy of my book How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. I also provide one-on-one consulting to every student in the course for the full twelve week session. Through the ATA Member-Provider Program, ATA members receive a $50 discount off the standard tuition of $350.
How to hide or delete a moribund blog
One of the plus/minus factors in the social media universe is the immortality of material that you post on the web. If you write an ill-advised comment on someone else’s blog, it’s there forever (unless you convince the blogger to remove it). However, the same isn’t true of a blog you write yourself; it’s not hard to hide your blog from public view or delete it completely.
If you haven’t posted anything to your blog in a long time (definition of “a long time”…maybe 6 months?), it’s debatable whether the blog is an asset to your networking or marketing efforts. If you use WordPress, you can hide your blog by going to Settings>Privacy and then selecting the most restrictive privacy level, where you must approve each user who can view your blog. If you want to delete the blog entirely, go to Settings>Delete blog. Note that at least in WordPress, deleting your blog is irreversible. If you have *any* inkling that you might use your blog posts for something in the future, either just hide the blog as described above, or back up the blog to an XML file before you delete it (in WordPress, go to Tools>Export). Or better yet, start blogging again!