Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

U.K. National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day in the U.K. (admittedly I don’t live in the U.K. but I’m sure they don’t mind a little borrowing!). My high school French teacher was a real poetry buff, and when I was in 11th grade we each had to pick a French poem to translate and read to the class. I picked Guillaume Apollinaire’s Le pont Mirabeau, which is set on the Mirabeau Bridge over the Seine in Paris. I can’t even imagine what I wrote; whatever it was I’m sure it made Apollinaire roll in his grave, but I do still remember how long I worked on the translation and how much I loved doing it. I think that my career destiny was definitely sealed when, a year later, some high school friends and I went to Paris with that same teacher and read “Le pont Mirabeau” in French and English while standing on the Mirabeau Bridge!

Of course I now realize that translating poetry has to be one of the hardest tasks a translator can undertake. In the absence of whatever horrors I inflicted on Apollinaire’s work, here are some better translations: one by the folk/rock group The Pogues and one by U.S. Poet Laureate emeritus Richard Wilbur.


Corinne McKay

Avoiding feast or famine by marketing consistently

Ever since the current recession hit, the economy has been doing strange things. While most freelancers I know are at or above their overall income goals, I’ve talked to numerous people who have gone longer than usual with little or no work. In my own case, my usual holiday slowdown (normally lasting from about Christmas Eve to January 2 or 3) morphed into almost no work from mid-December to mid-January. Another translator I talked to had absolutely no work for the month of July; yet another said that she had been going about one week a month with no inquiries at all.

For those of us who are usually as busy or busier than we want to be, a short-term slowdown can be more of a blessing than a curse.  However, there’s a point where the feast or famine phenomenon gets problematic, especially when it motivates us to accept sub-standard projects or low rates out of a fear that no one will ever hire us again. Or, we start contacting our current clients out of desperation, trying to find a way to sugar-coat “Do you have any work for me?” so that it doesn’t sound so pleading.

The Wealthy Freelancer just ran an excellent post on this very topic, in which the author (Ed Gandia) stressed the importance of marketing consistently. Ed advises that every freelancer block out 10% of her or his time and spend it on marketing in order to even the work flow out. He makes the excellent point that “…even when you’re slammed, getting leads you can’t pursue is good for your self-confidence, which helps you keep your fees where they should be (and even raise them in some cases).”

Lately I’ve been trying to spend 30-45 minutes a day on marketing; I find it’s a task I can do even when I’m physically or mentally tired, so a small chunk of time in the evening works well. I have a spreadsheet where I jot down marketing ideas as they pop into my head, i.e. “xyz is marketing to Americans but website is only in French” or “Look for more clients in same niche as xyz current client,” then I take action on them during my marketing time.

Has anyone else tried methods to even out the feast or famine cycle?


Corinne McKay

When a client cold contacts you

We translators spend a lot of time strategizing about how to cold contact potential clients. But what happens when a potential client cold contacts us? Especially if you have a well-written profile in your local/national translators association directory, or you have a professional-looking website, or you do a reasonable amount of networking, this is bound to happen; you get an “out of the blue” e-mail or phone call from someone who needs a quote for a translation. What are some basic steps to take in order to set this interaction up for success?

  • Establish who the client is. This sounds laughably basic, but it isn’t. Is the client an individual or a company? How did the client get your name? Is the client based in your country or somewhere else? Is the client a startup or an established going concern? All of these factors will weigh into your decision as to whether to work with this client and at what rate. Always do your own research on the client, either by searching them on Payment Practices, getting references from other freelancers who work with them, searching them online, or preferably all three.
  • Determine if the client needs some basic information about your services, a quote for a specific project, or both. I think it’s useful to have a nice-looking one or two page document about you and your services that you can send out to anyone who requests it. Personally I would not mention rates on this profile document, but I would include information about the services you do and do not offer, your specializations, some recent projects, etc.
  • Ask questions. I think that many translators make the error of giving too much information while asking for too little information from the client. For example, is the document you will be translating already written, or is the client still writing it? What is the deadline? How many words or pages is the document? Is the document for internal use or for publication? Does the client have a glossary and/or reference materials? While you don’t want to bombard the client with complicated requests or make them feel that they have to jump through all sorts of hoops to work with you, you also don’t want to fall into the trap of agreeing to something you can’t deliver.
  • Always, always (did I mention always?) insist on seeing the document before committing to a rate and turnaround time. Offer to sign an NDA in advance if you need to, but realize that you are setting yourself up for failure if you do not see the actual material before the ink is on the contract.
  • Give the client your terms of service. Whether this is an extensive document or just an e-mail that the client needs to reply to, make sure that you have something in writing where the client confirms your rate, deadline, payment terms and any other policies (i.e. dispute resolution procedure, confidentiality agreement, etc.)
  • If the project doesn’t happen, be gracious and stay in touch. I think anyone who has been in business for a reasonable amount of time has been contacted by numerous potential clients whose projects don’t work out. Don’t get bitter; thank the client for contacting you and ask them to keep you in mind in the future!


Corinne McKay

What the health care debate teaches us about pricing

Until a few weeks ago, the most popular post on this blog was one that I wrote a long time ago on charging by the word versus charging by the hour (it’s since been eclipsed by a recent post on using a sample translation as a sales pitch). This is a topic I think about a lot, and this morning while listening to NPR’s Morning Edition, I made a connection (admittedly this was before I had any coffee, so it may be an erroneous connection…) between the current health care reform debate and translation pricing.

Linda Wertheimer talked to Mayo Clinic President Dr. Denis Cortese about the Mayo Clinic’s model of providing high-quality care at a manageable cost, largely by putting its physicians on salary. As compared to the fee-for-service model that exists elsewhere, the Mayo Clinic believes that physicians are/should be paid to keep patients healthy, rather than just for treating them when they’re sick. Whether or not we agree with this model, its basis appears valid: in the normal system, if I go to the doctor for my sore shoulder and she decides I need rotator cuff repair surgery, she makes a lot of money; if she tells me to stretch and take ibuprofen, she makes only what I pay for the office visit. Under the Mayo model, the doctor earns the same amount no matter what treatment she prescribes.

So, what about this is applicable to translation? It seems to me (and feel free to disagree) that I am inclined to work more carefully when I get paid by the hour. I know that if I spend two hours reading reference documents that will result in a better translation, I get paid for that time. If it takes an inordinately long time to find just the right word, that’s OK. Whereas when I’m getting paid by the word, the actions mentioned above are essentially off the clock.

I’ve partially solved this problem by raising my per-word rates to the point where I can afford to do off the clock work and still make a healthy hourly rate. However, the problem in our industry (which Dr. Cortese addressed as it relates to medicine) seems to be that many clients want to pay a lower hourly rate than what they effectively pay when the translator charges by the word. Let’s say that I produce about 500 finished words per hour on average, and that my clients pay 15-20 cents per word. Right now, I would say that although my clients are effectively paying $75-$100 an hour, they would balk at that number if I listed it as my hourly rate. In the NPR interview, when Linda Wertheimer asked Dr. Cortese how Mayo retains physicians when they are paid a fixed salary, his answer was that Mayo’s salaries are competitive with what physicians make in the fee-for-service model, and that its physician turnover rate is less than 2% per year. So, it seems that the missing link in our industry is that competitive hourly rate, which leaves most of us charging by the word. Thoughts?