If you’re curious how AI tools like ChatGPT can fit into your work as a translator or interpreter—without compromising quality or ethics, come join us for a two-hour master class with guest instructor Nora Díaz on June 18 (next Wednesday). 

 Intro to AI for Freelance Translators and Interpreters is a practical, jargon-free class with a clear overview of what AI can (and can’t) do, and how to use it responsibly in your language work.

You’ll learn:

• How ChatGPT actually works
• Why prompt-writing is the key to getting AI output that’s actually helpful: treating it like an intern who can augment your work with the right instructions 
• Real-world ways to start using AI: Nora gives examples that are specific to our work as translators and interpreters; even if you’re skeptical (I was!!), you may find some use cases you hadn’t thought of 

Whether you missed this class the first time or you’ve been thinking about signing up, now’s your chance. We hope to see you there!

We’ve all been there: “I was working consistently on marketing (excellent!), then landed a large project (also excellent!) that left me with almost no time for the activities of daily life, much less marketing (less excellent, but the right decision in the current economy!). Now I haven’t done any business development in over a month and it feels daunting to start again.”  How to get back on the marketing wagon, after you’ve fallen off? 

Here’s the truth: There’s a lot of fear and panic in the freelance world right now, but/and everyone I know (really, everyone) who’s marketing assertively is finding good work. It’s out there. But it’s also a good time to capitalize on large projects when they come your way, and sometimes those projects are so large that your marketing routine flies out the window. 

When (not if, when) this happens to you, here are a few ideas to get back in the groove. You can also apply these to creating any sort of routine in your life, not just marketing! 

• Perhaps most importantly, you feel like you’re back at square one, but you’re not. This applies to lots of things in life when you’re on a roll and then you lose momentum: you have a lot more skills and knowledge than when you first started. Here’s the example I gave to someone in my marketing challenge group: if I told you, “Nudge one dormant client and call that enough for today,” you know exactly what that means and how to do it. It probably wouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, because you’re a long way from square one. You have at least some dormant clients. You know what “nudge” means (because you subscribed to this newsletter and got your free Nudge Kit!). You’ve done it before, whereas someone who’s really at square one doesn’t have any dormant clients and doesn’t know how to write a nudge e-mail. 
• Next, set your expectations really low. I know this sounds crazy, but I think you set yourself up for more disappointment and feeling worse about yourself (and none of us need that!) if you set your expectations too high for that first “dip” back in the pool. Here’s an example I recently gave: I was on a streak of practicing cello every day, then I went on vacation (and the vacation was great!). When I got back, I knew that I was setting myself up for disappointment if I pulled out the hardest piece I had been working on before I left. Instead, I got out my book of very easy warm-up exercises and played for 15 minutes. It actually felt great! It felt good to hold my cello again, and it felt fun to play, because I expected very little of that practice session; the point was simply to get back in the routine by doing something. 
• Then, start with the smallest possible action. Nudge one dormant client. Apply to one agency. Comment on one client’s LinkedIn post. Build from there! Most importantly, do not trap yourself in some convoluted, multi-step marketing campaign right away. Don’t tell yourself, “Well, I’d like to work with some local immigration law firms. But first I have to pass the ATA certification test!” (stop me if this sounds familiar). My husband, who works in IT, often uses the expression, “the tyranny of the sub-goal,” meaning that you’re not held back by the marketing campaign, you’re held back by what you perceive that you need to do before the marketing campaign even starts. Don’t fall for it! Take the smallest possible action to get the ball rolling.

I hope this is helpful! Have a great week!

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It’s a weird time in the freelance world and in the language professions in general. As I wrote in a past newsletter, I continue to talk to people who are looking for another career, people whose businesses are doing better than ever, and not that much in between. 

Most people don’t deal that well with change, and many of us are pretty risk-averse people (part of why we’re good at the job). When we think about trying something new, we often talk ourselves out of it before we even begin, by telling ourselves things like:

• “Nudging dormant clients will only annoy them. They know where to find me if they need me.” 
• “The clients I want to work with would never pay higher rates.”
• “Direct clients all want multiple languages, and I don’t want to subcontract work to other people.” 
• “Everyone at client-side conferences wants to talk to other people who do what they do. No one wants to talk to a translator or interpreter.” 
• “E-mail marketing doesn’t work. Everyone gets too much e-mail as it is.” 

The only question that matters

Here’s the *one* question to ask yourself in those situations:
-Have I tried it?

Let me repeat that: Have you tried these things? Have you nudged a bunch of dormant clients who told you, “You’re annoying, stop contacting us”? Have you attended five client-side events, and at each one, no one would talk to you? Have multiple direct clients told you that they don’t work with solo freelancers? Or are you making predictions based on what you think might happen, could happen, or will happen when (at some unknown point in the future) you try these things?

If you haven’t tried it, *you literally don’t know* how it’s going to go. Do your potential clients respond to “cold” e-mails? Who knows! Is it worth spending money on client-side conferences? Literally you don’t know unless you’ve tried it. Can you find your first direct clients if you’ve only ever worked for agencies? I definitely think so, but you won’t know for sure until you market to a bunch of direct clients.

Once you’ve tried something, you can assess:
-Was it effective?
-Did you enjoy it?
-Is it worth repeating?
-Should you tweak it (market to a different type of client, attend a different type of conference, word your e-mails differently)? 

But before that, *you just don’t know.* So, ask yourself, “Have I tried it?” and if the answer is no, the next step is…to try.

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Upcoming classes

• You can still sign up for Thursday’s master class on Translating official documents from French to English (apologies, I originally announced this for the wrong date!). This class covers the translation technique and business aspects of translating official documents. Registration is $75 and includes the recording. 
• Stay tuned for another AI-related master class with Nora Diaz on Wednesday, June 18: topic TBD!
• Registration is now open for the July session of my four-week course, Direct client marketing launch pad. This is a self-paced class with weekly question and answer sessions, giving you the tools and skills to launch a direct client marketing campaign. Registration is $250 and gives you access to the course materials for six months.

This week’s topic: Coping with existential dread about the language professions

I’ve recently fielded questions from numerous freelancers who are feeling existential dread about the language professions. These questions come primarily from people who are exclusively translators (they don’t interpret, subtitle, edit, etc.) and they center around a few key themes.

A typical message goes like this: “My business is actually doing fine, but all of the talk about AI replacing us is getting me down. I’ve talked to a few other freelancers who have lost so much work that they’re thinking about looking for another job. And every time I sense some hesitancy on the part of a client, or I have a slow week, I feel like it’s the end of my career. What should I do, besides maybe just staying off social media?” 

My thoughts on the source of the dread 

I have lots of thoughts on this topic, some of which I wrote about my previous article, Q1 2025: The best of times, the worst of times. While things are going well in my business, I agree with the people who’ve commented on the emotional toll of the swirling doom and gloom about the language professions right now. And the doom and gloom isn’t just rumor: I’ve recently talked to freelancers who are working side jobs to pay their bills, or who are dipping into savings for the first time in 15+ years of freelancing due to lack of work. 

I see a few contributing factors:

• AI fever, compounded by our tendency to focus on examples of people actually losing work to AI, of which there are plenty
• The unsettled US and world economies in general
• The ongoing world events (war in Ukraine, war in Gaza) affecting specific languages and clients
• The massive cuts to the US Federal government, including the near-elimination of the US Agency for International Development
• Fear of what might come next: Could the US’s longstanding language access laws be next on the chopping block? Could machine interpreting suddenly make a “great leap forward,” the way translation did with the advent of ChatGPT? It’s a lot to consider. 

Multiple things are true at once

I really think this is one of those situations where multiple things can be, and are, true at the same time. The operative word here is “and.” There’s still a lot of good language work out there, *and* it’s more time-consuming than it used to be, to find that work. Many people in the language professions are doing really well, *and* I think we’re going to lose a lot of people from the language professions, especially “pure” translators who either don’t have the skills or don’t have the desire to work with direct clients. 

That being said, I have yet to talk to someone who is doing a lot of targeted marketing and not finding work. Everyone I know who is doing a lot of targeted marketing, is finding work. And by “a lot,” I mean that they’re either sending out more than 100 highly targeted e-mails, or they’re attending multiple client-side conferences. 

A final consideration: Every single knowledge profession in the world is being affected by these same factors. According to an article I just read in Forbes (it’s paywalled, but you can probably find snippets online), 65% of law firms agree with the statement, “AI will separate successful law firms from unsuccessful ones within the next five years.” We (the knowledge professions) are literally all in this together, and I think the only way “out,” if that’s what you’re looking for, is to do a job that cannot be done on a computer. 

What now?

Here’s how I’m coping:

• Acknowledge that it’s scary. Just as when someone you know has a seemingly out-of-nowhere health crisis, it’s impossible to read this stuff (“My 15-year business has basically evaporated in the last year”) without wondering if it could happen to you. 
• And, acknowledge that someone else’s reality is not your reality. I couldn’t help myself, I actually asked ChatGPT if we’re going to be eliminated, and even it says no! You need to focus on what’s happening in *your* business, not in anyone else’s business.

That being said, I think we all need to:

• Be prepared to lose a large amount of work overnight. Envision a scenario in which your largest client drops you with no notice, and think about what you’d do. My defense against that is a sizable emergency fund, and some back-burner marketing ideas that are totally different from what I’m doing now. Your defense will be different, but you need to have one. 
• Take action; don’t sit there waiting for something awful to happen. Get ahead of it. In this economy, I think you’re never going to have just the right amount of work. It’s always going to be slightly too much or slightly too little. If you’d rather have slightly too much, market consistently until you have a little more work than you want, because if you stop when you have just enough work, you’re back on the hamster wheel if you lose one client. 
• Consider hiring a virtual assistant to help you with marketing. I stopped actively marketing to translation agencies around five years ago; few enough of them will pay my rates that it just was not worthwhile. And the truth is that marketing to direct clients is a lot of work. I’ve recently talked to a couple of freelancers who are using virtual assistants for the tedious part: they (the freelancers) make a list of 10-20 companies/universities/NGOs/other entities that they want to market to, then they write a template for e-mails and LinkedIn messages, then the virtual assistant (who has to be someone you really trust) locates those entities’ employees who are most likely to need the freelancer’s services, and contacts them by e-mail, LinkedIn, or both. I’ve never done this, but if you’re aiming to consistently contact 10+ clients per week, I think it’s worth considering. 
• Finally, think worst-case scenario and ask yourself if the worst-case scenario would really be that bad. Again, everyone’s is going to be different, but here’s mine. My husband’s job is tenuous right now because he works at a government climate research lab. I earn more in cash than he does, but we get all of our benefits through his job, and our young adult daughter is still a full-time student, so she’s still on our health insurance. Let’s say that my husband got laid off and I lost more than one major client. Here’s my thought: we live in an expensive city, our house is paid off, and we have no other debt. Worst case scenario, we could rent our house out and move to a part of the world with a very low cost of living (Thailand? Philippines? Indonesia?), put my daughter on her school’s student health insurance, and give ourselves six months to a year to figure things out. And in reality, that doesn’t sound horrible. Maybe your scenario is different, but personally it helps me to think about what I would do if the economy really collapsed. 

Finally, whatever happens, we’re in it together! I’m glad to have you as part of the Training for Translators community!

My new book, Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter is now in soft launch; it’s officially out June 3, from Tilt Publishing. If you’d like to be entered to win a free copy, join the Training for Translators mailing list here, and you have a chance of winning your choice of a hardcover, paperback, or electronic version. And if you don’t want to wait for the drawing and you’d like to read the book right now, you can purchase your copy right here (worldwide shipping available!).