Greetings, Training for Translators readers! I hope you’re all doing well, and here’s what’s up with T4T this week. 

Upcoming classes 

• On Wednesday, May 21, I’m teaching a two-hour master class on Translating official documents from French to English. We’ll discuss the translation technique and the business aspects of this topic; registration is $75 and includes the recording
• From June 2-27, I’ll be running my four-week, self-paced class, Direct client marketing launch pad. This class combines self-paced video lessons, weekly assignments, and question and answer sessions that you can attend live or watch the recording. Registration is $250 ($30 discount for members of the American Translators Association) and you have access to the course materials for six months.

This week’s topic: Ways to self-publish your writing or translations 

By definition, translators like to write. Lots of interpreters also like to write! And perhaps you’d like to get that writing out into the world, without going through the traditional publishing process. Maybe you’d like to publish a glossary, or a business how-to book, or something about your specialization? Let’s take a look at some ways of doing that; I’m basing this on my experience self-publishing a bunch of books and other materials, using all of the channels that I’ll describe here. 

I honestly think translators and interpreters should publish more books; maybe you could…:

• Publish glossaries for your specializations
• Publish a literary translation: find a book in the public domain on Project Gutenberg, translate it, and self-publish it! 
• Publish manuals to software that you use 
• Publish marketing plans and business strategies that have worked for you 

In order to do this, you need to:

1. Write the book, probably in either Word, Google Docs, or Scrivener 
2. Design the interior
3. Design the cover
4. Publish it
5. Market it 

My favorite general resources 

My two favorite resources on self-publishing in general are:

• Joanna Penn’s website The Creative Penn. Joanna Penn is herself a thriller author, but taught herself how to format and publish her own books. She talks about both the craft and the process of writing, and I find her stuff really helpful. Her Tools page contains all of the resources (software and people) that she uses for her own books. 
• Dave Chesson’s website Kindlepreneur. Admittedly geared toward Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing option, this website has tons of resources on every stage of the self-publishing process: how to write and edit your manuscript, design the interior, design the cover, it’s all there! 

First: The minimum viable product option

These days, it’s completely possible to self-publish a book that is indistinguishable from a traditionally published book. More on that later. But that option takes time, and money, and may cause you to overthink it or get bogged down in the details (not that any of us ever do that…). If so, consider the MVP (minimum viable product) option:

• Write or translate the thing that you want to write or translate; format it nicely enough that it looks decent and people will want to read it. Maybe hire a graphic designer to make some sort of cover for you. 
• Make it into a PDF
• Sell it as an instant download, using a service like E-junkie. There are lots of other services like this, I just use and like E-junkie, and it’s inexpensive. 

There; you’re done! I honestly think this is an underrated option; just get the thing out there! I’ve used this option for a couple of my e-books and I’ve been very happy with it. I’ve since upgraded to a Woo Commerce store that allows me to sell digital files directly from my website, but I’m still a fan of this MVP approach! 

Pluses: It’s easy and inexpensive, and allows you to focus on the content, rather than the publishing process. 
Minuses: It doesn’t look like a “real book,” and you have to figure out how and where to market it, because it’s not on any distribution platforms. 

Next up: An entry-level self-publishing option like Kindle Direct 

If we’re ranking these options like Gold, Silver, Bronze, this would be the Silver option. You can make a real book with no up-front cost, by publishing on Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which (despite the name) publishes print and e-books. This is what I did for my book Finding and Marketing to Translation Agencies. In my case, I hired my own cover designer and interior designer so I did have an up-front cost, but KDP itself costs nothing, and you can upload a Word file and KDP will convert it into a publishable format for you. 

Pluses: When they say “simple,” they’re not kidding. I’ve talked to a couple of self-published authors who went from “idea stage” to published book in, like, a month. KDP is a way to get a “real book” out into the world at a low cost. 
Minuses: There’s a lot of junk published by KDP, and your book may be thrown into that mix. If you use KDP’s built-in book conversion options (make a Word file into a book), it shows. And I find the quality of their print books to be not great. 

I think that most independent authors have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. It’s, well, Amazon, *and* it’s the way most books are sold. My self-published books are available on almost any channel you can think of, from my own website to independent bookstores, and the Amazon sales crush every other channel. So it’s up to you: be on Amazon or don’t be on Amazon, but if you’re going to go the non-Amazon route, you need a very robust plan on how to market your book outside your circle of friends and family. Personally, I find the quality of KDP’s print books to be subpar if you’re a book snob; that will bother some people, and not others. 

Another option with no up-front cost is Ingram Spark, but it’s less full-featured than KDP. KDP requires basically no self-publishing skills if you’re OK with a book that looks like a Word document made into a book, but for Ingram Spark you’ll need to either hire an interior designer and a cover designer, or use a resource like Joanna Penn’s website to learn to do that yourself. Yet another possibility is a service like Ebook Launch (thanks to JT Hine for this recommendation!) that offers a menu of book design, editing, and formatting services. I’m actually thinking about using them for a compilation of my blog posts; you send them a Word document and they guarantee that the e-book file will be accepted by all of the major distributors, and they offer template-based book covers for as little as $99. 

This “Silver” option is what I did for the first three editions of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. The editing, interior design, and cover design were done by some combination of myself, my husband, and freelance designers, and I used Lulu (kind of the O.G. print-on-demand service) to publish and distribute the books. And hey, I managed to sell 15,000 books that way, so it’s a good option; it just requires a lot of coordination between the various stages of the publishing process. 

Gold: Hire a publishing service to do all of this for you 

My resolution for this year was/is to start publishing at least one book a year until I run out of ideas (will that be in 2026 or 2050…who knows?). Self-publishing has changed a lot since my last book, so I did some research on the “modern” options, which yielded an entirely new paradigm: the hybrid publisher. I’ve always maintained that my books would be a complete non-starter for a traditional publisher. They’re too niche, they need a while to gain traction in the market, and very few people walk into a brick and mortar bookstore in search of a book about how to become a translator. And yet, the Silver option is still a lot of work; that, plus the retirement of my longtime book designer pushed me to consider other ways of doing this. 

While reading Austin Church’s book Free Money, I was impressed with the quality (of the writing and the actual book) and noticed the Tilt Publishing imprint on the cover. Hmmm. What could this be? It turns out that Tilt is the hybrid publishing arm of my old friend Lulu, and there are other hybrid publishers out there as well. Hybrid publishing is basically a “general contractor” approach to self-publishing: the hybrid publisher does all of the legwork for you, in return for a lump sum fee, while you keep all the royalties from the book.

In Tilt’s case, they had my book proofread (I was happy with the quality), got the ISBN, had the cover designed, did the interior layout, formatted the e-book, set the book up for global distribution, and set up print-on-demand on Lulu so that I can order my own discounted copies. I paid $3,700 for this, and it looks like this has now increased to $4,500. Whether this is a good investment really depends on your goals and your book’s sales potential. If you’re envisioning a few hundred sales to family and friends, I’d probably go a different route. Since I’ve already earned close to six figures from book sales, this was an appealing way to go, and it saved me a lot of time and hassle; I’m already considering using them for the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. 

I hope these tips are helpful if you have a book lurking inside you!

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This question was submitted by a reader. How do you stop working with a client? Just give them some notice, like a regular job? 

It’s an interesting question, and there are a few ways to answer it, so let’s analyze it from a few different angles!

If the client is treating you poorly, just quit!

This should be the exception rather than the rule, but it bears saying: you’re a contractor, not an employee. If a client is treating you poorly, just stop working with them as of this very moment. In this category, I would put reasons like:

• Payment issues: paying late, reducing the payment after the project has started, you having to chase the client for payment.
• “Treating a freelancer like an employee” issues: Expecting you to attend meetings at short notice, expecting you to attend an excessive amount of meetings without being paid, expecting you to be available for work at short notice or to rearrange your schedule to accommodate them. Those aren’t unreasonable expectations of an employee, but they’re unreasonable expectations of a freelancer: If the client wants you to do these things, they can give you a salary and benefits.
• Disrespecting you: Treating you in a way that’s unprofessional, denigrating your work, asking you to go beyond the scope of the project without extra pay. 

If a client does any of these things, just quit. “Thank you for your business in the past; I’m no longer available to work on your projects or assignments.” That’s it. 

Consider whether it’s worth raising your rates (or another change in parameters)

If you want to move on from this client because they pay poorly, or because they take up more of your time than the work is worth, I think it’s always worth one try at a rate raise or other negotiation. Calculate what it would be worth to you to stick with this client, and give them a chance to match that rate. “In order to keep working together, I would need to raise my rate to X, effective as of the next project. I really enjoy working with you; please let me know if that rate would be in your budget.”

This strategy assumes that you don’t care if the client refuses the rate increase and stops working with you. You can do the same with any other parameter of your working conditions: tell them that you need one day per 1,500 words of translation, or that you’re not working for them if you can’t select your interpreting boothmate, or you’re not using their in-house translation memory tool, or whatever else is bugging you. It’s surprising to me how often clients will go along with these types of requests if they really want to keep you. My take: if there’s a reason you don’t want to work with this client any more, it doesn’t hurt to tell them why, and see if they can fix it. 

However, don’t do this if you actually want to keep the client. I recently took a class with Ed Gandia, and he stressed that, counter to what most freelancers do, the first step in raising your rates with existing clients, is to proactively find new clients who will pay what you want to earn. His take, and I agree, is that when you try to negotiate a rate increase without having a plan B, you’re too invested in retaining the existing client: you need them more than they need you, and that’s a weak negotiating position. 

Then decide: Are you going to actively quit, or passively quit? 

Maybe you’ve already made up your mind: you don’t want to work with this client any more. Their work is boring, their project managers are mean, their deadlines are unreasonable, you know that they won’t pay more than you’re making, whatever the reason, you’re allowed to quit, and you can do it in one of two ways:

1. Passively. Just become unavailable. Answer every request with, “I’m sorry, I’m not available.” and leave it at that. Personally I prefer a more direct approach, but again, you’re a freelancer and you don’t owe this client anything. Here, a side note: When a client who I want to keep working with contacts me and I’m not available, I always say something in addition to “I’m not available.” Like, “I’m so sorry, I already have another assignment on that day, but I really enjoy your assignments and I’d love to work with you again in the future. As of now I’m actually completely available during the week of June 2 if anything comes up!” I think that if you stick to, “I’m not available” and leave it at that, this client probably won’t contact you more than a couple of times before giving up. 
2. Actively. If the passive approach feels weird or you really just want to get rid of this client, it’s fine to tell them that, and you can do it briefly or more fully. You can just say, “Thank you for contacting me for this project. At this time, I’m focusing on work that’s more aligned with my current goals, so I won’t be taking on any new projects from you going forward. I appreciate your understanding and wish you all the best with your future work.” Or you can give them more of an explanation. “Thank you for contacting me for this project. As we’ve discussed in the past, your rates are significantly lower than what my other clients are paying. I understand that your budget parameters don’t allow you to pay more for my language pair; to save your time and mine, you don’t need to contact me for future projects.” It goes without saying that this can feel awkward. We (for good reasons…like continuing to have enough work) want to please our clients; we want them to like us. But if you feel better being direct, or if you want to get ahead of the client asking why you don’t want to work with them anymore, just put it out there. After all, you’re quitting. You want to be professional, particularly in the event that you encounter someone from this client’s staff when they move on to another job, but it’s not really your problem to praise them if you no longer want to work together.

It seems like many people in the translation world are doing really well, or really terribly, with very little in between. In this episode of the Training for Translators podcast, I talk about how Q1 of 2025 went for me, along with some observations on what I’m hearing from other people. Listen in your favorite podcast app, or right here!

In May 2025, I’ll be offering two master classes:

• On Tuesday, May 13: Aiming for six figures as a freelancer (in the age of AI and MT). This two-hour class is for anyone aiming for an income of US $100,000 or more, the part-time equivalent, or just a significant increase over what you’re earning now. We’ll cover the mindset, marketing methods, actions, and habits that can help you earn this level of income, even in the age of AI and MT. Registration is $75 and includes the recording.
• On Wednesday, May 21: Translating official documents from French to English. In this two-hour class (registration is $75 and includes the recording), we’ll cover both the technique and business aspects of translating official documents from French to English, including real-world examples, translation dilemmas, and strategies for finding clients.

Greetings, Training for Translators readers! I hope you’re all enjoying the change of seasons in your various corners of the world (although it’s still snowing here in Colorado!!). Here’s what’s happening this week: 

Upcoming class for Spanish interpreters

• On Wednesday, April 30, guest instructor Carola Lehmacher teaches a two-hour master class on Preparing for the oral component of the U.S. Federal court interpreter certification exam. This class is for anyone planning on or contemplating taking the Federal oral exam, and will help you understand what it takes to pass the exam and how to prepare a study plan. 

This week’s topic: a lightning round of reader questions!

In the past few months, I’ve received a bunch of great questions from newsletter readers and from students in my classes (if you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future newsletter, just drop it in the comments and I’ll put it on the list!). Here we go!

Question: Can you talk about translation speed? How many words or pages should a translator be expected to translate in a day, and about how many words are on a standard page? 

My answer: You’ve got a couple of questions here: how fast do clients expect you to translate, and how fast do most translators actually translate? Let’s break it down. If you work for agencies, they often expect 2,000–3,000 words a day of “pure” translation (not from an MT draft), so the key is how long it takes you to reach that output. The idea of a standard page being 200–250 words likely comes from the days of double-spaced type; today, a full page of typed text is more like 500 words.

Some in-house employers set lower expectations—translators in the UN system, for example, are often said to average five pages a day, with a page considered 250 words. That’s about half what a freelancer might produce, likely because in-house translators attend meetings and handle other tasks.

In my experience, the “slower” translators I know—who are often excellent and thorough—produce around 250 words per hour. On the high end, some translators (with tech help or just speed) hit 900 words an hour. I average about 500 finished words an hour, including proofreading, and I’d say 400–600 is typical.

Question: How to handle feedback from a client’s in-house editor that is partially helpful and partially unhelpful, even introducing errors into the translation? 

My answer: This has happened to me too, and it’s tricky. On the one hand, how often do all of us complain about clients who seem to not even read the translation, much less send any feedback? At least this client took the time to have your translation edited. On the other hand, these kinds of “edits” (for me, often coming from in-house bilingual staff who know the entity’s programs very well but aren’t native English speakers) can be really difficult to handle, both in practical terms (now you’re correcting the corrections), and emotionally (the client butchered your work!). I would:

• Thank the client for this thorough review. “Thank you so much for taking the time to have my translation reviewed so thoroughly.” 
• Point out what the editor did well. “It’s always a huge help to get corrections and suggestions from someone who knows your programs inside and out.” 
• When you address the introduced errors, don’t make judgments (“This person clearly isn’t a native English speaker”), make observations. “The editor did introduce some errors into the translation.” 

The touchy part is what happens next. Do you charge the client to correct the corrections? My usual M.O. is to do whatever it takes to create a finished translation that the client is happy with, and then (after I’ve submitted that project) to set different parameters for the next project. That might involve charging them to review the edits, or it might involve the in-house editor commenting only on in-house issues (their style sheet, their program-specific terms) and my own proofreader doing the final read-through, or something else. But personally I would address that after you’ve wrapped up this project, assuming you want to keep working with this client. 

Question: Several people asked about non-compete agreements with agencies. We all know that you should never circumvent an agency and work directly with their end clients. But what about grey areas? What if a different department of the end client contacts you? What if you’re interpreting for a deposition and someone from the opposing law firm asks for your contact information? 

My answer: I place a lot of value on my relationships with my agency clients. A good agency should allow you to feel like you have a “regular job,” (with very little administrative overhead) but where you set the hours, and to some extent, the rates. That’s worth a lot. For that reason, I am very, very cautious about anything that could be remotely perceived as poaching. If a different department of the end client contacts me, I tell them to go through the agency. If the opposing law firm wants my contact information, I tell them to go through the agency. My rationale is that I never would have made that contact without the agency, so I’m going to refer all of that work to them. It’s also worth asking if any of your agency clients pay referral fees for these kinds of things! 

OK, that’s three interesting topics for this time! If you have a question you want me to consider for a future reader questions newsletter, just add it in the comments!

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