In the past month I’ve been contacted by several translators who are at what I think of as the “make or break” phase of freelancing. They have a fair amount of work and their clients seem pleased with their translations, but they are not yet at the level of income and work volume where they would like to be for the long term.

In this situation, I think it’s important to look at a few factors in order to break through to financial sustainability, and the point in your freelance career where you are spending your time working rather than looking for work. For example:

• Have you allowed sufficient time to reach your goals? I would say that the average translator’s startup phase could last six months to a year, but that it’s not unusual for many people to require two to three years to reach “cruising speed,” where the freelance business becomes like a full-time job where you control the hours. Expecting this to happen after three or four months is, in my opinion, very optimistic.
• Have you met the requirements of every project you have done? If you meet (or better yet, beat) your deadlines and deliver quality work that has been carefully researched and proofread, your clients will use you again. If you are lax about deadlines, don’t allow time to ask terminology questions and proofread your work, it’s time to tighten up your quality assurance system.
• Are you targeting clients who have ongoing work? Sometimes, a client is very happy with your work but simply does not have a need for your language/specialization/etc. more than a few times a year. In this case, ask the client for a testimonial and use it to market your services to other clients.
• Are you asking your clients for feedback? It’s important to remember that a) some clients are not eager to give you constructive/negative feedback and that’s their prerogative and b) a translation project manager’s job does not necessarily include evaluating translators. That being said, it’s worth asking your clients what you could do to better meet their needs, if they have any feedback on your services. etc. At the very least, this lets the client know that you are eager to improve and to work with them again.
• Are you charging too much or too little? The rest of this blog’s lifetime could be spent talking about rates, but in general, you want to avoid pricing yourself substantially above or below the market rates for your language pair. Charge too little and you’ll mark yourself as either an amateur or someone who is not confident about your skills; charge too much and your clients will look elsewhere.
• Are you targeting clients who fit your niche? In general, large agencies seem to prefer translators who work in a variety of specializations, charge moderate rates and can turn around large volumes of text in a short amount of time. In exchange, a large agency might be able to keep a translator busy close to full time. Smaller, boutique-style agencies often prefer specialized translators who, often in exchange for higher pay, are very meticulous about their work and don’t mind answering questions about their terminology choices, target language phraseology, etc. Just make sure that you are targeting clients who fit your own work style.
• Have you considered taking on a supplemental job? You’ve come this far; rather than abandoning your freelance business (assuming you enjoy it!), consider working at a bookstore or library, teaching language courses, doing tutoring, applying as an FBI contract linguist or another similar job that will help you keep your business afloat while you reach profitability.

For anyone in the Denver area, or anyone who would like to come to Colorado this July, you don’t have to wait until 2010 to attend a translation conference in Denver. ATA’s Translation Company Division will be holding its 9th annual conference in Englewood from July 17-20; that’s next month!

I’ll be attending this conference, and although it’s obviously geared toward people involved with translation companies, I think that a) many of the sessions are applicable to freelancers too (Trends in Translation Technology, machine translation, The Technological Vice Grip, Life Cycle of a Translation Project, as well as tool-specific presentations on across and Beetext) and b) it’s a nice chance to get to know other translators and company owners in a more personal setting than the main ATA conference. And no, I’m not a spokesperson for the TCD, I just think this looks like a good opportunity and Colorado isn’t generally flooded with translation-related conferences. All of the registration information and the program are on the TCD’s website that is linked above, and there are also some interesting social activities like dinner at The Fort restaurant.

Last night I was working on a translation of a news article; there was a quote from an expert in the article, so I Googled it to see if the quote appeared in English somewhere on the web. Interestingly enough, what popped up was a translation of the entire article. Enter a dilemma, and one that has various ethical and financial gradations. In this situation, I was able to talk to my client on the phone and explain the situation; since the translation was a rush job and due in a few hours, we decided that I would simply go ahead and do the translation as if the online version didn’t exist, but the situation is not always this clear. Following are a few “déjà lu” (already read!) experiences I’ve had and how I’ve handled them.

Situation: You find a translation of your document online. Some people would argue that if the client isn’t willing to spend a few minutes searching for an existing translation, it’s not unfair to go ahead and translate the document and charge the client for it. Personally, I always alert the client in a situation like this and offer to stop translating and be paid only for what I’ve already done, because if the existing translation is high-quality, it seems like a waste of effort to produce another one.

Situation: You have previously translated a document that’s very similar to what you’re working on, but for another client. Here, I think that it’s a case of “leveraging your previous work” and it’s fair to charge the client your full rate. I’ve run into this situation with insurance contracts, where two different clients sent me two insurance contracts that were 90% similar because they were issued by the same company. My take on this: when you have your will written up, the attorney doesn’t charge less because she already has boilerplate documents prepared. As long as the document was for another client, I don’t see a problem with charging full price.

Situation: You have previously translated a document that’s very similar to what you’re working on, and it was for the same client. Here, I’m inclined to err on the side of honesty. I would probably explain the situation to the client and offer to charge by the hour for reviewing the new document and making the changes. I think it’s a little greedy to ask a client to pay you for 8,000 words when they already paid you to translate 7,500 of the same words.

Situation: You’re translating a corporate document, and the text, or something close to it, is already on the company’s website. I think this issue can be argued from both sides. In one sense, the company should be checking that it doesn’t already have a translation of what it’s sending out. In another sense, if the document is sent out for translation, there may be a reason the company wants a new or different translation. I would probably verify with the client, but I don’t think it’s absolutely dishonest not to.