Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Which English?

Rumor, or should we say rumour, has it that many (or at least more than usual) translators on this side of the Atlantic are being approached to translate into what we commonly refer to here as U.K. English. I would guess that this has more to do with the falling U.S. dollar and weakening U.S. economy than with a sudden shortage of qualified into-English translators in the U.K.

This brings up a number of interesting questions. The first is, what is meant by U.K. English? Does this mean that the translator simply sets her/his spell-checker to U.K. English and uses U.K. date formats? Or does the translator attempt to write with a British flair, substituting “pudding” for “dessert” and “chemist’s” for “pharmacy,” or “at weekends” for “on the weekend”? A more conceptual issue is whether some sort of culturally neutral English is possible or desirable, and whether translation consumers are satisfied with translations that may be technically correct but stylistically more American than British.

U.S.-based German to English translator Jill Sommer says, “Translating into U.K. English involves more than switching a z to an s. When a client contacts me for a U.K. English translation, I turn it down.” Jill sees part of the problem as client misunderstanding of the many differences between U.K. and U.S. English and relates the story of a U.S.-based colleague who was asked, halfway into a 100+ page translation to “make it U.K. English.” “At a minimum, clients should be willing to use a U.K. English proofreader. They underestimate the differences that make a text sound British or American,” says Jill.

With session proposals for the 2008 ATA conference due next Friday, it seems like there might also be a niche for some linguistic education on this topic. Maybe a session on “Fundamentals of U.K. English for U.S. English translators” or “English with a British flair”? I would also be interested to know whether the reverse phenomenon happens on the other side of the Atlantic; do U.K.-based translation buyers automatically use U.S.-based translators, or do they ask U.K-based translators to Americanize their translations?


Corinne McKay

Strategies for sustaining a freelance business

Michelle Vranizan Rafter’s blog has a great post
entitled “Freelancers’ Strategies for Prospering in Bad Times.” Although my sense is that most translators are not feeling the hit of the economic downturn, this post has some very useful information for growing your freelance business under any circumstances; even a beginning freelance translator could apply this information to get established, and for those of us who are already in the business, it’s always good to be reminded about the importance of continuous marketing.

The advice in this blog post reminded me of an interview with noted financial translator Chris Durban that appeared on Business Week’s website in 2004. I like to hear Chris Durban’s thoughts about pretty much anything (her “Onionskin” column is the first thing I read in every issue of the ATA Chronicle), but I thought that her comments about marketing were particularly insightful. Chris’ interview and Michelle Rafter’s blog post point out what I see as critical marketing errors on the part of many freelance translators:

  • Living by the computer alone. I’ll second the person in Michelle’s blog post who said that most of their best clients have come through in-person meetings or personal referrals. I actually met one of my biggest clients in the hallway at an ATA conference, and I find that I have a closer rapport with clients who I’ve met in person and cultivated a relationship with. In addition, I think that high-value clients, those who either pay very well or have a large volume of work, are much more likely to trust someone they have met in person. So, every once in a while (or even more often!), shut off the computer and talk to some live people. Attend an ATA or local chapter event, join your local Chamber of Commerce, go to a freelancers’ group potluck, attend a trade show for your specialization.
  • Competing on price alone. I think that many translators do this simply because they can’t think of a way not to; they automatically assume that if they need more work and the going rate for their language is X cents per word, if they charge X-2 cents, they’ll stand out. There are a few problems with this. First, I think that many quality-conscious clients are skeptical about translators who charge low rates, feeling that there must be some reason why the person is willing to work for so little. Second, I think that most translators do a better job when they feel that they are being paid fairly, and that the reverse is true as well. Third, I think that competing on price sets up a negative dynamic between the client and the translator, where the client’s view of the translator is as a commodity provider. Lastly, racing to the bottom is a losing battle; there will always be someone willing to work for one cent less. Rather than competing on price, charge what you feel your work is worth and compete on quality and service.
  • Resting on laurels. No question, the translation industry is booming, and most established translators are not hurting for work. However, many of us also rely on steady flows of work from regular clients, each of whom may provide 30%, 50% or more of our yearly income. It’s important to have a plan for what happens if one of these relationships dries up. Instead of assuming that you’ll be happily translating away for your current clients indefinitely, always be thinking of who your next clients will be and how you will market to them.


Corinne McKay

An interesting post on open source machine translation

Serdar Yegulaip wrote an interesting post entitled “Talk to Me, Openly” that is up on InformationWeek’s site, dealing with open source machine translation. While there are a number of very active open source translation memory projects out there, with OmegaT being one of the most popular among freelancers, open source machine translation hasn’t sparked the same level of interest.

Personally, I find machine translation more interesting than threatening. I think that the day when human translators will be put out of business by MT is far, far off, likely beyond the lifetimes of any of us who are working in the industry now. However, I think that MT’s use in areas where speed and cost are more important objectives than quality, or where writers are willing to use a very restricted vocabulary, is really interesting. For example, at a translation technology seminar that I attended this summer, the presenter gave an anecdotal example of MT being used to translate online knowledgebase pages for a large technology company. Apparently, when the company then surveyed people who read the machine-translated help pages (and who knew that the page they were reading had been translated by a computer rather than a human), their rates of satisfaction with those pages were only slightly lower than the satisfaction rates of people who read similar documents translated by humans. To me, that’s more intriguing than anything else, and I’m interested to see if the open source community jumps on the bandwagon.


Corinne McKay

Euro vs euros: why translators need each other

Every once in a while, I get a glimpse of some of the ways in which translators (and probably other obsessive “word people” too!) are different from the rest of the population, and thus why we need to stick together. Earlier this week, a French translation listserve that I belong to engaged in a lively discussion of whether, in English, the correct plural of “euro” (as in the currency denomination) is “euro” or “euros.” While a non-translator might feel hopelessly nit-picky for even thinking about this type of issue, the listserve members had clearly spent some time mulling it over even before the question came up. One member pointed out that the actual bank notes say “100 euro” “50 euro,” etc. and that other currencies (yen, yuan) are invariable in the plural (1 yen/1,ooo yen, etc.); others pointed to the Guardian style guide’s use of “euros” (“he will be fined a few thousand euros”) and to the fact that the New York Times uses “euros” as well. Yet another example of the value of associating with like-minded translators!


Corinne McKay

Using objective data to set your translation rates

Possibly the most anxiety-provoking aspect of launching or running your translation business is deciding how much to charge. Charge too much and you’ll be priced out of the market; charge too little and you’ll be working overtime just to make ends meet. The easiest way to remove the anxiety from this decision is to gather some objective data such as how much money you would like to make and how much it will cost you to run your business.

Adding to the pricing confusion is that most people are used to calculating their wages by the hour, rather than by the word. Beginning translators often don’t know how to estimate how long a translation will take, so don’t know how to set their per-word rates in order to reach their target hourly rate. Whereas an experienced linguist knows approximately how many words per hour he or she translates when working on various types of documents: general, technical, highly technical, handwritten, hard copy, HTML, etc., there is no way to know this if you haven’t done much translation; you simply have to time yourself while you translate to see how fast you work. In general, a translator who is a relatively fast typist (or uses speech recognition software that works well) can translate 400-600 words per hour or 2,000-3,000 words per day, but this is only a ballpark figure. When working on a highly technical document, even an experienced translator might work as slowly as 150 words an hour, and I once worked on a project where I consistently translated up to 1,000 words per hour because the document was non-technical and very repetitive.
Calculating your billable hours
First, complete the following calculation using your actual or estimated totals:

  • Hours per week you would like to work
  • Weeks per year you would like to work (subtracting vacation weeks)
  • Multiply the above two items to get your total working hours per year
  • If you foresee taking sick time or additional legal holidays off, subtract those hours
  • Subtract your non-billable time, normally 25-50% of your total work time, for marketing, accounting, meetings, slow work periods, etc.
  • This is your total billable hours per year

Calculating your target hourly rate
Now, calculate how much money you need/want to earn, by adding together:

  • Your salary goal in dollars
  • Taxes (15-50% of salary)
  • Internet, web hosting, phone, fax, cell phone
  • Professional memberships and continuing education
  • Marketing materials and advertising
  • Office supplies
  • Computer hardware and software; technical support
  • Auto and travel expenses
  • Other costs of operation such as work-related child care, office rent, website development, etc.
  • Add the above items together to get your total cost of business operation
  • Then, divide your total cost of business operation by your billable hours from the first calculation, which will show your required hourly rate

Once you have this hourly rate worksheet completed, you’ve completed a major step in pricing your translation services. Your next step is to determine how you’re going to arrive at that hourly rate. For example if you want to earn $60.00 an hour, you can achieve this by translating 600 words per hour at 10 cents per word, 400 words per hour at 15 cents per word or 300 words per hour at 20 cents per word. In order to do this, you need to know how fast you work (the only way to figure this out is to time yourself while you do some translations) and what the range of rates for your language pair(s) and specialization(s) is. For example, you might look at rates surveys on online translation marketplaces, the ATA compensation survey or look at websites of translators in your language pair to see if they publish their rates. Some translators, although not all, are also willing to discuss rates with their colleagues.

Knowing how much you need to charge also tells you what type of clients you need to look for. For example, if your hourly rate goal is high, you may need to market to direct clients rather than to translation agencies, or at least to very high-end translation agencies. In working with beginning translators, I find that work speed is often an issue for them and it impacts their work in a few ways. First, a translator whose work is solid but who translates 250 words an hour is going to struggle to make a living on typical agency rates. Second, agencies understandably like working with translators who can turn around large documents in a short amount of time, and won’t be thrilled to hear that it will take you four days to finish 5,000 words.

Yet another element that enters into the rates equation these days is currency exchange rates, especially for translators who have clients in the euro zone. With today’s news of the euro breaking the longstanding barrier of US $1.50, Europe-based translators are taking a big hit when paid in dollars, and those of us in the US are staring in disbelief at the calculator as that 2,000 euro invoice turns into $3,000. Wherever you think the dollar is headed from here, it’s something to take into consideration in your pricing equations.