Training for Translators: Blog - Page 51 of 245

Nov 03 2022
Corinne McKay

Making your peace with “the big number”

Some of you may have already signed up for the Innovation in Translation Summit, (not an affiliate link) organized by Josh Goldsmith, Nora Diaz, and Jost Zetzsche. It’s happening online November 15-17 and the basic ticket is free; paid options give you access to replays, slides, live panels, etc.

My presentation topic for the Summit is “How much money do you really need to make as a freelancer?” The whole presentation is only 20 minutes, but I thought I’d give you the basics here, and then if you attend the Summit, you can see the whole thing along with tons of other great stuff. To cut to the chase:

Lots of freelancers are in deep denial about how much you need to earn as a freelancer, in order to achieve the same financial security as someone with a traditional job. I know this, because I see under the hoods of lots of freelancers’ businesses. Many people feel that they’re earning an OK income. Oftentimes, this is something in the range of US $45-$60K, which various compensation surveys identify as the mean income in the language professions. However, the situation gets less rosy when I ask people whether they:
-Are able to achieve their personal financial goals (buy a house, have a savings cushion, save for their kids’ education)
-Have enough money in a business savings account to pay themselves when they take time off, to avoid burning out
-Always have enough money in savings to pay their taxes
-Are able to fund professional development, computer hardware/software upgrades, and professional services like an accountant
-Are dependent on a partner’s or spouse’s income when they’d rather not be dependent on that

When it comes down to it, I think that a sustainable freelance income is closer to double the mean average: more like $90-$120K if you want to be doing the things listed above. If you need to increase, or even radically increase your freelance income, step one is to calculate and make peace with that big number. Getting there is possible, with excellent translation and interpreting skills and a good marketing plan, but first you have to know where you’re doing. A couple of options:
-If you want something basic, and if you, like me, feel a tension headache coming on every time you have to think about numbers, use my super-basic Deciding what to charge worksheet
-If you have a higher tolerance for numbers and want more detailed statistics, try the US CalPro spreadsheet available for free on the ATA website

Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!

Nov 02 2022
Corinne McKay

Finding and marketing to translation agencies: November master class open for registration

This month’s master class, Finding and marketing to translation agencies, is open for registration. In this two-hour class taught by Corinne McKay, you’ll learn:

The advantages and disadvantages of working with agencies
How to find agencies to apply to
How to screen agencies for creditworthiness before you apply to them
How to create a targeted resume for agencies, and how to answer common questions on agency applications
How to follow up with agencies to increase your chance of getting work from them

The live class runs on November 28 and everyone who registers receives the recording! You’ll also have time to ask your own questions about the agency marketing process. Hope to see you there!

Oct 25 2022
Corinne McKay

ATA63 wrapup

The ATA conference is back, in 3D!

It was a real pleasure to attend the 63rd annual conference of the American Translators Association, held from October 12-15, 2022 in Los Angeles. I’ve now attended every ATA conference since 2004 (yikes!), but this one was particularly special as the 2020 conference was entirely online, and the 2021 conference was hybrid, but the in-person component (which I did attend) was a lot smaller than usual. This year in LA felt like the first “normal” (whatever passes for normal these days!) conference since COVID, and I’m really glad that I went.

Attendance at this conference was about 1,100 people, pretty close to pre-pandemic levels. Having done the job myself back in 2015 and 2016, I can say that ATA’s current President-elect and conference organizer, Veronika Demichelis, did a great job balancing tradition and innovation, which is always a challenge when you’re organizing something that’s been done (literally) 62 times before.

Highlights

Most of all, it was fabulous seeing so many colleagues in real life after such a long time apart during COVID. It was almost impossible for international attendees to come to the US last year; a major damper on any language-industry event. Additionally, I was really impressed by the quality of the sessions this year; it was like everyone saved up their best ideas during COVID and presented them in LA! I was also honored that current ATA President Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo selected me as one of two new ATA honorary members, the other being outgoing Executive Director, Walter “Mooch” Bacak.

On Wednesday, I presented an AST seminar on direct client marketing, and also attended Michael Schubert‘s AST seminar on working in the premium translation market. I’m a firm believer that as a freelancer, either you’re growing or you’re stagnating, and I came away from Michael’s session with some new ideas for working with high-end clients, some reinforcement of what I’m doing well, and some ideas of things to change. If any other associations are looking for a presenter on this complicated topic, I highly recommend Michael! I think my AST session went well, and it’s always enjoyable to each a three-hour workshop on a topic I love.

Session highlights

Really, every session I attended was worthwhile. My main focus right now is growing the interpreting side of my business, so I mostly focused on the interpreting sessions, and I also presented a session on how to prepare for and pass an interpreting exam. I feel like the interpreting session offerings at the ATA conference have really increased in quality and quantity in recent years. I attended and really enjoyed:

-How to be a better simul partner, presented by Celine Colvin
-Deliberate practice for simultaneous interpreters, presented by Gabriela Siebach
-Interpreting international arbitrations, presented by Tony Rosado and Maria Propato
-Interpreting for the Tokyo Olympics, presented by Rony Gao and Jessie Liu

The non-interpreting sessions I attended were just as good:
-The elusive inclusive (on gender-neutral French), presented by Isabelle Meurville; one of the best French-track presentations I’ve attended in recent years
-How to work with top law firms, presented by Paula Arturo Klammer
-Time flies and you’re the pilot, presented by Ingrid Holm
I felt like this year’s sessions were all a great mix of theoretical and practical information, and honestly, “there were no duds,” as another attendee commented.

The venue!

This year’s conference hotel, the Westin Bonaventure, was well-suited to this type of conference. The rooms all had enough space for everyone (including enough seats at breakfast on the days I went!), and the lobby was a good place to hang out and talk. I can’t say that the conference made me want to move to LA (I had been looking forward to beach weather and it was cool and cloudy and even drizzling a bit while we were there), but I did dine at some excellent restaurants with colleagues, and there were some excellent food options in the area.

The only thing I didn’t love about this year’s conference was the pre-recorded speeches from the election candidates. Personally, part of what I use to evaluate a candidate for the Board is their “stage presence,” and how they present themselves in front of a fairly large crowd. I felt like the recorded speeches detracted from that, but I’m also glad not to be organizing that aspect of the conference anymore, and I think it’s always tricky to decide how to allocate the time during the fairly lengthy plenary meeting sessions.

This was my first real conference as a civilian, after serving for seven years on the ATA Board, then attending remotely in 2020, then attending the enjoyable but relatively small conference last year in Minneapolis. Honestly, it was a great feeling to not have any responsibilities during the conference and just do whatever I felt like doing, including going to a rhythm and blues yoga class instead of taking care of official responsibilities! Huge congratulations to Madalena and Veronika and the whole ATA63 team on a really wonderful conference, and I’m already looking forward to next year in Miami!

Oct 17 2022
Corinne McKay

Breaking into the book translation market: master class on Thursday

This month’s Training for Translators master class, Breaking into the book translation market, is coming up this Thursday, October 20. The live class runs from 11 AM to 1 PM New York time, and everyone who registers receives the recording.

In this nuts-and-bolts master class, you’ll learn about the lifecycle of a book translation, from the idea stage to the rights arrangement, to finding a publisher and signing a contract, to marketing the book. We’ll also talk about self-publishing, and about translating books in the public domain. For many would-be book translators, doing the translation is the easy part: this class will allow you to confidently approach the not-so-easy, business-related parts of the book translation equation, and to anticipate how a book translation can go wrong. Open to translators who want to translate fiction, non-fiction, poetry, textbooks, or any other literary media.

Registration is $60 and includes the recording; I hope to see you there!

Sep 27 2022
Corinne McKay

Freelancing and mental health

Let’s talk about freelancing and mental health; a topic that I think is not discussed nearly often enough.
I don’t have ongoing mental health issues, but I consider myself a mental health ally because a lot of people I love struggle with depression and anxiety. Additionally, I went through a period of several months at the height of COVID back in the fall of 2020, when I was under a tremendous amount of stress and, for the first time in my life, I had trouble coping. I felt physically exhausted pretty much all the time, and in general I just felt like I was having trouble functioning.

As freelancers, many of us have a bunch of risk factors for mental health struggles:

We’re perfectionists
We spend a lot of time alone
We don’t have the financial security of a guaranteed salary, and if we’re single or the primary earner in our families, we may have no employer-provided benefits either
We’re afraid to admit when things aren’t going well in our businesses
We feel, sometimes correctly, that we could be at risk of significant financial problems if we stop working or even slow down for a short period of time

All of these factors are real, but what can we do about them?

Most importantly, if you are having suicidal thoughts, call a mental health crisis line or go to an emergency room. There’s evidence that business founders are up to twice as likely as the general population to have suicidal thoughts. If you have thoughts of not wanting to be alive, you need and deserve professional mental health help immediately.
Second most importantly, try to accept that if you’re at the point of having trouble coping (chronically or periodically), you have two choices: give your brain and your body the break they need, in a way that you control, or risk being forced to take a break in a way that you can’t control. Sadly, I’ve spoken with multiple people in my circle who told themselves, I can’t slow down or take any time for myself because…(who will run my business, who will watch my kids, what will my spouse think, how will I survive financially, etc. etc.), only to find themselves unable to do those things because they ended up needing emergency mental health treatment. The most important step is to not let yourself get to that point.
All of this sounds like, “Yeah, right, nice idea, but…” or it even seems condescending, as if the key is just to work less and take more time for yourself, which not all of us can do. The reality is that your health is your health: mental, physical, it’s all your health, and we all know that as a freelancer, you are the business. If you crumble, the business crumbles.

In my own life, here’s what that looked like:

I started meditating for 5-10 minutes a day with the Calm app. That’s not an affiliate deal. I like the Calm app because it has a bunch of different narrators, and you can literally do a meditation that’s one minute or 20 minutes long. Meditating got me off the ledge; after a few weeks, I started feeling that my thoughts were slower, I no longer had a sense of panic when I thought about the hard things going on in my life, and I could identify thoughts and feelings as thoughts and feelings rather than facts or things that were certain to happen.
I slowed down a bit in general. I’m a fairly energetic person, but I need a lot of sleep, and to be honest this is something that I always feel vaguely embarrassed about. I need at least eight hours of sleep a night in order to function, and honestly I feel better with eight and a half to nine hours, and I sometimes sleep 10 hours on the weekends. I started allowing myself to do this without guilt.
I prioritized things that I love, like spending time with my husband and my close friends, hanging out with my foster animals, and riding my mountain bike and going skiing. I made a point to take “screen-free Saturdays” where I tried to do an outdoor, non-screen activity all day.
I eliminated some non-paying work from my work day. I decided to focus on my highest-paying clients, and to offer fewer online courses and more courses that I teach myself, so that I’m as close as possible to my target hourly rate whenever I’m working.
Eventually, I started going to four yoga classes a week, and for me, this was the major mental health turning point, where I actually started to feel calm and happy again. I realize that this is not attractive or possible for everyone, so I mean it as inspiration for whatever keeps you calm and happy.
Even if you can’t make big changes, do something, even something small, to support your happiness and mental health; even a small sliver of your day that helps you feel sane and grounded.

I hope these tips are helpful to you in your own freelance journey!