Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters


Corinne McKay

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mini-course starts Tuesday

The Training for Translators mini-course on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) taught by Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo starts Tuesday, and we have room for as many people as want to participate. This is a pre-recorded course, using the videos from Madalena’s highly successful SEO September Strategy challenge group (which ran in…you guessed it…September!). The course includes 20 doable challenges that will help you get more traction from your existing website, and these are things you can do yourself, even if you don’t have access to your website’s source code.

Since a lot of people are using COVID downtime to work on their back-burner projects, we’re offering this mini-course for $50. If you don’t have time to do the course now (or if you’ve already signed up for the Tackling Task Management challenge group with Dorothee Racette in May, and you don’t want to double up…) you can sign up for the SEO course and just save the e-mails for when you have time.

We’ll have 20 daily challenges with videos from Madalena and an optional Slack group (just skip that part if it feels like one more thing you don’t have time for). Thanks to Madalena for offering this, and I hope to see some of you there!


Corinne McKay

Freelancing in the time of COVID: a few survival tips

I’d normally start this post with, “I hope you’re doing well,” but at the moment, how about, “I hope you’re holding on to a few threads of sanity.” It’s a crazy time for sure; and let’s start with the reminder that health (mental and physical) and family come first right now. If it’s taking all of your available energy to keep those balls in the air, just focus on that!

Now that it’s clear that the COVID situation is a months, not weeks-long crisis, I thought I’d offer a few coping strategies if you need them:

1. First, I’d suggest this blog post by Madalena Sanchez Zampaulo, on taking care of your freelance business during the pandemic. Madalena offers tons of great ideas on how to stay mentally and financially afloat during this very stressful time.

2. Next, I’d suggest this podcast from Ed Gandia, where he interviews Carol Alexander, a homeschooling mom of six kids who’s been homeschooling for a total of 27 years. That’s approximately my worst nightmare, but she has some great (like, really great) suggestions for how to freelance from home while your kids are there, without completely losing your mind.

3. I’d offer the following tips:

Let yourself be sad about the sad things, even if they are not matters of life and death. A few examples on my end: after turning down all non-ATA travel and speaking invitations for the past seven years, I was all set to go to Germany for the BP conference and some vacation, and to Boston for the New England Translators Association conference: of course now cancelled. My daughter–a senior in high school–likely will not have a high school graduation, and will probably have to pick a college via video tour. My husband and I were hoping to do a big trip for our 20th anniversary in May, coinciding with meeting my daughter at a bike race in Europe (nope, and nope). Although these things are not life and death, they are hugely disappointing, and are not things that can simply be “made up” later. If you’re going through those kinds of emotions, do not sad-shame yourself. It’s OK to be sad about the loss of things that are important to you.

To whatever extent you can, try to create a “new normal” routine. At my house we don’t have a rigid schedule, but we try to keep a regular sleep and meal schedule, exercise at least one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon (it helps that we can still go outside for exercise with no restrictions, and the weather has been great), limit TV to one hour after dinner, limit news to quick checks a couple of times a day (if something catastrophic happens, we will find out anyway), and check in with a couple of friends every day to see how they are holding up. All of that is definitely helping.

Remember that not every business sector is going to stall out. In the past two days, I received inquiries from two agencies that are moving to seven day a week operations to keep up with medical translation requests from large clients. I don’t do medical translation, but it was interesting to see that happening.

If you have a business savings account, give yourself permission to tap into it if work slows down. If you don’t have one, this is your sign from the universe that you need one. I’m a huge proponent of the business savings account: two summers ago I tapped into mine, to take two “once in a lifetime trips” that were absolutely worth it. So far my own work volume is steady, but if it falls off a cliff, my plan is to start paying myself out of my business savings account while I write another book. If you don’t have a business savings account, vow (right now) that you’re going to establish one.

I’ve got two free offerings on tap if you haven’t seen them already: the April master class on “surviving to thriving,” taught by Jennifer Nielsen, and a free, MOOC-style session of Getting Started as a Freelance Translator, starting Monday.

I think the most important tip for all of us is this feels like the end of the world, and it’s an unprecedented upheaval, but it will not last forever. The people who say, “This too shall pass” are actually correct. The best thing you can do right now is to keep swimming, and set yourself up as well as possible for what comes next.


Corinne McKay

Are entry-level translation clients disappearing?

A reader asks: It seems like when I talk to experienced translators and ask how they started out, nearly all of them started by working with agencies that gave a lot of feedback or at least let them see the edited versions of their translations. Then after some amount of time, they started working with direct clients in similar specializations. These days, I feel like entry-level agencies provide no feedback at all, and want crazy volumes translated in crazy amounts of time, for very little money. What can I do?

What happened to feedback and mentoring?

I addressed a bunch of these same questions in a post in December, Is the career path for beginning translators changing? And in general, I agree with the reader who asked this question. Back in 2002, my first few agency clients did exactly what the reader describes: they knew I was competent for a beginning translator, but they had all of my work edited and either showed me the finished version, or in some cases the editor actually called me (I know…how quaint!) to go over the changes and explain them.

As a result, I was very loyal to those clients; at least one of them I still work for occasionally today, almost 18 years later. And I still silently thank those editors who were so patient and taught me so much.

What happened? My sense is that agencies themselves have just felt more and more of a price and speed squeeze from their own end clients as time has gone on. From my experience, the first thing to go was feedback and mentoring, then some gave up on bilingual revision all together, then some gave up on any kind of revision, or went to the “sloppy translator/good editor” model that squeezes a lot of good translators out of the agency market today.

Are agencies to blame?

I mean, yes and no. No, and yes. I think that part of the problem lies with agencies capitulating to end clients’ price and speed squeezes, and part of the problem lies with translators capitulating to agencies’ price and speed squeezes. The problem is that resistance only works if everybody resists, and here’s a typical situation I hear about from translators these days:

I got an inquiry from what I thought was a dream client; a highly specialized scientific translation agency that I had been stalking for a while. They have really interesting projects and I couldn’t wait to go through their application process. Come to find out, their absolute maximum rate for my language pair is barely higher than what I’m making for the mega-agency I work for most of the time, and I have to do additional QA steps for no extra pay. Total bummer.

Yes, I agree, it’s a bummer, it’s not the first time I’ve heard this type of story, and I think there are two factors at play:

  • Agencies having a hard time differentiating themselves in the marketplace, and feeling like they have to compete on price and speed or go out of business. An agency exec I recently spoke with told me that it’s now the norm for them to experience things like: end clients threatening to dump them for an agency that charges one cent per word less; end clients outright telling them, “We’re putting this out to bid to five agencies and we’re looking for your absolute best rate.”
  • Translators feeling like they have to compete on price and speed or not have enough work, at least in the agency market. Again, if every single translator had resisted this downward price pressure, agencies would have no choice except to pay more or not be able to find enough people. And you also can’t blame translators for wanting to do things like eat and keep the lights on. But it does seem like even high-quality, specialized agencies are getting thrown into the same bidding barrel as mega-agencies, and thus asking their translators to lower their rates by quite a bit in many cases.

Is there a bright side here?

Well, sure. If you’re not an entry-level translator. The same forces (see: the Internet, globalization) that have given agencies access to bigger pools of translators–and thus generally decreased the chance that they’ll pay more or offer better working conditions to their more loyal translators–have given translators greater access to direct clients. I still have a couple of good agency clients holding on, and my overall income and work volume continue to increase, thanks to larger projects from my higher-paying direct clients. I’m not looking to change careers anytime soon.

But if I were a beginning translator starting out today, I’m honestly not sure what I’d do, unless I were able to pursue a niche route like moving to Europe, getting a Master’s in translation/interpreting in a French-speaking country and then working there for a few years. And to be clear, there are still good agencies out there. But those good agencies also have a lot of translators wanting to work for them, so it’s harder to break in. And I do feel like, even if you have a lot of work, it’s increasingly difficult to make a living on mega-agency work, and lots of non-mega agencies aren’t paying much more than the behemoths do. It’s definitely a dilemma.

What would I do if I were starting out today?

If I were a beginning translator in today’s environment, I think I’d do a few things:

  • Build up a significant savings cushion before going freelance. This avoids the “any work is better than no work” syndrome that causes a lot of people to take on work that they really shouldn’t take on.
  • Identify a marketable specialization (like, yesterday!). I think the days of “jack of all trades” translators are going, going, gone, unless you work in a very small language where people don’t tend to specialize as much.
  • Consider a Masters in translation from a strong program in the US or your source language country. Of the beginning translators I know who are doing really well, a significant number of them have a Master’s (not just a certificate) in translation, and several are native English speakers who went outside the US to do a Master’s in their source language country.
  • Join reputable professional associations and earn credentials if possible. In a market with more freelancers available, you need to do whatever you can to stand out: memberships and certifications are good ways to do this.
  • Diversify your range of services if you’re qualified to do so: offering services like editing, transcription, interpreting, and language teaching can help bring in enough business to keep you afloat as a beginner.
  • Look for steady contract work, even if it pays less than your other work. I worked for several years as an FBI contract linguist; it was interesting work and I learned a lot. After a while, trekking to the Denver field office to earn $35 an hour was no longer worthwhile, but it allowed me to keep freelancing until I built up a slate of regular clients.
  • Consider interning or apprenticing with an experienced translator. This could be a good way to see “under the hood” of a successful freelance business.
  • Offer concessions *other* than low rates: for example working at night or on weekends when clients may have trouble finding other translators.

In sum

I’d sum up the situation as follows: the generation of translators ahead of me (I’m 48, so let’s say translators who are now in their 60s or older) might say, “I started my freelance business with a phone number and an e-mail address, and in not very long I had more work than I could handle.” Actually a translator in that age group recently said that to me: “I just hung out my shingle, and in six months I had to hire another translator because I had so much work.”

Then there’s my generation of translators who might say, “Yeah, that didn’t happen anymore by the early 2000s. When I started, I applied to hundreds of agencies, went on informational interviews, networked within my local translators association, became ATA-certified as fast as possible, etc. etc.” And now, I think the new generation of translators might need to say, “Yeah, that doesn’t happen anymore, because it’s very hard to make a living on entry-level agency work, so now you have to get even more creative, or pre-emptively get a Master’s, or have a side job, or partially live off savings, etc. until you have a sustainable volume of work at decent rates.”

Readers, over to you: do you have thoughts on viable entry-level clients for beginners? How do you see the entry-level market changing?


Corinne McKay

March Marketing Madness starts Monday

March Madness–most commonly associated with the NCAA basketball tournament, or, this year at my house, college application decisions–is upon us! How about getting your own March Madness on, with the Training for Translators March Marketing Madness challenge group??

I launched this group last year, and many participants had major breakthroughs in their marketing. Feedback included:

  • “I found my first direct client, after convincing myself that that would never happen.”
  • “My business is transformed and will never be the same.” (Yes, someone actually said that…I was amazed too!)
  • “I realized that major progress is possible with even a small amount of daily marketing effort.”

What’s more, I think it’s safe to say that the group was even fun. There’s a challenge each day, plus a motivational video, then everyone posts their progress in our Slack group. All together, you’ll spend about 30 minutes each weekday on this effort, and I feel confident that you’ll see some results if you stick with it for the month.

We kick off on Monday, and there’s room for everyone who wants to join! The cost is only $75, and I’d love to see some of you there!

Also: the April session of Medical concepts and terminology for translators and interpreters, taught by Michele Hansen, is already sold out (!), so we’re looking at scheduling another session. Send me an e-mail at corinne@translatewrite.com if you’d like to be on the wait list!


Corinne McKay

How do you nudge a dormant client?

A reader asks: “How do you nudge a dormant client? How can I get back in touch with a client who’s gone totally silent?”

Why nudge dormant clients?

In my experience and opinion, nudging dormant clients–rekindling the flame with a client you worked with in the past–is one of the most successful and most overlooked marketing strategies that freelance translators can implement. Why? Because:

  • It’s much less onerous than starting from scratch with a completely new potential client. Think, “Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed working on X project last year; haven’t heard from you in a while and would love to work together again,” rather than, “I’m a freelance English to German translator specializing in your industry and wondering if you might need my services.”
  • You already know that this client needs (or at least needed) your services and enjoyed working with you, assuming that you worked with them multiple times.
  • In your mind (or at least in mine!), the client has probably gone dormant for some deep, dark reason: like an egregious error in a translation that they were never willing to tell you about and that you never found. In reality, 99% of clients go dormant for completely benign reasons. They’ve simply forgotten about you, or the person you worked with left and didn’t give your contact information to the new person, or they honestly haven’t had any work that fits with what you do. But don’t use fear as an excuse for not nudging a dormant client: at least give them one nudge and see where it goes.

How do you nudge a dormant client?

Answer: as simply and directly as possible. This is not the time to air your paranoid fantasies about why the client hasn’t contacted you. If they really don’t want to work with you again, they’ll either tell you that or they won’t respond at all. Don’t borrow trouble here. Just send a quick, friendly e-mail that refreshes the client’s memory, something like:

“Dear Melissa, I hope that all is well with you. I’m just checking in with you, as I really enjoyed working on the German to English translation of your annual report last year. If you have additional translation needs, I’d love to work together again. Thank you and have a great day.”

Or…

“Dear Robert, I hope you’re doing well. In looking over my project records, I noticed that we haven’t worked together in a few months. I always look forward to projects from your agency, and I wondered if you might have anything in the pipeline that would be a good fit for my skills (Japanese to English financial translation). Thank you and have a good day.”

Or…

“Dear Melissa, I hope you’re doing well. I noticed that it’s been about eight months since I did the German to English translation of your annual report. I really enjoyed working on that project, and just wanted to check in and see whether you’ll be needing me for this year’s report? If so, I’m available and I’d be happy to speak with you further about it.”

When you nudge a dormant client, do not…

  • Don’t overdo it. The client will be turned off by a long message that dissects all the possible reasons they haven’t contacted you. “I’m not sure if you were dissatisfied with my work last time…” “I’m not sure if one of the other translators on the project talked negatively about me to you…” “I’m not sure if you’ve found someone cheaper and no longer want to work with me…” Of course we all wonder those things from time to time, but keep it to yourself (or vent to a trusted colleague). When you contact the client, keep it short and positive.
  • Don’t go into too much detail: the client doesn’t need to know your exact availability, or what adjustments you’d like to make if you work on another project with them. First, just remind them that you exist.

Now readers, over to you! I’d love to hear your experiences with nudging dormant clients. Better yet, use this post as a motivator to nudge a dormant client right now!