Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Buying translations


Corinne McKay

Winter/Spring coaching groups: early bird rate ends December 15

Just a reminder that the Early Bird rate ($290) for my four-week online coaching groups ends on December 15. I’m running four groups: Getting Started as a Freelance Translator (January), Beyond the Basics of Freelancing (February), Marketing to Translation Agencies (March), and Marketing to Direct Clients (April). Each runs for four weeks and includes weekly slide show lessons and 20 “tasks of the day” so that you can break your work into manageable chunks; we’ll also do a weekly live question and answer session and have an online discussion group for the class.

To read the full course descriptions or to register, visit the online courses page on my website. Each group is limited to 10 people so that you get plenty of personal attention. One “Getting Started” group is already full and I’ve opened a second one (same dates), Beyond the Basics is filling up, and there’s still plenty of room in both “Marketing to…” classes. Hope to see some of you there!


Corinne McKay

Ethical dilemma: when services cost less than you expect

Thoughts on Translation is back from a relaxing camping vacation in the deserts of Western Colorado. This vacation was completely unplugged; I didn’t take my laptop or netbook and only turned my cell phone on once a day to check my office messages. In other words, a real vacation! I highly recommend doing this at least once a year if you’re at the computer the rest of the time. Now on to more substantive issues…

A while back, I wrote a post about sticker shock: dealing with clients who are blindsided about how much professional translation services cost. Recently, I spoke with the owner of a small agency who brought up a different but related topic: how to react when a professional service costs less than you expect. In a nutshell…this agency owner works with clients in a very targeted industry that not many translators specialize in. When she landed a new client in this specialization, she needed to expand her pool of qualified translators quickly, so she posted the job on ProZ. In her words, “Not to save money in particular, but in order to widen the pool of potential translators.” This agency owner pays her current translators very fair rates, what I would consider the high end of the U.S.-based agency market (I’m guessing you can tell where this is headed!), and in her ProZ posting, she did not specify any rate at all, but left it up to the translators to state their rates.

So, the applications started coming in, and because of the way the agency owner worded her posting, the applicants were few in number and very well qualified for the job. However, their rates were generally between 25% and 60% less than what she had planned on paying. For example if she had been planning on paying 30 cents a word (this isn’t the actual figure, just an example), these highly qualified translators generally bid between 12 and 20 cents a word. In the end, the agency owner did not pick the cheapest translators, but also did not suggest to the selected translators that they raise their rates. I realize that this anecdote also brings up the issue of competitive bidding in general, translators who charge less than they are worth, and probably various other issues too. However, specifically related to the under-budget issue, what would you have done? Would you have told these translators that they were bidding half of what you were willing to pay, or would you have accepted the rates that they offered?


Corinne McKay

Two posts that translation clients should read

For anyone who’s a translation buyer, here are two excellent blog posts on what makes a good client. Ryan Ginstrom’s Five practices of agencies that get it gives five specific examples of how his agency clients have impressed him. I agree with these wholeheartedly; especially the feedback piece. It’s not hard to understand why clients are reluctant to pass on negative feedback; they don’t want to get into a “your word against mine” argument with the translator, they’re not in the business of training translators, and it’s probably easier just to dispense with using the problematic translator and hire someone else in the future. However, I think that clients are often equally sparse with their positive feedback because they’re busy, they’ve moved on to another project and (possibly the strongest factor) they assume that good translators know how good they are. Clients, trust us here… most people who are excellent translators are excellent in part because they are perfectionists who are very critical of their own work and constantly striving to improve. Even a simple “the client was really pleased with it” or “it required almost no edits” goes a long way.

Then, make sure to check out Jill Sommer’s 10 simple rules for project managers to live by and keep me happy. I love these tips; many of them help remind clients that although translators (and other freelance service providers) are often willing to go the extra mile for our clients, we are not their employees. Because most translators are relatively tech-savvy, asking us to do formatting, OCR, etc. may work out in the end but it will often slow the project down and take our time and energy away from the job we are really good at…translating. Likewise, pushing your translators to work longer, faster, etc. for more than a  few days at a time will likely backfire, especially if the translator is not compensated accordingly.


Corinne McKay

Care and feeding of a translator

When asked how their work load is these days, most translators I know and work with will respond, “Never busier.” This seems, not surprisingly, to have led to a situation where translation buyers are having an increasingly difficult time recruiting qualified translators, so I’ve put together a few pieces of advice on best practices for contacting translators. We’ll assume that the translation buyer has already reviewed the translator’s credentials (i.e. on the translator’s website, translation association directory or through a word-of-mouth referral).

  • Realize that in this market and in this industry, recruitment is sales. This may sound a little harsh, but a colleague who is a former recruiter of translators really drove this point home to me. Translators who are highly qualified and are already working full time or more than full time for their regular clients have little incentive to work with new and unknown clients merely because the client is offering work. When you are recruiting a new translator and you know or assume that that person is very busy already, acknowledge that you are in effect selling that person on the idea of working for you.
  • Introduce yourself. Although the translator may be fully booked at that time, you don’t want to create a negative impression of your company. At a minimum, I like it when a project manager says, “My name is … and I work for …; we found your contact information in the ATA directory and wondered if you might have some availability for an upcoming project.” Personally I find it very off-putting when an potential new client opens the conversation with, “Hi, I work with a translation company in … and we wondered if you could translate 25,000 words in the next 10 days” or something similar.
  • Choose a negotiation point. Among the main parameters of a translation, such as rate, deadline, payment terms, format, close collaboration with other translators, being required to use special software, etc., a translator may be able to make some concessions in one area, but certainly not in a number of areas at once. If you need rush work or if you need a translator to be willing to work in a team with other translators and exchange glossaries multiple times a day or to wait two months to get paid, make this your main negotiation point rather than asking for rush work using non-standard software and at a discount rate and payment terms of Net 60.
  • Expect to offer complete details in order for the translator to commit. Given the nature of the industry, most translators work on very tight deadlines and accept work on an ongoing basis, so an in-demand translator’s schedule may change quickly. To smooth the process, be prepared with the key details of the project: rate, deadline, number of words, subject matter, format, etc. and provide these to the translator during your first contact.
  • Confirm everything in writing. I don’t use a lengthy terms of service agreement or freelance services contract, but I do think that it helps when a client confirms everything in writing. A simple e-mail such as “As we discussed, you will translate the 7,500 word document we sent and return it by 9AM Eastern Time on Friday. You will be paid X cents per source/target word” can go a long way toward avoiding misunderstandings between translators and clients.


Corinne McKay

The first step in translation quality: a qualified translator

Last week, I was visiting the website of a certain country’s embassy in the U.S. (yes, I’m deliberately protecting their identity because they’ve promised that the issue is being rectified!) and just out of curiosity, checked to see if they had any information about translation, since this country’s official language is not English.

I was at first excited to see that they did, in fact, have a section about translation, but my elation soon turned to something akin to horror when I saw that their translation advice was to visit the yellow pages to find a translator since the embassy itself does not offer translation services. This made me think that many such establishments are in a similar bind: they get requests for translation services, but don’t want to handle the requests themselves and therefore need to direct people somewhere else. So, here are a few tips on finding a translator, and on why the yellow pages aren’t the best option:

  • Being bilingual does not a translator make. Translators need other skills such as specialized vocabulary, familiarity with the conventions of the industry, business management skills, etc. In addition, professional translators should be working into their native language only, not into their second, third, etc. language. Using someone who is established as a professional translator is key.
  • Finding a qualified translator is the first step in procuring a quality translation, and a sloppy translation is expensive, embarrassing and time-consuming. Why not do it right the first time? Your brother’s girlfriend may have studied abroad in Italy, but she’s probably not the best choice to translate your annual report into Italian.
  • Probably the best resource for finding a translator (assuming that you are not plugged in to the industry and don’t have access to a word of mouth referral) is a professional association for translators. In the U.S., the American Translators Association has its member directory online and you can search using pretty much any criteria you would like: location, specialization, language pair, ATA certification, etc. In addition, many states and large metro areas have translators associations with online membership directories too, for example our local Colorado Translators Association also has one, and using a local person can be a good option when you are new to purchasing translations or may need someone with whom you can meet in person.
  • Various other countries have active translators associations as well, for example the SFT (France), the ITI (UK), OTTIAQ (Quebec) and many more. These are excellent resources if you are located in those countries, or if you would like to use an in-country translator.
  • In certain cases, online translation marketplaces such as ProZ and TranslatorsCafe can be helpful too. Unfortunately, these marketplaces have a bit of a “reverse auction” reputation in the industry, as places where translation buyers go to get rock-bottom rates or insane turnaround times. However, I think that they can be useful when the translation buyer is dealing with an obscure language that is hard to find otherwise, and when the buyer, instead of posting the job on the marketplace’s job board, contacts the translator directly via the website.