Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Clients


Corinne McKay

Giving clients advice: how far to go?

I gave some thought to titling this post “Should translators encourage their clients to be more gay-friendly?”, but the issue I’m mulling over is really about whether we should encourage our clients to be more inclusive in general. I should also say that although I’m not gay, I have a close family member who is, and I live in one of America’s most gay-friendly cities, so I might be more aware of this issue than some translators are.

With the identifying details removed, here’s the story: I’ve recently translated several corporate communications pieces (one was a questionnaire for a medical study and the other was a marketing piece for a line of luxury goods) that were written in a way that assumed that the target reader was straight. For example these pieces used expressions such as “his and hers,” “the patient’s mother and father,” etc. As mentioned above, I think that this type of phrasing jumps out at me because of the English documents that I’m used to reading. Case in point: the forms that my daughter’s school sends home now say “Parent or Guardian #1″ and Parent or Guardian #2” instead of “Mother” and “Father” because so many students have two parents of the same gender. But then again here in Boulder we can’t even refer to pet “owners”:  we’re legally required to say pet guardians, so maybe it’s just us!

At any rate, when I went to prepare my page of client comments for each of these projects, I wondered how to phrase this issue. My objection to language such as “his and hers” when referring to an unidentified couple isn’t political; it’s based on my impression that the client risks offending some of their potential target market. Here in the U.S., it seems to be more common for mainstream companies to either produce gay-targeted ads, or ads for the general public that happen to include gay themes. This undoubtedly makes good business sense since gay men are some of America’s highest-spending consumers. When even mainstream companies like Johnson and Johnson (“for the go-go boy in all of us”…who knew?) and Campari are producing gay-targeted ads and American Express has a directory of gay and gay-friendly travel agents, it seems counterproductive not to alert a client to the potential business implications of assuming that all of their clients are heterosexual.

Unfortunately I can’t go into the specifics of the solution that I suggested for each client without saying more than I want to about the specifics of these projects. But I’m interested to hear from other translators about this topic in general: when a client has you translate a communications piece that makes assumptions about the target reader’s religion, race, sexual orientation or other “sensitive” characteristics, do you offer advice or leave it to the client to decide?

Another interesting point: when doing some research for the projects referenced above, I found that mainstream companies are producing gay-themed ads in other countries, and some of them are more overt than what we’re used to seeing in the U.S. market. For example this gay-themed ad for French McDonald’s (which uses the English slogan “come as you are” and even references the tension between a gay teen and his father) struck me as something we’d be unlikely to see on U.S. television.


Corinne McKay

Reader question: cold-contacting with holiday cards

Here’s a followup to my post on What to send clients and colleagues for the holidays. This is a question that recently came up in the online course I teach, and I’d like to put it out to a wider audience. Is it appropriate to use holiday cards as cold contacts to potential clients? If not, why not? If so, what is the best method of doing this? Specifically, is it appropriate (always? sometimes? never?) to enclose one’s business card in a holiday card to a potential client? Is it appropriate to softly promote one’s own translation services, or should the card just express admiration for the potential client’s work and best wishes for the holidays and new year?

Over to the readers: I gave my students a brief opinion but I’ll refrain from commenting more fully until some readers weigh in.


Corinne McKay

What to send clients and colleagues for the holidays

Since we’re on the topic, it’s also time to think about your end-of-year greetings/thank you plans for your clients and colleagues. Obviously these plans will vary depending on your country, customs, budget and time limits, but here are a few suggestions for spreading some cheer, gratitude and name recognition.

Holiday greeting basics:

  • Send something. OK; I know this sounds pitifully basic…but I think that even if you only have time to pick up a box of cards at Target and sign them, you should at least do that. I’ve heard a few clients comment (in a good-natured way!) that they notice who sends something at the end of the year and who doesn’t; and you know which of those groups you want to be in!
  • That being said, go for a card that is high-quality and has a fairly universal image and message. Unless your clients are members of a specific religion or cultural group, it’s best to pick a holiday card with a semi-generic “season’s greetings” message and an image that isn’t associated with a specific holiday. In our industry I think that the “around the world” motif (i.e. a globe with a dove, flags of various countries, “peace” in multiple languages, you get the picture…) is a little overused but can work if you find the right card. I think that two good choices are charity-themed cards (such as those from Unicef) or locally-themed cards (this year I ordered Colorado mountain scene cards for my clients and colleagues).
  • Avoid pre-printed mailing labels. Address your cards by hand; remove any trappings of mass-production from your holiday greeting efforts.
  • Don’t forget your colleagues, especially those who refer work to you. For many of us, these people are some of our most powerful marketing tools. See below for ideas on how to really single them out!

Holiday greetings, beyond the basics:

  • Personalize. If you have time, write something specific about that client or colleague. How you really appreciate their friendliness and attention to detail; how flattered you were to be selected to translate their annual report; how their trust and referrals have really helped your business grow. If you’re a business or agency, think about having all of your employees sign the cards; I always enjoy it when my agency clients do this.
  • Send gifts to your top clients and your top-referring colleagues. These don’t have to be extravagant. Something like special chocolates, tea, a wreath or better yet, products that are made in your local area! Personally I would go with something unique that you select and send rather than something ordered from an office gifts catalog.
  • Specifically thank your “multipliers.” Thanks to Grant Hamilton of Anglocom for teaching me this term! Especially if you work with direct clients, you probably have an advocate within the company who loves your work and encourages her/his superiors to use your services. Think about sending two cards or gifts: one to the company as a whole and one to your multiplier.
  • Here’s a wacky one: a holiday letter to your clients. Here in the US, it’s common for people to send a letter with their holiday cards, telling about what happened over the course of the last year. These letters are sometimes maligned for their braggy, “don’t you wish you were as happy as we are???” tone, but personally I enjoy reading them. Obviously you want to write a separate holiday letter for your clients; one that details your professional progress such as conferences, awards, large projects, publications, etc. and also thanks your clients for their trust and confidence in you over the past year. I don’t know…this one came to me while I was jogging this morning. Any thoughts?
  • And then there’s in-person visits at which you can present your holiday gift, thank the client for their business and find out how their year went. I think this is a high-investment, high-value strategy. I know of one medium-sized agency that visits nearly every one of their local clients during the holidays. Huge time outlay? You bet! Huge returns? Probably; especially if the competition is sending a low-quality card with a pre-printed mailing label.


Corinne McKay

Making translation easy versus making translation cheap

When you’re inquiring about a professional service, let’s say taxes, computer help or marketing consulting, which is more attractive to you: a service provider who seems ultra-competent and gives the impression that the process will be easy for you, or a service provider who charges low rates and gives the impression that the process will be cheap? While few clients are completely price-insensitive, I think that it’s important to always be looking for ways to make your clients’ lives easier and avoid bogging them down in the complexity of what you do.

For example, let’s say that you need a really good small business accountant. You know that accountants charge fairly high rates; upwards of $100 an hour and maybe as much as $200 an hour, so you have a ballpark figure in mind. You call CPA #1 and explain your situation. His/her response: “Well, switching accountants at this time of year is complicated. If only you had called me in January. I need your personal and business returns for the past 3 years, don’t give me the originals, you’ll have to copy them and drop them off. I’m only here 10-4 outside of tax season so you have to come during those hours” and so on. At that point, do you even care how little this person charges? Even if this accountant’s rates were below what I expected to pay, I would be turned off. I hate accounting, I hire an accountant to make my life easier, and this person has already bogged me down with too many details and too many hoops through which I have to jump.

But how about this: you call CPA #2 and explain your situation. His/her response: “No problem at all, thanks for calling. If you’re interested in switching to us, you’ll just need to sign a release form and then I’ll call your current accountant and ask them to fax us your past returns. Our hours are shorter outside of tax season but we do everything electronically with password-protected files so you can scan and submit your documents whenever you want. Also if you’re interested we could review your previous returns for errors or missed deductions and there’s no cost to you unless we find something.” At that point, I would be willing to pay the high end of the rate range I was expecting, because this person conveys the impression that my life will be immeasurably easier and I will save time (and therefore be able to work more and earn more money) by using his/her services.

Think about applying these types of scenarios to your own business:

  • When you receive an inquiry from a client, assume that the client wants you to solve their problem, not give them a deal.
  • Don’t get pedantic. Think: do you really care about the minute details of your service providers’ jobs? Right. Stick to the information that your client really needs.
  • Think of simple ways to streamline things for your clients. If you always translate their quarterly newsletter, can you contact them on a predetermined date to talk about the next issue? Can you set up a secure file transfer site so that your clients can access their translations whenever they want? Can you send them a short survey to ask how you can better meet their needs?
  • Try to frame things positively. Not “I can’t finish it by Thursday morning unless you can get it to me by Wednesday noon,” but “If you can get that to me by Wednesday noon, I could definitely have it back to you by the time you get into the office on Thursday.”
  • Don’t make translation sound easy (we know: it’s not!), make the client feel that you will make things easy for them.


Corinne McKay

Projects large and small

At the moment I’m working on one of the larger projects I’ve ever taken on; a bit over 40,000 words. This has gotten me thinking about the pros and cons of large projects versus small projects, as well as which type of projects I prefer working on. I’m interested to hear what other translators think about this as well.

I think that there are a few issues associated with project length: income potential, job satisfaction and quality control (and probably others that I’ll depend on you to point out!). In terms of income potential, I don’t give volume discounts because I am usually as busy as I want to be. However, I do like that a large project gives me the opportunity to earn a guaranteed large chunk of money at once rather than a few hundred dollars at a time. Large projects have some economies of scale: one invoice, one client, one glossary for 40,000 words as opposed to multiplying all of that by 10 for a slew of 4,000 word jobs. However, I find that the higher the word count, the higher the chance of client sticker shock regardless of the per-word rate. I charge $50 per page to translate official documents, which often comes out to $1 a word or more. Still, very few potential clients ever object to that rate. But when you’re talking about 30,000 or 50,000 or 75,000 words, even a very reasonable per-word rate just comes out to a pretty huge number (and numbers tend to sound bigger when you have to say them out loud!). So, in some ways I find that it’s easier to charge high rates for short documents than it is for long ones.

Job satisfaction. I think this can cut both ways. When you land a huge project that you really love working on, it’s a treat. Life is predictable because you know what the day’s agenda is and you can really enjoy the work. But when you commit to a big project and things go wrong, it’s really excruciating. Rather than telling yourself “one more day and I never have to look at this document again,” you might be facing a month or more of slogging through a book or manual that you wish you’d never come eye to eye with.

Quality control
 on very large projects is hard. I seem to forget this every time I take on a huge project. I use CAT tools and I have a pretty good memory for terms, but when you’re getting that “haven’t I read this somewhere before?” feeling on a project that you’ve been working on for 3 weeks, it’s not always easy to pull up the section of text you’re thinking about. And when you were mulling over “CEO” versus “Chief Executive Officer,” which one did you choose? Did you change your original term or just think about it?

In general, I think that my ideal project length is about 5,000 to 8,000 words: long enough to really get into, long enough to generate a decent invoice but not long enough to start getting bored. A project of that length represents about 3-5 days of work for me, and I find that to be an appealing amount of time to work on a project. Thoughts?