Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Clients


Corinne McKay

The direct-to-direct client route: can it work?

I’ve noticed a trend, or at least a micro-trend, among the students who take my classes for beginning freelancers: more and more of them are interested in working with direct clients right off the bat. Typically, these are students who know that their language skills are solid; for example they currently work in a job where they use their non-native language all the time, or where translation is one of their job tasks, and they have significant experience in the business world, just not as freelancers. Is this a viable pathway? Is it a smart pathway? Let’s take a closer look.

In my mind, a translator has four core skills: language(s), writing, specialization(s), and business skills. In an ideal world, we’d all have those in equal measure. And certainly, some of those skills are deal-breakers: if your source language reading skills or your target language writing skills are terrible, you’re simply not going to make it as a translator. And in countries/regions where, when you say “I’m a translator,” it’s assumed that you have a degree in translation, that may be a deal-breaker (for better or worse, not the case in the US, where translation programs seem to be dwindling rather than expanding).

I’d also theorize that there are some market factors underlying this trend. The hardest market niche to break into is the middle; the edges of the market are easier. And in our industry (my take here…feel free to disagree), the edges are huge agencies, which base their hiring primarily or even exclusively on their own tests, and direct clients, who will trust that you can do what you say you can do. In the middle, you’re mostly looking at small to medium agencies, which often, and understandably, have barriers to entry such as three to five years’ experience, ATA certification or a Master’s in translation, and thus are not a great option for people with solid skills but not much experience. A typical student in this situation will tell me something like The higher-quality agencies won’t take me because I don’t have enough experience, and I’m not interested in working for the Wal-Marts of translation or they don’t need my specialization, so I’m thinking of just going straight to direct clients.

My honest answer to the direct-to-direct client question is “I’m not sure…I see pluses and minuses.” On the plus side:

  • For translators who work in specializations that many agencies don’t handle (sports marketing, art history, nanotechnology), it may be the only way to pursue that specialization.
  • For translators who work in language pairs with a lot of downward price pressure (English-Spanish, English-Russian, etc.), direct clients offer a way around the reverse auction scene that prevails on online job boards.
  • I think that many direct clients are less concerned with formal qualifications than with what you can do for them: if you can solve their problem, you’re in.

But then again:

  • To do this, you have to be really, really sure that your language skills are good enough. The direct client market is not the place to be working on your language skills.
  • You have to get some objective assessment of your translation skills: if you’ve never done a translation that anyone else has reviewed, don’t start pursuing direct clients just yet.
  • You don’t know what you don’t know, and that can lead to a lot of problems. Example: I recently translated a marketing brochure for one of my direct clients. When they sent me the pre-press PDF, it included a bunch of errors (text pasted incorrectly, etc.), and a tagline that didn’t make sense. But I never would have seen this, had I not told them to send me the pre-press PDF; things can go wrong when you don’t even know what to ask.

Wise readers, over to you: thoughts?


Corinne McKay

Sub-optimal rates: "better than nothing," or not?

“The rate isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing.” “It’s not what I’d like to be earning, but you have to start somewhere.” “I wasn’t thrilled about the rate, but working is better than not working.” Stop me if you’ve heard this before… But the real question is: is this a valid way of looking at your freelance rates?

Ideally, here’s the situation you want to be in: you don’t even deal with low-paying clients, because you don’t need to. You are busy all the time at your regular rates, and if clients won’t pay those rates, you simply don’t work with them. Or, when you take on lower-paying work (let’s say a book translation, or work for a non-profit that you find meaningful), it’s for a reason: just because you enjoy it, or because you want to contribute to the organization’s mission, or bring a certain author’s work to a different culture, or something like that.

But when you’re looking for more work, or for any work at all, it’s a different story. Then, an experienced translator’s advice to stick to your standard rates and never offer discounts can feel a bit condescending. When, if ever, is a sub-optimal rate better than nothing?

  • Bottom line: rarely. You tell yourself “it’s better than nothing,” but low rates can become a treadmill that’s difficult to dismount. You’re making a few cents a word, so you have to translate 12 hours a day just to keep the lights on. That leaves approximately zero time to market yourself to better-paying clients, or do some networking, or attend conferences where you might meet better-paying clients, or upgrade your skills and marketing presence.
  • When you’re working within a lot of constraints. In most ways, huge agencies are not ideal clients; but they do have some advantages. One of those is that you can generally turn them down many times without fear of losing them as a client, or you can give them windows of time within which you can work. So, if you’re trying to start a freelance business while going to school, or raising kids, or working another job, a huge agency that pays sub-optimal rates might allow you to do that.
  • When you put some parameters on the low-rate work. Working at sub-optimal rates for decades will a) suck the life out of you and b) destroy any love you have for this job. Really, it will. But if you decide that the low-rate work fits your purposes while you… (finish school, sock away enough money to quit your day job, etc.), and if that time period is relatively short, like a couple of years or less, I think it’s more doable.

When is a sub-optimal rate absolutely not worth it?

  • When you’re doing it out of desperation. Desperation is rarely a good precursor of good business decisions. If you’re in sketchy financial shape, you’re probably better off looking for a stable part-time job rather than taking low-rate freelance work. Take the part-time job and then translate pro bono for clients who work for causes you believe in: in the end, you’ll feel much better about yourself. Out-of-the-box tip: look for a job where you could do some translating while you work. For example, I once worked in a fancy office building that needed a receptionist, but there was actually very little work to do. The owner’s technique (because it was hard to keep people in that job long-term), was to deliberately recruit students from the writing program at the local university, with the stipulation that if they committed to staying for a full school year, they could work on their own writing while they sat at the desk.
  • When you could cut fat from your spending budget and avoid the low-rate work. I’ve beaten the freelance frugality drum here and here. Blackbelt frugality isn’t for everyone (although I did get quite a few compliments on the haircuts that my husband gave me in the early 2000s!), but to me, it’s certainly preferable to doing soul-crushing work.
  • When you have the skills to work for better-paying clients, but you never go out and look for them. As I’ve said before, but it bears repeating, there is *so much* interesting, well-paying translation work out there. But, it’s not going to flop into your inbox with a bow on it; you need to be out there (in person, online or both) being in the places where the good clients can find you, or going and knocking on the good clients’ doors and pitching your services. Otherwise, you’re running in neutral in the low-rate market.
  • When you’re telling yourself that the low-paying clients will love you so much, they’ll agree to a big rate increase at some point. Harsh but true: most times, they won’t. Once a client knows that you’re willing to work at a certain rate, you can’t blame them for refusing to pay more. No matter how much a client likes you, most agencies, especially big agencies, have a fairly rigid rate ceiling above which they absolutely will not go, no matter how much they like you. When you want to make more money, you just have to move on.

Readers: any other thoughts on this? And if you’re thinking, “This sounds great, but how do I find work at decent rates?,” you might enjoy this post: To break out of the low-rate market, change these three things.


Corinne McKay

How to retain freelance clients

Conventional business wisdom tells us that it’s a lot easier to retain an existing client than to find a new one. Retaining clients (as opposed to finding new ones) allows you to amortize the time you put into finding the client in the first place, the time and effort you put into learning a new client’s style preferences, terminology and payment procedures, and so on. In scanning a few articles before writing this post, I found that large corporations estimate that it costs up to five times as much to land a new client than to hold onto an existing one.

Long-term clients are also more likely to make you a true part of their team, which is always satisfying. In my mind, the only exception to the client retention rule relates to rates. If you have a salaried job and you want a 25% raise, it’s unlikely that your current job will provide that, but a new job might. Likewise, as a freelancer, you don’t want to be tied forever to the rates that your legacy clients pay; when you want to make a big income leap, you need to move on.

But let’s say that you’re mostly interested in retaining clients: other than providing them with excellent translations, here are some tips to holding onto them once you’ve landed them.

  • Send a handwritten thank-you note after you receive their payment for the first project. It doesn’t have to be gushy; just “Thank you so much for the opportunity to work together on your recent (annual report, press release, patent, etc.). I really enjoyed it, and look forward to working with you again in the future.”
  • Ask for feedback on every single job, and explain why it’s important to you. “My goal is to develop a long-term relationship with you; in order to do that, I really welcome your feedback on every translation. This is an important part of my quality process, and any feedback, even if negative, is a huge help in tailoring my translations to your needs and expectations.” Send that with the first job. Then, after every subsequent job, refer to it. “As I’ve mentioned, your feedback is always welcome and appreciated; please let me know if you have any comments on the translation.” I’ve also seen at least one freelancer who includes a link to a short, anonymous “satisfaction survey” on every invoice.
  • Send something for the winter holidays. I send a handwritten New Year’s card (you be the judge of what’s appropriate for your clients’ cultures: some may expect/welcome a “Christmas” card, others may not) to every client for whom I did even one project over the course of the past year. I send my A-list clients a tangible gift: sometimes a wreath (again, judge the cultural appropriateness), or some food that’s associated with where I live (Colorado-roasted coffee, Colorado honey, etc.).
  • Send them news items that might be of interest. This could be as simple as, “I noticed this article about changes in the US patent filing procedure and thought it might be of interest.” Or, if you want to go the whole nine yards, set up Google Alerts on your A-list clients’ names (especially if they don’t speak your target language and thus won’t notice press items that you might notice), then send them the mentions if they seem interesting.
  • Don’t nickle and dime them. This is a personal preference and applies primarily to direct clients. Personally, I prefer to charge a higher rate overall and do really small jobs for free, rather than impose a minimum charge on a client who needs 10 words translated. In general, I do not do minimum charges for direct clients if the job is under about 200 words; I just translate it for free, surmising that in the course of what the client pays me in a year, it all evens out.
  • Ask about the impact of your work. Again, this applies mainly to direct clients, but it’s a good tip for everyone. When I translate something that is intended for a specific impact or goal (university applying for international accreditation or recruiting students for a summer program, international development entity applying for a big grant, etc.), I always follow up with the client and ask about the result. Did they get the accreditation? Did the summer program fill up? Did they win the grant? This shows the client that a) I care and b) I want the translation to have the desired impact. These types of clients are investing in translation to improve something, not to maintain the status quo, so I want to know if that happened.
  • Pick up the phone. I don’t love the phone, and many of my big clients are in Europe, so the time difference is a factor. But, I find that with a client who I’ve never met in person, just being able to put a voice with an e-mail address is a huge help in personalizing the relationship. Likewise, if there is ever anything even minorly tricky that I have to work out with a client (what did they mean by “a more formal tone”?), I always call instead of e-mailing, because a sticky situation can very quickly escalate via e-mail.

Readers, any other client retention strategies to share?


Corinne McKay

To break out of the low-rate market, change these three things

Stop me if this sounds familiar:
I really needed work, so I decided to take whatever came through the door. I decided that applying to mega-agencies/advertising on Fiverr/racing to the bottom on translation job boards was the fastest way to get full-time freelance work. But now I’m stuck; I have to translate 10-12 hours a day to earn a decent living at these rates. I can’t ever take a day off. If I get sick, I’m in danger of not being able to pay my rent, and I have no money to spend on better equipment or professional development. Low-rate work feels like a treadmill that I’ll never get off. HELP.
[Read more…] about To break out of the low-rate market, change these three things


Corinne McKay

Negotiating on factors other than price

There are a lot of reasons to avoid negotiating on price:

  • Once you take on the lower-paying project, what happens when a higher-paying project comes in?
  • Lowering your rate shows the client that, at least some of the time, you’re willing to work for less than your stated rate.
  • Lowering your rate can cause you to feel resentful of the client or the project (even though you’re the one who agreed to the lower rate).

But what happens when, for whatever reason (interest in the client, interest in the subject matter, interest in bringing in more work in general), you’re offered a lower-paying project and you want to accept it? What other factors might you negotiate with the client?

A longer deadline. If you really want the work, but you and the client can’t agree on a rate, ask the client to extend the deadline. This protects you from having to turn down higher-paying work during the lower-paying project.

The non-translation tasks. Can the client’s admin staff do some of the formatting? Retype numbers from a PDF? Create tables? Do the annoying double-column layout that you’re dreading? Decipher the handwritten notes in the margins?

Faster payment. If you really want the work, can the client reduce their payment terms from 30 or 45 days to, say, 10 days?

Name recognition. Especially for a direct client, you may be able to negotiate for your name, website, etc. to be included on the translation. This can be appealing if the translation will be published/exhibited/distributed.

In certain circumstances, you might also consider doing the job for free instead of reducing your rate. This sounds a bit nutty, but here’s an example: one of my A-list clients approached me about doing a translation for a charitable organization that one of their employees was involved with. In light of the pro bono nature of the project, what was “my best rate?,” they asked. Here, I thought of item 2 on the list above: if I said “I’ll do it for half of my normal rate,” the bottom line would be that, at least some of the time, half of my normal rate is fine with me (which it’s not, even though I really like this client). So in that case, I preferred to do the translation for free, as a contribution to the charitable organization, rather than at a reduced rate.

Obviously, the best option is to have enough work at your regular rates that you don’t need to pursue these options. But I think many/most freelancers end up in situations where they feel torn: the project doesn’t pay their standard rate, but for some reason they want to take it. Readers, other thoughts?