Freelancing

Greetings, Training for Translators subscribers! I hope you’re all doing well!

The March Marketing Madness challenge group kicks off on Monday (March 4); we already have 100+ people signed up, and the Slack group is hopping with activity. You can read the full description and/or register (US $90) here!

This week, let’s talk about who’s doing well as a freelance translator or interpreter, these days. We hear a lot of doom and gloom about the language professions, some of it warranted, and some of it unwarranted. Not that I know every freelance translator or interpreter on earth (I definitely do not), but I do talk to a lot of people in our professions, so here’s my take on what types of translators and interpreters are making good money and doing interesting work. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here’s my take, and it may provide some inspiration if you’re looking for more work, more interesting work, or better-paying work:

1. Freelancers with loyal clients whose main concern is not price. In my mind, this is probably the best “job security” that exists for freelancers. You have clients who know (at least in a vague sense) that they could find someone cheaper or faster, but they continue working with you because other factors are more important to them. Hopefully they value the quality of your work; they probably also value confidentiality, responsiveness, the fact that you know their requirements, and that you carve out time for them when they really need you. A successful freelancer recently commented to me, “I have a good direct client who sends me a document with a one-sentence e-mail, like, ‘We need this as soon as you can get to it.’ We don’t have to discuss price, or formatting, or terminology, because we’ve already hashed those things out. The last thing they want to do is call an agency project manager they’ve never worked with before, and have to start from scratch, even if it would be cheaper.”
2. Freelancers with “captive audience” clients. By this I mean, clients who have to use you, whether or not they really want to. Examples of this include court systems that are required or at least strongly encouraged to use court-certified interpreters; individuals who have to use an ATA-certified translator for their official documents; interpreting clients who work in a market (i.e. Canada) where they are legally required to provide interpreting. I do some of this type of work myself, and I think it’s a factor to consider if you’re thinking about a new service offering. The downside of “captive audience” clients is that they sometimes don’t appreciate your work, or even make it totally clear that they’re only using you because they have to. But having clients who have no choice except to use your services isn’t the worst thing in the world. I honestly kind of feel that way about my accounting firm: I like them as people, I would be thrilled to spend the money I pay them on something else if there were another option, but there really isn’t, because I don’t want to do my own taxes.
3. Freelancers who have followed the money to a specific niche. I feel like this is becoming more common as AI and MT hollow out the middle of the translation market, which is where most freelancers want(ed) to work. I’ve talked to freelance translators who have started providing highly specialized copywriting services to the types of clients they translate for, at good rates. I’ve talked to interpreters who have started providing translate/transcribe services to law firms with high confidentiality needs. I’ve talked to subtitlers who are doing high-end corporate video subtitling work, in addition to their regular subtitling jobs. The key here is to focus on the intersection between what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, and what clients have the budget to pay well for.
4. Freelancers who do one specific thing, very well. We talk a lot about diversification, and how it can be a really good thing in a freelance business. Diversification has really helped me; my business is basically a triathlon (translation, interpreting, teaching/writing/consulting), which I enjoy and which I think has been a significant business advantage. However, the same is true of narrowing down and doing only one, very specialized thing, whether that’s translating for German-speaking doctors who want to get their work published in American or British scientific journals, or translating audio guide scripts for museums and then recording the voiceover, or translating thriller novels, basically becoming “the” person for a very narrow specialization.
5. Beginning freelancers who are creative and persistent. I think that starting out as a freelancer in 2024 is not necessarily harder than it used to be, but it demands a more creative and persistent approach. When I started out in 2002, things were a lot more straightforward: most people started out by translating for large agencies that hired anyone who passed their tests, then moved up to more discerning agencies and maybe direct clients. Today, you could still take that approach, but you’re likely to spend the bulk of your time editing machine-translated texts. That’s not objectively bad or wrong, but it’s a lot different than starting out as a pure translator. The beginning freelancers I talk to who are making decent money and enjoying the work have two qualities in common: they are creative, and they are persistent. They accept that they have to do a lot of marketing, whereas mid-career freelancers are more likely to express frustration at that (“I want to be a translator, not a translation salesperson”). They might be pursuing a certificate or graduate degree in an area they’d like to specialize in (genealogy, forensic linguistics, paralegal) because they know that specialization is the way to go. I think that successful beginners are also more likely to experiment and see what sticks: “I started offering tours of my city in Spanish on AirBnB experiences;” “I volunteered for TED Translators and found out I love subtitling;” “I sent out postcards to 200 immigration law firms offering certified document translation services.”

As I said above, this is totally unscientific, but these are some trends I’ve been thinking about, and I hope they are helpful to you!

Greetings, Training for Translators readers! Have you signed up for the March Marketing Madness challenge group?? Registrations are going strong; the price ($90) is the same as last year, and my favorite thing is hearing from people who say, “I can’t do the group this year because I have so much work from the marketing I did last year!” We kick off on March 4!

Here’s a topic that a couple of people have asked me about lately? Do I ever contemplate retirement and what it might look like? Short answer: Yes! I’m a planner, so I like to think ahead!

Longer version of the question: A couple of blog readers and online course alumni have asked me:

• Assuming that money isn’t a problem, have I contemplated when I might retire and what that might look like?
• What should those of us who aren’t 22 years old think about when we think about retiring?

My thoughts, in various categories. First, the logistical factors:

I’m 52, my husband is 58, and we have one child who is 21 and on track to graduate from college/university in 2026. We are fortunate to have three out of four of our own parents still alive; we are also fortunate that all of them are financially secure and we don’t anticipate having to spend our own money to care for them. Thanks to several decades of frugal living (basically, spending less than we earn), our house is paid for and has approximately tripled in value since we bought it in 2004, we have no other debt, and we have a good amount of money in retirement savings, so I anticipate/hope that money will not be a huge issue when/if we want to retire. I realize that right here, we have a lot of advantages–some are the result of our own careful planning, and some are the result of luck,and I feel grateful for that.

Random question: Why is it becoming more normal to retire in your 50s when most of us are going to live into our 80s and 90s?

Perhaps the most important factor here is that I love my job (more on this below), but this is something that really puzzles me. I was born in 1971, which means that in the US retirement system, I need to work until I’m 67 in order to get full social security benefits. That’s 15 years from now. US life expectancy is now age 73 for men and age 79 for women, and yet, we have a fair number of friends in their mid-50s who are either already at least semi-retired or who are planning to fully retire in the not-too-distant future. Everyone should do what they want, but personally I don’t really get this phenomenon. (End of rant).

The emotional/lifestyle factors:

• Bottom line, I love my job, I just went back to school for interpreting three years ago, I really have zero interest in retiring right now, and I think that I’m kind of a poor candidate for total retirement in general. I’m easily bored, I don’t enjoy being home all the time, and although I can see wanting more time for non-work activities (more on this below), 30 years of unstructured time isn’t something that really appeals to me.
• At the same time, I appreciate this question because I also have some fear, especially when it comes to interpreting, of being the person who holds on for too long and doesn’t know when to get off the stage. I really don’t want to be someone about whom others are saying behind my back, “She really needs to retire.”

Thus, here’s my current line of thinking:

• As long as my mind and body hold out, I’m planning to keep doing what I’m doing until I’m around 70. That being said, life can change a lot, and life can change very quickly. One variable is that my husband is six years older than I am, and is also more interested than I am in fully retiring. If he completely retires in ~7 years, I can see us wanting to do more extended travel, which could affect how much I work.
• My plan after that is, roughly, to retire from interpreting, or at least from high-stakes interpreting where cognitive processing speed is a big factor. Rightly or wrongly, I think that when older interpreters have trouble hearing, make mistakes or have trouble keeping up, it’s blamed on age. I think this is sometimes unfair; young interpreters have bad days too. It’s also not that hard to just get a hearing test every year and see how you’re doing. But, as stated above, I really don’t want to be the person about whom other people say, “She misses a lot of stuff and needs to retire.”
• I honestly don’t know that I will ever fully retire from translation unless I physically or cognitively can’t do it anymore. On the question and answer session where I got this question, I said, joking/not joking, “If I translate a couple of birth certificates the day before my funeral, that sounds good to me.” I would also really enjoy being able to dedicate more work time to lower-paying projects like book translation, without worrying about the loss of income.
• I think the beauty of freelancing is that we can be very flexible. I completely understand why people don’t want to be tied to a 9-5 job with limited vacation until they’re too old to enjoy their non-work interests anymore, but/and I feel like I’m already taking advantage of “the free in freelancing” at this stage of my career. Specifically, I often do not work on Fridays if I don’t have urgent work; I often take a three-ish hour break in the middle of a workday to go play lute duets with a friend; last year I took basically six weeks of vacation, which was really nice. I could see some sort of digital nomad situation in my future; my husband and I both love Canada, and US citizens can spend six months there without any special visa. We also both have dual citizenship in Switzerland, so we can go to Switzerland or any EU country for as long as we want. It’s more that I don’t see an imperative to retire when all of those options are available.
• I have a couple of examples of freelancers in their 70s who are scaling back in a way that I hope to do. Specifically, one of these freelancers told me that they still work part-time because they enjoy it and want to keep their mind active, but that they have let go of the fear of losing out on work or even losing a client by not being available; they work when they want to, and they don’t work when they don’t want to. I think this is a good philosophy–again, as the initial question-asker said, as long as money isn’t a problem.
• One final thought: The extent to which all of this is driven by health insurance frustrates me. Assuming that my husband retires at 65 and goes on Medicare, I still have to figure out what to do about health insurance for another six years, and we’ve been spoiled by my husband’s current job situation, where we pay $300 a month for full-coverage medical and dental insurance for all three of us. The thought of paying $1,000+ a month for health insurance for myself (as is the case for several freelancers I know) is not appealing. So I don’t know where that leaves us; just another rant!

Although I’m hopefully several decades away from actual retirement, I found this to be an interesting “food for thought” topic at any age!

Greetings, Training for Translators readers, and happy 2024! I hope you all got some well-deserved time off over the holidays, and I’m excited to dive into the new year with all of you. The Training for Translators year kicks off next week:

• On Tuesday, January 16, I’m teaching a one-hour “flash” class on Using objective data to set your translation and interpreting rates. The start of the year is a great time to run the numbers and see how much you need to charge in order to earn your target income. Most of us either don’t know or can’t face this “big number,” so let’s attack it together. Registration is $50 (special price for this one-hour class).
• On Wednesday, January 17, my four-week self-paced class, Getting started as a freelance translator or interpreter…in the age of AI kicks off. This class (which I’m always updating, to reflect the new realities of our professions) has launched 750+ freelancers, and you could be next! Registration ($190; ATA members use coupon code ATA for $30 off) includes four weeks of self-paced videos and bonus material, plus question and answer videos to answer all of your questions each week.

2023: How it went!

On to this week’s topic, The year in review. I write this type of post every year (here’s last year’s) to go over the work I did, how much I earned, what worked, and what didn’t. I’ll start with the usual disclaimers:

• I find it helpful to talk about income; if I’m going to take business advice from another freelancer, I want to know the context: how much they earn, what they mean by “high rates” or “low rates,” how much work they have at those rates, etc. The purpose is not to brag about how much I earn, make you feel bad if you earn less, make you feel bad if you don’t want or need to earn what I earn, or anything else along those lines.
• That being said, you do you. If you find it cringe-y to talk about income, skip this newsletter. I earned $9,000 in 2003 and I was thrilled. If you’re happy with what you’re making, stick with it.

Executive summary: It was a good year, but there’s always room for improvement

2023 was a good year in my business. I did a lot of interesting work for good clients, I landed a few good new interpreting clients and had more work from my existing clients. Training for Translators’ classes did well, and I’m happy with the new model where I teach most of the classes, along with occasional guest instructors.

I set a higher income goal for this year and actually exceeded it.I’m happy with my translation income, but (for various reasons) I still haven’t found another “anchor” translation client to replace the major direct client I lost in 2022 (because their French project wrapped up).

My 2022 goals list was a mixed bag in terms of what I completed and what I didn’t: I’d like to translate another book, but so far nothing has panned out, and I didn’t finish Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter, my half-finished book that will hopefully be the companion to How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator when it’s done. I had a good year as a person: I really believe that I am the business, and my own heath and wellness are a huge priority. Overall, I give this year two thumbs up; read on for details if you’d like.

By the numbers

In 2023, I worked for 22 clients total (translation and interpreting combined: this includes only direct clients and agencies, not individuals). I did 103 court interpreting assignments and 90 conference assignments, of which 165 were remote and 28 were in person. Training for Translators ended the year with 633 course registrations. From 2019-2022, I earned around US $110K per year (I define “earned” as my gross income minus subcontracting: I don’t include money that I simply took in and paid out to online course instructors, but I include everything else). That’s obviously a decent income, but I was dissatisfied with it, for two reasons:

• Stagnation isn’t good, and because our own expenses go up over time, earning the same usually means less buying power.
• I wanted to aim for the equivalent of a six-figure salaried income, which, because we freelancers pay our own taxes, benefits, vacation time, professional development, etc., is a lot more than 100K.

Last year, I set a 2023 income goal of 120K (and again, “income” means gross income after subcontracting) and I actually earned 130K, which I was really happy with. In 2022, my income was divided almost evenly in thirds: 33K from translation, 33K from interpreting, and 33K from teaching, writing, and consulting. This year, interpreting really expanded, and I earned $12K from court interpreting and $41K from conference interpreting, meaning that my interpreting income almost doubled from the previous year. Translation income was basically unchanged at 32K, and teaching, writing, and consulting were also up significantly, at 45K, due to some Training for Translators classes that did well, and some trainings that I did for other entities.

 

Interpreting

When I finished my conference interpreting Master’s at Glendon, my goal (which I thought was pretty optimistic) was to have my work volume consist of 50% translation and 50% interpreting within two years of graduating. In reality, I have so much interpreting work that I have to deliberately carve out time for translation (which I don’t want to stop doing) so that I don’t become exclusively an interpreter. Interpreting went really well this year: a couple of my regular clients sent me a lot more work than in 2022, and I landed a couple of new clients, which I was happy about from the perspective of avoiding the “all eggs in one basket” phenomenon.

Translation

As previously mentioned, I keep saying that I need to work on finding a new “anchor” translation client, and (due to inaction and lack of time on my part: no excuses here) it hasn’t happened yet. This year worked out well in terms of translation work, largely because a couple of my agency clients had large projects at decent rates (14-15 cents per word) that I enjoyed working on. I also did a fair bit of translation for my direct law firm clients, and I worked for a couple of asylum cases that needed both translation and interpreting. It all worked out, but the approach feels a little piecemeal and this is something that I’d like to work on.

As mentioned above, I’m interested in translating another book, so I was excited to be approved on Reedsy (an online marketplace for editors, designers, and translators). It’s a pretty extensive application process, you have to have at least five published book translations, then create a profile, then do a live online training. However, so far the experience has been pretty disappointing: I’ve only gotten two inquiries, both from independent authors who went with someone cheaper.

Online courses

Life at Training for Translators was good this year. We had a total of 633 people participate in master classes, four-week classes, and challenge groups, and reviews were generally excellent. Marketing T4T is pretty straightforward, consisting mostly of my e-mail list (~4,000 subscribers), blog (~6,000 views per month), and LinkedIn. Teaching most of the classes myself, with a few guest instructors whose classes I know will do well, has proved to be a good decision. No major changes planned on this front!

Vacation and expenses

I took a good amount of vacation this year: a family trip to Mexico, a friends trip to Iceland, and a work-cation in British Columbia, plus lots of ski and mountain bike trips in Colorado and Utah. My family wrapped up the year in Belize (totally amazing), which I’ll write about in a future post. No complaints on the travel front, and hopefully more to come this year!

My expenses were pretty much the same as last year. My office rent actually went down, from $590 a month to $499 a month. This wasn’t any hard-nosed negotiation on my part; my office landlord told me they were going to raise the rent, so I told them I wasn’t going to renew my lease, and they offered me a different (but still nice) office at a lower rent. Accounting remains expensive. I now pay $80 a a month to my accountant for payroll tax prep, $46 a month to Gusto for the service that actually pulls the money from my business account and then pays me plus the various tax entities, and $62 a month to QuickBooks, for a total of $188 a month in accounting fees, plus year-end tax return prep. This is a lot, but I have an S-Corp and I hate accounting so much that I don’t want to do any of this myself, plus I want to work with an accountant who will represent me to the IRS if I ever get audited, so I don’t see a real way around it. Other subscription fees (MailChimp, Zoom, Thinkific) just are what they are: no way around them unless I want to stop doing business.

Goals (last year’s and this year’s)

Here’s how I did on last year’s goals:

• Increase my income to at least 120K: Yes; I actually significantly exceeded this goal
• Find at least one more interpreting client with regular work: Yes, I actually found a few new interpreting clients
• Publish at least one new book: No (no excuses, I just didn’t do it)
• Translate another book: No (same story here: this is on me, I put out a few feelers, but nothing panned out)
• Continue teaching monthly master classes for T4T: Yes, these went really well
• Start learning to play the cello: Yes; and I’m in a really great online cello group

Here’s what I’m aiming for this year; we’ll see how I do!

• Maintain an income above 125K. I’m not sure every year will be as good as this year, but now that I’ve broken 125K, I’m hoping to stay there.
• Maybe take a subtitling class. I’ve been subtitling-curious for while, and maybe this is the year to take action.
• No, really…finish this darned book!!! I’m really hoping to get Getting Started as a Freelance Interpreter out the door.
• Keep up at least the volume of translation work that I have right now. This sounds crazy, but I feel like the demand for interpreting work is so high, that I have to put a deliberate effort into remaining also a translator, which I want to do.
• Keep prioritizing my wellness and happiness. I’ve gotten into a good routine of going to in-person yoga 10-15 times a month, doing stretching and strengthening pretty much every day, and taking enough vacation that I still really love my job.
• Either go to cello camp this summer, join a community orchestra, or both. I really love playing the cello, and my goal for this year is to do some in-person ensemble playing.

That’s it! The year in a nutshell (a pretty long nutshell: thanks for coming to my TED Talk!!). I hope these data points are helpful as you think about where your own freelance business might head this year.

Greetings, Training for Translators subscribers! I hope you’re all doing well and hopefully getting some time off over the year-end holidays! This is the final “substantive” newsletter of the year; next week I’ll send out my annual “books I read this year” post (here’s last year’s if you’re looking for some holiday reading), and then the newsletter will take two weeks off while I do some skiing, beaching, and pajama-ing.

The T4T online training year has wrapped up, and I’m excited that 633 people participated in our master classes and challenge groups in 2023! If you’re looking to get a jump on things for 2024 (or if you need a year-end tax deduction!), our January offerings are open for registration:

• On January 16, I’m teaching a special one-hour “flash session” on Using objective data to set your freelance rates. This “quick start” webinar will help you use actual numbers to decide how much to charge (imagine that!), at a special price of $50.
• On January 17, my four-week, self-paced class, Getting started as a freelance translator or interpreter…in the age of AI kicks off. I teach this four-week class once or twice a year, and it’s continually updated to reflect the actual working conditions that beginning and aspiring freelancers encounter. Registration is $190, with a $30 discount for American Translators Association members (use coupon code ATA).

Now, on to this week’s topic: How to handle mistakes and perfectionism

When I teach classes for freelancers, I often tell people that if you’re making it as a freelancer, I already know that you’re a go-getter and an overachiever, because it’s basically impossible to succeed as a freelancer without those characteristics. In most salaried jobs, if you think of people on a scale of 1-10, the 1s and 2s might get laid off or demoted, the 9s and 10s might get a raise or a promotion, and everyone else sort of cruises along being neither great nor horrible at their job. That’s completely untrue of freelancers, where if you’re not a 9 or a 10, clients can easily just go find someone else.

This has its downsides, namely that when we make mistakes (which we all do), or if we suffer from perfectionism (which a lot of us do), we can have a hard time dealing with it. This happened to me last week: for a variety of reasons (none of them catastrophic), I had a bad day at work. I love my job, so it hits me hard when things don’t go well. But here’s what I did well: I realized that I was spiraling into panic mode, and I paused for some perspective instead of continuing to freak out. And then:

• I didn’t have any particular plans that evening, so I decided to walk home from my office to clear my head. This walk takes more than an hour, so it’s a good amount of time for reflection.
• I remembered that Sophie Llewellyn Smith, who hosts The Complete Interpreter podcast (sooo good; she covers mostly conference interpreting topics, but some of her episodes apply to translators as well) had done an episode on How to let go of mistakes when you have a bad day, and I had my earbuds with me, so I decided to listen to the episode while I walked home. Following are some takeaways for all of us!

1. I really appreciated Sophie’s take on the toxic aspects of perfectionism. Namely, that we tell ourselves that perfectionism is a positive thing, sort of a “continual quest for excellence,” when in reality, perfectionism often means that we never see our own work as good enough, and we see any mistakes as a complete failure: we’re either perfect or incompetent, and nothing in between.
2. Sophie also reinforced something I often tell people: You’re going to make mistakes; no one who does language work is perfect all the time. And when (not if, when) you mess up, you need to apologize, do what you can to make it right, and move on. However, Sophie had some really great tips for “moving on” that I had never thought of. They’re in the show notes if you want to take a look. Hint: I was on the right track by walking home instead of taking the bus!
3. Sophie also encourages (great advice for both translators and interpreters) differentiating between mistakes that weigh on you because your work wasn’t up to par, and mistakes that weigh on you because of mindset. There’s a difference between, “I knew I should have proofread that translation more carefully / I knew I wasn’t fully prepared for that interpreting assignment,” and feeling like the mistake was something relatively minor (Sophie’s episode is inspired by an interpreter who hesitated during an on-air interpreting assignment; not a catastrophic error) but it’s still eating away at you hours/days/weeks later.

Two tips that we often share in my family, and that I think are helpful in work situations as well, are:

• Progress doesn’t happen in the comfort zone. You never want to sell a client something on which you can’t deliver; “fake it ’till you make it” is actually terrible advice for a freelancer, IMO. But, when you challenge yourself, things aren’t always going to go perfectly, and yet you can grow from the experience.
• The only way never to be disappointed is never to try. If you stay in your safe zone, you’re never disappointed in your own work, because you stick with things you’re already good at. I always appreciate it when my yoga teachers will say, “If you’ve never tried this hard pose, you literally don’t know whether you can do it or not.” Trying involves the risk of not succeeding, and you need to give yourself credit for trying.

Greetings, Training for Translators readers! December’s master class, Breaking into the subtitling market, is open for registration! On December 11, guest instructor Molly Yurick will teach a two-hour master class for beginning and aspiring subtitlers and audiovisual translators, based on her own experience re-training as a subtitler during the COVID pandemic. This class always gets rave reviews! Registration ($75) includes the recording. We hope to see you there!

This week, let’s talk about handling the holiday season as a freelancer, depending on where you’re at in your career.

• If you’re an experienced freelancer and you’ve reached your income goals for the year, December and January are a great time to take time off, because work is often slow anyway. Particularly if you work with direct clients, make sure to give your regular clients a referral to another translator. Don’t just send them to a directory where they can find someone else; find a trusted colleague who will be working when you’re on vacation, and either send that person’s contact information to your regular clients, or put their contact information in your e-mail auto-responder. This rule isn’t absolutely iron-clad: if you’re taking off the week between Christmas and New Year’s, your clients are probably on vacation as well. But you definitely don’t want to leave clients hanging if they really need someone; better to set them up with someone else ahead of time. If your workflow is solid, give yourself some time to recharge. This is what I’m doing: planning on some pajama time, some ski time, and some beach time.
• It’s also a great time to remind clients that you exist, by sending them your holiday availability. I had sort of forgotten about this holiday nudging technique, until someone else mentioned it in a comment on my LinkedIn post about nudging dormant clients. Tamar Arenas Pastor commented that she followed up with a client who had said they might need her services in the future, letting them know her availability over Christmas, in case the project was going forward (the client replied, to discuss a project!). Sending out your holiday availability is a great excuse to contact pretty much any client.
• If you’re a beginner, it’s also a great time to look for work. Why? Because everyone else is taking time off. Over the years, I’ve talked to several translators who either launched or expanded their businesses by being available during the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Particularly if you work with agencies, it’s a great idea to let them know that you’ll be working over the holidays, and it’s a good time to look for work in places where you might not ordinarily look (i.e. job boards). Clients are often more amenable to taking a chance on a new person when all of their regular freelancers are busy!