Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Freelancing


Corinne McKay

Shoshin

This post has either nothing or everything to do with translation, depending on how you look at it! Here goes: I’ve been thinking a lot about Shosin, the Zen Buddhist concept most commonly translated as “Beginner’s Mind.” It’s most commonly described as an attitude of openness and lack of cynicism about experiences, or as the ability to see a familiar experience from the perspective of a beginner. At the same time, I had been looking for a goal to work toward for my upcoming 40th birthday. Long and expensive story short, I decided to combine my interest in teaching and my passion for telemark (free-heel) skiing and take a season-long ski instructor training course. The course is in progress right now, and I’ve definitely gleaned a few translation-related observations from it.

  • All of us should be more patient with beginning translators who don’t know anything about translation or the industry but are eager to learn. Being an enthusiastic beginner is really, really hard. It’s much harder than being an apathetic beginner. An apathetic beginner doesn’t really care about excelling, while an enthusiastic beginner does. During the run-up to my ski course, I had a thousand and one dumb questions: do I bring my own lunch or are we buying? do I need a notebook that fits in my coat pocket? are we skiing right away or is the first day in the classroom? and on and on. Enthusiastic beginners ask lots of questions that seem, dare I say it, stupid to experienced professionals, but we need to be more willing to answer these questions without being condescending.
  • I love translation overall, but there are also things about it that don’t thrill me all the time. My intent with this ski instructor idea has never been to quit translating. I love translating too much and I probably couldn’t afford to ski full time even if I wanted to! However, this  process has shown me that in some ways, sitting at a computer for every moment of my work day is draining in a way that doing something active and social for 8 hours is not. This has made me think about incorporating more social stimulation and non-computer time into my translation work.
  • Being forced into a challenging situation is an outstanding way to grow. After 8 years of translating in my current specializations, I feel pretty confident about my abilities nearly all the time; I can’t say (and this is largely my own fault) that I feel stretched, pushed or out of my comfort zone on a typical work day. But the first time my ski instructor took our group to a really steep tree-covered slope and said “see you at the bottom,” I was terrified and convinced that I would have to be helicoptered out, or that I would be woefully inadequate compared to the rest of the class. This was a great exercise in positive self-talk rather than the negative self-talk that we freelancers engage in so often. I had to consciously tell myself “You can do this. You have practiced these maneuvers lots of times. Just take it slowly and don’t forget to breathe!” And at the bottom (Yes! I didn’t have to be helicoptered out!), I was ecstatic. I was intimidated,  but I did OK because I trusted that I had built up a foundation of skills to get down that slope in one piece. That made me realize that I need to deliberately take on some translation work that is more of a stretch and a challenge: not a “get me out of here on a helicopter” challenge, but a “you are ready for this” challenge.
  • Even experts have a lot more to learn. This is true of skiing and it’s true of translation. My ski instructor is, to put it mildly, an amazing skier to watch. But when we looked at the video footage of ourselves skiing, he saw just as much room for improvement in his skiing as in the students’. This is part of the thrill of translation too; you can always become a better writer or learn more about your subject areas or read the translations of people who are more skilled than you are, and that’s a very inspirational thing.

This whole experience has let me look at our industry from (more of) a “Beginner’s Mind” perspective. Any other readers taking on some new and terrifying challenges??


Corinne McKay

Putting 40 cents a word in context

Well, it seems that something about money and income always hits people’s urge to discuss! At 65 comments and counting, “How much do freelance translators earn? Is it enough?” is far and away the most-discussed post in three years of Thoughts on Translation and everyone’s comments have provided me with lots of food for more posts. Here’s one: that elusive 40+ cents per word, which I would consider the top of the freelance translation market. I know at least two thriving freelance who’ve told me they charge that much, plus several more translators who I suspect/assume charge that much, and Chris Durban noted in her comment that her base rates are between 40 and 50 euro cents per word. I should say for the purposes of this post that I don’t earn 40 cents a word (for reasons I’ll go into…). I do publish my rates, and on official document translations I do sometimes make up to a dollar a word when the project is priced per page.

First, let’s give this number some context. If you produce, let’s say 500 finished words an hour, 40 cents a word translates (so to speak) into $200 an hour. No question, that’s good money. However, even here in Colorado (where professional services generally cost a lot less than in New York, LA, Chicago, etc.), my accountant makes $200 an hour and my business attorney makes $250. The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the growing contingent of attorneys who charge over $1,000 an hour (yes, that’s three zeros after the one). The article concludes with a prediction that within five to seven years, the gold standard for attorneys’ fees will be $2,000 an hour. So I think that part of the high rates issue is that if you want to charge 40 cents a word, you have to position yourself as a professional service provider on the level of an attorney, accountant, business strategy consultant etc. Realistically, most translators either cannot or are not willing to do that. Note that the WSJ article includes some excellent advice from an attorney who charges $1,100 an hour: “Some clients do focus on the hourly rate, but in the end what really matters is their total cost and whether they got a fair price.” Good tip for any professional service provider!

Second, I would hazard a guess that many translators who charge very high rates work very slowly, or at least more slowly than translators who charge 10 cents a word. At 10 cents a word, you don’t have the luxury of waiting for inspiration: you churn it out and send it in. At 40 cents per word, you have more of that luxury, and your clients also expect much more from your work. So maybe you produce 300, even 200 finished words an hour.

Third, as luscious as 40 cents a word might look, there are some reasons you might not want to charge that much:

  • As Chris and others commented in relation to my previous post, clients who pay 40-50 cents per word expect you to have their backs, all the time and with no exceptions. You cannot get huffy when there’s a problem with your translation. You cannot shut off your phone and go hiking when that client is having a business meltdown. You must be cheerful, helpful and positive all the time. You must follow the news in that client’s industry and spend your own money to go to their industry conferences whether or not they have a job in the pipeline for you. You must get out of your sweats and put on a suit and take that client to lunch a few times a year, shut up about yourself and invite them to talk about themselves. You must either take very short vacations or have someone you really, really trust who will fill in when you go away for more than a couple of days. In short, that $200 per hour is not going to come in exchange for only a modicum of effort on your part. And not to rant, but if some translators will not even spend $25 on business cards that don’t have the “Get your free business cards!” text on the back, they are not going to do what’s required to find and retain $200 an hour clients.
  • Some specializations just don’t pay that much (or at least this is what I tell myself!). For example, my preferred specialization is international development. I translate a lot of legal documents and I enjoy that work, but development is my real passion. And realistically, even high-level direct clients in those specializations probably do not have the budget to pay 40-50 cents a word on a regular basis. Realistically, even at the rates I charge now, I am probably paid more than a lot of the in-house employees at the companies I work for. However I love the work, and I love translating documents that are, for lack of a less hackneyed way to put it, meaningful. So there’s that aspect too.

None of this is to say that a) high income is a bad thing or b) 40-50 cents a word isn’t worth striving for. Mostly, I wanted to raise the possibility that 40-50 cents a word is doable; it’s out there if you want it! Readers, any thoughts?


Corinne McKay

How much do freelance translators earn? Is it enough?

Beginning freelance translators often want to know (understandably) how much they can expect to earn in our industry. Experienced freelance translators often want to know (understandably) whether they are earning enough for the effort they put into their businesses. So, what do freelance translators earn?

  • The American Translators Association does a compensation survey every few years: you can purchase the entire report here or read the executive summary for free. The dates here are a little confusing: the data tables in the summary say that they are from 2006, the file itself is named 2007 and the executive summary appeared in the ATA Chronicle in February 2008. According to this survey, the average full-time freelancer makes a little over $60,000; but US-based respondents reported a large income disparity according to whether or not they are ATA-certified (average income of $72,000 for certified translators and $53,000 for non-certified).
  • The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has some information too, and it’s even more disparate. The BLS reports that in May 2008, the average salary for translators and interpreters was about $38,000 (yikes), with the highest 10 percent earning over $69,000 and the average federal government language specialist earning an average of $79,000.
  • PayScale.com has some snapshot info about translators and interpreters, and it’s also broken down by years of experience.

I think that the issue with most of these surveys is that they are not specific enough to individual situations. For example, is someone who works 35 hours a week and takes 6 weeks of vacation full time or part time? Is someone who works at a client’s office 2 days a week and works for freelance clients 3 days a week self-employed or in-house? Should translation volume be taken into account? If you earned $130,000 last year but you worked 70 hours a week with no vacation, should your income be pro rated to a 40 hour work week with 4 weeks off? You get the picture!

Anecdotally, I think that most of the above-referenced surveys are slanted toward the low end of the market. Back in 2008, I wrote a blog post on Secrets of Six-Figure Translators, and since then I’ve talked to many more freelancers who’ve either stated or conveyed that they earn over $100,000 a year. I think that if you’re very good at what you do and you market yourself fairly assertively, there is enough work out there to earn at least $75,000 a year as a freelance translator even if you work with a mix of agencies and direct clients. I’d say that at this point, all of the translators I know who work exclusively with direct clients earn at least $100,000 a year.

But the real question when it comes to income is: is it enough? The “is it enough” question involves a lot of subjective factors, because it ties into the subsidiary question of whether you’d be doing better if you had a different job. Here’s where the subjectivity comes in. For example in my case:

  • I’m reasonably happy with my income as compared to how much I work. I earn more than the ATA average and my sense is that I work less (maybe even a lot less) than most freelancers do, partly because of my family and non-work commitments and partly because I think I’m more productive at 30ish hours per week. However when I look at how the benefits of my husband’s in-house job (company-funded retirement plan, insurance, paid vacation, and so on) add up, it’s a reality check. If I deduct 15.3% self-employment tax (which I only pay on about half my income since I have an S-Corp), 4-6 weeks unpaid vacation and my self-funded retirement plan from what I make, the bottom line is decidedly different.
  • But, then there are the subjective factors. I love where we live, and there are very, very few in-house jobs in our area for what I do. The only reasonable option, working for a government agency, would involve driving over an hour each way and a relatively inflexible schedule. It’s very important to me to have a work schedule that meshes with my daughter’s school schedule at least until she is old enough to be home alone. Realistically, if I wanted an in-house job that was close to my house and that would offer a similar level of flexibility to freelancing, I would probably be looking at earning less than half what I make now.

“Enough” also depends on where and how you live. $75,000 sounds like a decent chunk of money, but if you are not incorporated and thus pay self-employment tax on that entire amount, live in a nice apartment in a major city, have a car loan or student loan or credit card payment and fund your own health insurance and retirement, that amount goes pretty quickly. On the other hand if you live in a fairly rural area, are debt-free or close to it and practice freelance frugality, you could probably be saving 50% of your after-tax income if you gross $75,000 or more.

Readers, over to you…thoughts on the income issue?


Corinne McKay

Reader question: LinkedIn strategies

Recently I’ve received several questions from readers about connecting with people on LinkedIn. Most of the questions are something like this: “I receive connection requests from people I don’t know at all, with no explanation of who they are or how I might know them. Is it rude/unwise to just ignore these?” This brings up the issue of one’s personal LinkedIn strategy, so I think it’s worth exploring.

I don’t invest an enormous amount of time on LinkedIn, but I do think that for purposes of findability, every freelancer should have a profile on LinkedIn or a similar site. These sites rank very highly on search engines, so if clients are scouring the Internet for a translator, there’s a good chance that they will come across your LinkedIn profile. In addition, I use LinkedIn as a virtual business card file; it saves me from keeping track of the e-mail addresses of all of my business contacts. I also belong to several LinkedIn groups; I lurk more than I participate, but I still find them valuable.

People seem to have a variety of feelings about LinkedIn connections, ranging from:

  • only wanting to connect with people who they know personally and work with, resulting in a potentially small but very high-quality network
  • being willing to connect with new people, if those people provide an explanation of why they want to connect
  • actively connecting with anyone, also known as the LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) strategy

I can see rationales for all of these strategies, but in general I think I take the second option most often. One reason I’m an active social media user is that my local client base is very small. Colorado is not as international business-oriented as the coastal states in the U.S., and the major industries here (mining, agriculture, renewable energy) are not areas in which I translate. So, I have to broaden my horizons if I want to keep finding new clients. For that reason, I’ve done some active cold-contacting on LinkedIn, mostly in the form of sending contact requests to people who are in some of the same LinkedIn Groups I’m in (with a free account, you cannot cold-contact just anyone on LinkedIn). I’ve explained that I’m a US-based French to English translator specializing in law, international development and corporate communications and that I’m interested in expanding my contacts in that person’s country/industry. In general I’ve found people to be very receptive to these types of contacts. At the same time, I am reluctant to accept contact requests from people whose names I don’t recognize, and who provide no explanation beyond the pro forma “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” message.

Readers, any thoughts on your LinkedIn strategy and your rationale for it?


Corinne McKay

Happy 2011: Are bad habits a form of self-protection?

Happy 2011 to everyone out there in the translation blogosphere!

To start the year off, here’s a very interesting interview I came across: sports writer Bill Simmons interviewing New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell. Both Simmons and Gladwell draw some interesting parallels between sports and the rest of life, but my favorite is Gladwell’s take on why certain people (in this case athletes, but it could be translators) “don’t work hard when it’s in their best interest to do so.” Gladwell posits, and I’d agree, that failure caused by poor preparation is a way to insulate oneself from a more awful possibility: failure caused by a lack of ability. Gladwell applies this theory to golfers Tiger Woods (an obsessive preparer on the golf course, whatever his vices off the course!) and Phil MIckelson (who states that he didn’t pick up a golf club for 5 weeks before a major tournament), saying “…it’s really risky to work hard, because then if you fail you can no longer say that you failed because you didn’t work hard. It’s a form of self-protection. I swear that’s why Mickelson has that almost absurdly calm demeanor. If he loses, he can always say: Well, I could have practiced more, and maybe next year I will and I’ll win then. When Tiger loses, what does he tell himself? He worked as hard as he possibly could. He prepared like no one else in the game and he still lost. That has to be devastating…”

Let’s apply this to the business of freelance translation. Hopefully you achieved some or even most of your goals for 2010. But as for the goals you didn’t achieve, did you fail because you didn’t follow through or did you fail because you followed through and still fell short of the target? I’m with Gladwell on this one; it’s a lot easier to tell yourself that you didn’t meet your income goal because you didn’t have time to do your marketing than it is to accept that you marketed and marketed and things didn’t pan out. Therefore, it’s a lot safer not to do the marketing so that you have that excuse in your back pocket.

So here’s a resolution for 2011: whatever your business-related goals are, give yourself permission to really, really try to meet them. Rather than protecting yourself with the usual “not enough time,” “too much else going on” types of excuses (I’m as guilty of these as the next translator!), give those goals your best, most honest and most thorough effort. Accept that you might not reach them, but try to drop the self-protecting excuses!