Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Freelancing


Corinne McKay

Handling summer as a freelancing parent

Here in Colorado, school has been out for a couple of weeks. Elsewhere in the U.S., summer vacation is fast approaching. If you’re a freelancing mom or dad, it’s both the best of times and the worst of times! Each morning in the summer, I wake up and have a little gratitude moment: I’m grateful for a job that is so flexible; I’m grateful for a husband who supports both my work and my parenting; I’m grateful for a child who enjoys spending time with me; I’m grateful that I have a wonderful group of friends with kids of similar ages; I’m grateful that I enjoy what I do for work. On the flip side, if it’s hard to fit a semi-full-time job into the regular school schedule, it’s really hard to fit a semi-full-time job into the summer, no-school schedule. What’s a freelancing mom or dad to do?

As I see it, there are a few basic options: pay for child care in the form of a babysitter or summer camp, try to work while your kids are at home with you, work less or take the summer off, trade or barter child care or find a source of free child care, or patch together some combination of these strategies. As with all things parenting-related, I think that the ideal solution depends on how much you need or want to work, how many kids you have and how you get along with them, what financial resources you have available and how your spouse or partner (if you have one) can pitch in.

Here at the world headquarters of Thoughts on Translation, we tend to use the patchwork strategy and so far it has worked out well. Out of a 10 week summer break, we’ll be away for 3 weeks, my daughter will go to half-day or full-day camp for 5 weeks and we’ll have 2 free weeks at home. I feel that this gives me a good balance of uninterrupted work time and extra time to spend with my daughter and our friends, but I can also see that I’ll be working at night a lot more than I normally do. In addition, I think that the patchwork strategy works best if you only have one child. For example, the total tab for our 5 weeks of day camp was $1,500. Not bad as a percentage of my income, but if you are enrolling 2+ kids, the enrollment fees start to add up.

In mulling over how to plan our summer, here are a few creative solutions that I came up with; feel free to add your own!

  • Enlist your kids in the planning. This summer my daughter wanted more unstructured time, so we struck a deal that when she’s not at camp, she will read or listen to an audio book for at least an hour a day while I’m working.
  • Steal an hour here and an hour there. If your kids sleep later in the summer, get up as early as possible and work then. Maybe there’s an hour between when your spouse gets home and when you eat dinner; maybe you can get a netbook or small laptop and take it to the pool, park, playdates, etc. I have an Asus Eee netbook and I make a habit of always having it with me in the summer in case I get some unexpected work time.
  • Get your spouse on board. Maybe your spouse can arrive early at work and then leave early, so that you can have some extra work time in the afternoons.
  • Barter child care. You’re not the only one in the freelancing parent boat; maybe you could even form a child care co-op with other freelancing moms and dads. Maybe you have a friend who’s a stay at home mom or dad and wouldn’t mind watching your child (either for pay or as a trade or favor) some of the time.
  • Use a less expensive babysitter while you work at home. For example, we know several neighborhood middle-schoolers who will babysit for $3-$5 per hour while a parent is home. This is a significant savings over the $10-$15 per hour that “full-fledged” babysitters in our area charge.

When my daughter was really little, a wise older woman in the supermarket line said to me, “When they’re that age, the days are long and the years are short.” I find that in the summer, that advice is still true; the days often go slowly, but when school starts I’m always amazed at how fast summer vacation went. So, the last piece of advice for freelancing moms and dads with a long, hot summer ahead? Enjoy it!!


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

A freelance best practices checklist

I’ll be honest; I love self-evaluation tools. When I presented a seminar on “Beyond the Basics of Freelancing” for the Northern California Translators Association last summer, I decided to create a self-evaluation tool for the attendees and we also used this checklist at a meeting of the Colorado Translators Association. People seemed to find this tool useful and helpful, so I decided to post it here as well; of course some of the associations (ATA, CTA, etc.) don’t apply if you don’t live in the US or Colorado, so feel free to substitute a professional association of your choice.  The list includes some best practices and some indicators of freelance success; feel free to contribute your own suggestions too!

_____ I have a marketing plan for my freelance business
_____ I am satisfied with my income as compared with how much I work
_____ My business comes mostly from repeat clients
_____ I have three or more regular clients
_____ I keep my rates by the phone/computer
_____ I always have an updated version of my resume ready to send out
_____ I usually have as much work as I want
_____ I ask my clients for feedback on my translations
_____ I ask to see the edited versions of my translations
_____ I track my income on an ongoing basis
_____ I proofread a hard copy of my translations before submitting them
_____ I have a profile on LinkedIn or a similar website
_____ I regularly update my profiles on the CTA, ATA etc. websites
_____ I participate in online discussion groups such as the CTA listserve, ATA division listserves, ProZ forums, etc.
_____ I write articles for trade publications such as the ATA Chronicle, Multilingual or local newsletters
_____ I have a website and/or a blog
_____ I gather objective data about translation rates by reading the ATA Compensation Survey, talking to colleagues about their rates, etc.
_____ I calculate my hourly rate for different types of translation assignments
_____ I read the local, national and/or international business news
_____ I network and/or market myself in industries related to my specialization(s)
_____ I actively try to improve my target language writing skills
_____ I actively try to improve my knowledge of terminology in my specialization(s)
_____ I do pro bono translations
_____ I offer additional services other than translation, such as editing, proofreading, interpreting, voiceover, transcription, teaching, copywriting, etc.
_____ I ask for my name to be included on my translations whenever possible
_____ When I am too busy to take on a project, I offer the client a referral to another translator
_____ I accept a variety of payment methods such as credit cards, wire transfers, foreign currency checks, etc.
_____ I continue marketing even when I have a lot of work
_____ I regularly keep in touch with clients I haven’t heard from in a while
_____ I send tokens of appreciation (card, gift, etc) to clients and colleagues
_____ I ask clients for testimonials to put on my website, brochure, etc.


Corinne McKay

Translating official documents

Over the years, I’ve observed that many translators are somewhere between lukewarm and downright scornful of translating individual clients’ official documents: birth certificates, educational transcripts, diplomas, drivers’ licenses, you get the picture. I think that a lot of experienced translators view this as “beginner’s work” or not worth their time, so they take it off their range of services. Official documents are not a huge component of my freelance business, but they do total a few thousand dollars of income every year for me and the work is painless and gratifying. Here are a few reasons I think it’s worth including official documents  in your range of services, and a few tips on how to do it successfully.

Translating official documents is appealing because:

  • It’s lucrative. Admittedly, translating birth certificates is not a lot of things: it’s not creative, it doesn’t cry out for stylistic greatness… but it can pay up to a dollar a word and nearly always pays at least 50 cents a word because the standard billing unit is per page. In addition, official documents are a market that agencies really don’t want because the size of the projects does not justify their overhead, so freelancers are most individual clients’ best option.
  • It’s gratifying. People who are applying for green cards, graduate school, marriage licenses etc. are really, really grateful to find someone who is experienced and professional to work on their documents.
  • It’s easy to schedule. When you’re translating a driver’s license, it’s not as if you’re juggling other commitments  in order to fit in 10,000 words. Most official document translations take less than an hour to complete, so they’re easy to schedule.
  • The clients pay in advance, so you have no follow-up or collections hassles. I require all individual clients to pay in advance by PayPal or by check, so that I do not have to deal with any after-the-fact invoicing.

    • And a few tips for setting your official document translations up for success:

  • Set a per-page fee and a notarized certification fee; it makes your life and your clients’ lives easier. Because of the time it takes to format official documents (especially diplomas and any kind of official certificate), I think that the per-page rate is important. In addition, if you get a lot of inquiries from people who want quotes, it can be helpful to put up a web page (here is mine) with your standard rates, turnaround time and procedures.
  • Require advance payment. I cannot stress this enough; you do not want to be chasing after someone for $50, and most official document projects are small enough that your clients should not object to paying in advance. I know that a lot of people complain about PayPal, but I really like it. You receive your money immediately, any difficulties with the actual payment process are between your client and PayPal, and you can use PayPal’s free invoicing tool to set up an invoice template that looks professional and does all of the calculations for you.
  • Use a screenshot or graphics program to enhance your translations. Many official documents include stamps, university logos, seals, etc. If you use a screenshot or image manipulation program, you can copy these over onto your translation for a truly official-looking translation.
  • Find a free or low-cost notary. My bank provides free notary services to anyone who has accounts there, so my fee for the notarized certification simply reflects the time it takes to go obtain the certification.

    • In closing, I also think that there are a lot of opportunities to market your official document translation services. International credentials evaluation services, consulates, language schools, international exchange programs and other similar organizations could probably use your services. Thoughts?


Corinne McKay

Wrapping up 2009

Whether you look back on 2009 as an annus horribilis or a welcome change from the status quo, it’s time to take stock of the past year and move on.

The nature of 2009 depends on who you ask; I’ve spoken with freelancers who say they’ve never been busier, freelancers who say that their income is down 25% or more and they’re thinking about another career and freelancers who say that life is pretty much the same as before the economic sky fell. Paula Dieli’s blog Essential Project Management recently featured an interesting interview with the President of LUZ, Inc., who said that although his company’s revenue was up about 10% this year, their busiest and slowest times of the year were the opposite of previous years.

This assessment mirrors my experience in 2009; although I worked about 25% less (by choice, since my husband took an in-house job and I wanted to spend more time with my daughter), I earned about 5% more than in 2008, so obviously something went right. At the same time, my work flow was, for lack of a better term, weird. Some of my regular clients dropped off the map almost entirely or started using cheaper translators, but I gained a fair number of new direct clients who had large and well-paying projects. In addition, July and August were two of my busiest months, whereas Augusts past have been almost completely devoid of major projects.

I’m not really one for predictions, but here are a few of my observations about 2009 and what we might see in 2010:

  • Especially for translators who work with direct clients, I think that a combination of the weak dollar and businesses looking for clients overseas is likely to continue feeding demand in our industry. With the euro hovering between 1.4 and 1.5 US dollars, US-based freelancers are an attractive option for European companies, and many US companies are looking abroad for clients in countries where the economic situation is less dire.
  • The necessity for translators to opt in or out of the low-margin, volume-driven market is becoming more pressing. It seems (and again, this is just my unscientific observation) that in the world of large agencies, 4,000-5,000 words per day, mass e-mails to multiple potential translators and ever-decreasing rates are becoming the norm. At the same time, I personally have encountered very little downward rate pressure from my direct clients, and they continue to cope with my turtlish 2,000 words per day. In this case I think that you can’t really fight the trend; you just have to choose whether you’re going to try to compete in the volume-driven market or not.
  • Along those lines, I think that we may also see some shifts in the CAT tool situation. The various issues surrounding Trados Studio 2009 and just the fact that it’s so different from the older versions of Trados may prompt many freelancers to look at other options. I have never owned Trados (preferring OmegaT and Wordfast), but if I were faced with the possibility of paying 795 euros for Trados Studio and having to essentially learn the program from scratch, I think I would look at some other possibilities. And don’t forget that you can compare a whole bunch of translation tools, without the marketing spiels, at Translators Training (I don’t have an affiliate deal with them, I just think it’s a useful site).

    • And with that, all the best for a healthy and lucrative 2010! Feel free to add your wrapup comments/predictions/gripes in the comments!