Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Freelancing


Corinne McKay

Diversifying your income stream

With the economy not really knowing what it’s doing this year, it’s a good time to look at your income stream: what’s up, what’s down, and how can you do more of the work that’s up? In my case, my work from U.S.-based agencies is markedly down, work from European clients (both direct clients and agencies) is holding steady and work related to translator training (such as my book and course) is way, way up.

Happily, most successful translators are good candidates for branching out beyond translation. If you’re running a successful freelance business, chances are that in addition to being fluent in at least two languages, you’re a good or excellent writer in your target language and you’re reasonably tech-savvy. All of these are good starting points for a sideline venture.

There’s a plethora of information on the web about how to create a spinoff business and make money from it. Many of these sites have useful tips on things that translators could potentially do, such as writing articles online and getting paid for it. The barometer that I always use is whether the site’s author gives actual data about their earnings so that you can judge whether the sideline business in question is a good possibility for you. For example, I  enjoy reading The Smart Passive Income Blog, because the author gives monthly reports about his income and what he did to earn it. For example, I deduced from reading this blog that writing articles on eHow, a possibility that I once considered as a remarketing tool for translation-related articles I’ve already written, is actually not a great option.  In addition, although the author of Smart Passive Income makes a lot of money from Google AdSense, I personally find ads on blogs to be pretty off-putting. By contrast, Smart Passive Income has a lot of great information about how to write and market an e-book, which I think could be useful to many translators.

Following are some ideas about diverse revenue streams for translators, feel free to contribute your own!

  • Write. This is probably the most obvious fit for many translators who are already good writers. Subject-specific glossaries and application-specific software guides offer fairly endless possibilities for writing. Also, I’ve seen from personal experience that niche business guides (how about something on marketing to direct clients?) can do very well. You can either create a simple PDF of your document and sell it on your website or use a self-publishing service such as Lulu (I use and enjoy Lulu but I don’t have any sort of affiliate deal with them) to create an e-book or traditional book.
  • Teach. You could teach classes at an established institution, maybe a course on how to run a successful freelance business via your local adult education program? Or you could offer courses on your own; how about something related to a translation-related tool that you use? With modern web-based tools, it’s not hard to set up a webinar, e-course, conference call, etc.
  • Do tech work for other translators. Think of a tech task that you’re proficient at and which is either labor-intensive/highly annoying or requires expensive software that most people don’t have. Alignment and PDF conversion are two tasks that spring to mind. I get a lot of PDFs to translate, but I’ve so far resisted purchasing a good conversion tool such as Abbyy FineReader because of the cost; I would definitely be willing to hire someone to do this task for me when it involves non-confidential documents.

In addition, why not expand these ideas to projects that aren’t translation-related? In the course of reading books with my elementary school-aged daughter, I’ve gotten interested in writing some historical fiction for young people and using the same publishing and marketing tools that I currently use for my book about how to become a translator. Any other ideas out there?


Corinne McKay

Why am I doing this again?

Earlier this week, Get Rich Slowly had a great post on finding the balance between time and money. The author (and site owner, J.D.) relates the story of an old friend of his who radically changed his priorities in life after the death of his wife and infant daughter, and J.D. then goes on to apply this “time or money” analysis to his own rapidly expanding freelance business.

This post made me realize that one of the most important exercises in planning your freelance translation business is to firmly establish why exactly you’re doing this; what’s making you so eager to give up a steady paycheck (at least when the economy is strong!), benefits, paid vacation and an office door that closes at the end of the day? The answers to that question will be as varied as we translators are; some of us want to work extra-long hours, earn as much as possible and retire early. Some of us are heavily involved in personal projects that don’t fit well with an office schedule. Many of us want more time, or at least flexible time, to devote to our families and friends. Others want to live in a rural or remote area where in-house jobs for translators simply don’t exist. The important thing is to have your eye on your prize, and to remind yourself to get back on track when you lose sight of that goal.

My own “lightbulb moment” came when I was in the self-checkout line at the grocery store (because isn’t that where all life-changing realizations occur?) when my daughter was a few months old. At that point I was still thinking that I would translate very part time until my daughter was about a year old, at which point I would go back to teaching full time. An older woman in line behind me struck up a conversation and while she was cooing over my daughter, said “You know, I wish that when I was your age, someone had told me that everything else in life will wait for you, but your kids won’t. Everything else in life will still be there when your kids don’t need you anymore, but they’ll be off on their own.” Not that my family is my only reason for freelancing, because other issues (like living in an area where in-house jobs in my language combination are few to nonexistent) enter into it too. But many times since that day, I’ve wished I could thank that chatty woman in the supermarket line for helping me figure out my priorities. So, why do you do this?


Corinne McKay

Some lessons from the BusinessWeek top 50

For reasons unknown to me, I suddenly started receiving a subscription to BusinessWeek (my guess is that this is related to buying a Newsweek subscription…anyway!) and although I find the quality of their articles a bit uneven, some of them have great tips for businesspeople, even if the business operates out of your living room. This week’s issue highlights “The 50 Best Performers,” including their insights on surviving the recession. Following are a few tips that I gleaned, which I think apply to freelance translators as well:

  • Sell an essential product. Market leader Colgate-Palmolive points out that of the many things consumers have given up in the bad economy, “Brushing their teeth is not one of them.” In general, I think that businesses view translation services as fairly essential; while they might have an unpaid intern write their web copy, it’s unlikely that they either can or would trust the mail clerk with translating documents for a lawsuit. However, within our industry, I think it’s important to concentrate your marketing efforts on industries that have to translate (for example law firms, patent firms, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, companies that produce multilingual annual reports, etc.) rather than those that choose to translate (for example hotels, luxury goods companies, etc.).
  • DIY and update. Steel giant Nucor hasn’t laid off a single employee, despite a decrease in business. One of its key strategies is having employees do tasks that either used to be done by contractors (mow the lawns, clean the bathrooms) or get ahead on projects that are often put on the back burner (rewriting safety manuals, doing preventive maintenance). Now is a great time to look at the work that you either outsource or put off; think about taking a web design course so that you can create or update an excellent website to promote your translation services, or take webinars to brush up your translation-related software skills.
  • Hold on to the clients you’ve got. I’m usually the first one to advocate marketing as a business development tool, but this is a great point; it’s generally cheaper to maintain an existing client than it is to find a new one. IT outsourcer Cognizant Technology Solutions is now getting 90% of its business from repeat clients, thanks in part to its team of “relationship managers” who check in regularly with existing clients. So, be your own relationship manager; check in with your existing clients and ask them how business is going, is there anything you can do to better meet their needs, have they been happy with your recent work? My only beef with this point in general is that in my unscientific experience, it’s much easier to charge a new client a higher rate than it is to raise your rates with existing clients.
  • Set yourself up to be first off the blocks. Throughout this article, many companies conveyed that they’re making changes now so that they’re poised to strike when the economy rebounds. For some, this means expanding into new international markets (Avon in China, anyone?), for others, it means diversification (crane manufacturers buying kitchen equipment companies). Whatever the case, now is definitely the time to think about where you want your business to be in the year after the economy rebounds!


Corinne McKay

Some thoughts on feedback and the translation process

Sorry for the unannounced week of silence here at Thoughts on Translation; I went on vacation for a week and suddenly became violently allergic to using my laptop… but it seems that the bad reaction has now passed and Thoughts on Translation is back at the treadmill and ready to open up some new topics.

So, let’s talk about feedback and the translation process. One of the things I enjoy about working with direct clients is that I’m in control of the translation workflow, and I get direct feedback on my work from the person who I hire to do the editing. When I work for direct clients, I do the translation, then I send it to my editor, then I review her comments and if there are any that I have questions about, we talk about them together before preparing the final version of the document to send off to the client. However, the feedback flow normally ends there; a client will sometimes offer a sound bite assessment of a translation — “it was great, just what we needed” or “could you make the tone a little more casual?” or something along those lines, but my sense is that very few translators received detailed feedback from their clients.

When one works with a translation agency, things often go a little differently. Although it’s not a good practice, there are some agencies that don’t proofread the translations they receive at all, they simply forward them to the end client and assume that the translator has done an excellent job. Obviously everyone’s business model is different, but I decline to work with agencies that do this, simply because I think that every translation needs to be seen by at least two sets of eyes, and at agency rates I cannot afford to hire a second translator to edit my translations before I submit them. A second category of agencies are those that have their translations proofread by someone who reads the target language but may or may not read the source language. Finally, there are some high-quality agencies that have their translations reviewed by a second translator working in the same language combination as the person who did the translation; very quality-conscious agencies might even have these two people collaborate, the way my editor and I do when we work with direct clients. In all cases, agencies may or may not send the translator any feedback that they get from the end client.

These various feedback models raise a few questions. How can translators improve their work if they don’t get detailed feedback on it? How can clients provide feedback without getting into a “your word against mine” situation with their freelancers? Who should be the ultimate authority when it comes to a choice of words? Should agencies be obligated to provide the translator with the final version of their document as it was sent to the end client?

This topic sprang to my mind because I’ve recently come across some sticky issues involving feedback. One involved a translator whose work was butchered by an editor before being sent to the end client who then complained about the quality of the translation, and one involved my own unpleasant experience with an agency that assured me my work would be edited by a second French>English translator and then didn’t follow through. I agree that the QA and feedback process has its issues: QA and feedback take a lot of time; if you’re working on 3,000 words due tomorrow, the collegial back and forth with your editor probably takes time that you don’t have; in addition I think that agencies are simply not in the business of providing continuing education to translators, and they’re afraid that if a translator receives a poor review of his/her work, it will lead to conflict. However, lack of feedback is also a problem because it deprives translators of the opportunity to improve their work, and leaves translators wondering what happened if they’re suddenly dropped by a regular client.

Personally, I firmly believe that the best process is for a translator and an editor to work together, with the editor’s suggested changes going back to the translator. In addition, I’m fortunate to have gotten to the point in my business volume that I can ask about an agency’s QA and feedback process and decline to work for them if they don’t meet what I consider an appropriate standard. However, I’m not so sure about the best model when there isn’t time for this three-step process to happen. Anyone have feedback stories to share, or suggestions to offer?


Corinne McKay

Dealing with job stress

As job stress goes, translators seem to fall somewhere between anesthesiologists and air traffic controllers (most stressed-out) and florists and historians (least stressed-out). Still, dealing with job stress is a big issue because it has a dramatic effect on both your enjoyment of your job and on your longevity in the profession; and the longer you keep your translation business running, the more efficient you get at your work and the more money you earn (hopefully!). So, what are some of your best tips for dealing with job stress? A few of mine are:

  • Have confidence in the quality of your work. A few years ago, I decided to start proofreading a hard copy of every document I translated. Interestingly enough, although this step takes time, it has actually decreased my level of job stress because I am more confident that I haven’t skipped a section of the source text or grossly mis-translated something.
  • Accept that you’re going to make mistakes. This sounds like the antithesis of point #1, but it’s not. A certain amount of perfectionism is an asset to a freelance translator, but it’s also important to own up to your failures. When a disgruntled client has a point about an error in your work, apologize, offer to make it right, and move on.
  • Minimize financial worries by living beneath your means. This is definitely a personal choice, but in this economy, I think it’s an important one. Spending less than what you earn frees you from taking on unpleasant work just because you need the money and reduces your incentive to produce huge volumes of work at low rates. The Thoughts on Translation household is an extreme example, as we have two incomes but live off one (and bank the other), but whatever your financial philosophy, spending *more* than you earn is a road to serious job stress.
  • Get out of your head. I really believe that knowledge workers who are at the computer for many hours a day need to unplug when work is over. In addition to getting your body moving, give your brain a little candy especially if the documents you work on are very dense. This can be hard; before I became a translator I was a lifelong voracious reader, and now I find that gardening manuals and cookbooks are about as much as I can handle after translating all day.
  • Set objective boundaries around your time. “I’m too busy to take that on” is a subjective statement; maybe you could just stay up later, or work faster, or work more efficiently. “For quality reasons, I translate no more than 2,000 words per day” is an objective statement, and gives you a policy to abide by, which is a lot less stressful than trying to decide if you can squeeze in just one more job.

    • Feel free to contribute your own thoughts on stress management as well!