Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Freelancing


Corinne McKay

Very part-time freelancing

Most beginning translators I talk to have similar goals for their nascent freelance businesses; they currently have a full-time job and they want to start freelancing part time, then gradually ramp up to full time freelancing as their work volume increases. Lately, I’ve come across a few beginning freelancers who have a different goal: they want to freelance very part time on a long-term basis. One of these individuals wants to freelance only in the summers (in combination with a teaching job), one wants to freelance only at night (in combination with being an at-home parent) and another wants to freelance only on the weekends. All of these people asked “is this possible?” and it would be interesting to get other translators’ takes on this too.

Here’s my take: I think that if you want to work on an “odd” schedule, you have to a) market to clients to whom this type of schedule would be an asset or a necessity and b) convince yourself that your unconventional schedule is a selling point, not a deficit. For example, it seems to me that many translation buyers (be they agencies or direct clients) struggle to find translators during the summer months, when many of their regulars are on vacation. Particularly in the month of August, when it can seem that every person who lives in or is originally from Europe is out on a beach chair somewhere, the translator pickings can be slim, which could open the door to a summer-only translator. However, I think that the challenge lies in reminding clients that you, the summer-only translator, exist between September and May so that come June, they’ll send you work. At a large agency, a significant portion of the project management staff could have turned over during this time, and even a small client will have handled reams of work during the winter months. So, I think that the summer-only translator has to keep up a steady flow of contact, even if he or she really only wants to work in June, July and August.

I think that people who work off-hours have it a little easier. For starters, these people can use time zones to their advantage and mount a “the end of your day is the beginning of mine” or “send me your documents on Friday afternoon and the translations will be in your in-box on Monday morning” marketing campaign. Translators who work off-hours might also do well, once they have some experience, to market themselves as “pinch hitters” for translators who work with direct clients. In my experience, translators are much more reluctant to turn down work from a regular direct client than from a regular agency client, because the direct client may find another option and stick with it. So, an off-hours translator could be a lifesaver when a translator needs some work done at the last minute; of course this involves a high degree of trust between the regular translator and the pinch hitter!

Any other ideas/experiences out there for translators who want to work while the rest of us are sleeping or playing?


Corinne McKay

Avoiding beginner's mistakes

Update to this post: Make sure to read the comments for more excellent tips from experienced translators!

Today is the first day of the winter session of the online course I teach for beginning translators. It’s an occasion that always prompts me to think of the first day I thought of myself as a translator, and what I did correctly and incorrectly during that stressful and exciting first year as a freelancer. I’ve been mulling over some of the best and worst decisions I made when I first started freelancing, and I hope that readers will feel free to add their own tips. Here I’m mainly including advice for people who are in their first year of freelancing, but some of these tips apply to experienced translators as well.

DO keep a record of all of your contacts. During the first year you’ll be doing a lot of marketing; at times during my first year, I was doing about 80% marketing and 20% translation. Trust me; a lot of this effort is wasted if you don’t have a good system for tracking who you’ve contacted, what the response was (if any) and how you followed up if there was a response. This could take the form of a computerized contact management system, a spreadsheet, or even a Rolodex-type file, but make sure you save this information.

DO NOT take on work that you know is wrong for you just because you need work. This is a mistake that I made several times during my beginner days. For example, at one point I let a client convince me to translate into French and then have my work proofed by a native speaker. This resulted in a lower hourly rate for me since I write very slowly in French, and also in a lower-quality end product than what the client would have received from a native French speaker. At the time I remember thinking “…well, if the client thinks it’s OK…” whereas now this is one of my non-negotiables no matter what the client says; I translate into English only.

DO ask prospective clients in your area for an informational interview. To give my beginner self some credit, this is one thing that I think I did well. I e-mailed a variety of prospective clients in the Boulder/Denver area and asked if I could come in to learn some more about their business and how I might, at some point, fit in. I think that this took the pressure off the prospective client because I wasn’t aggressively pumping them for work, and I also correctly theorized that I presented myself better in person than on paper. Of the five or so prospective clients I visited, I ended up getting work from three of them soon after.

DO NOT contact agency owners directly. Of the beginner mistakes I made, this one was probably the worst; I used the local translator’s association directory to find local agencies, then I phoned up the owners. Now I realize that although association directories and client websites are a great resource, wasting someone’s time is a very poor first impression. Always use the general contact information provided on a prospective client’s website, and avoid cold phone calls in nearly every situation.

DO ask for very specific instructions on your first few projects. Unless you’ve misrepresented your experience, most of your clients will realize that you’re a beginner and won’t mind doing a little hand-holding. So ask them: what do they mean by “reproduce the formatting exactly”? Should you do something special with handwritten text? What if something is illegible? What if there are abbreviations that you don’t understand?

DO NOT set your rates suspiciously low. I think that especially in a down economy, many beginning freelancers are tempted to set their rates markedly below the going rate for their languages. I still cringe at some of the rates I accepted when I was first starting out. In one sense, I think that offering attractive terms can help get your business of the ground; in another sense, I think that lowball rates attract bottom-feeding clients who are looking for high-quality work for minimum wage. Personally, I think it’s a better idea to sweeten your offer in other ways; maybe offering night or weekend work without a rush charge, or being available on holidays when other translators aren’t working.

DO set reasonable expectations for the growth and success of your business. Of all the advice I give beginners, I would tag this as the most important. I’ve been contacted many times by beginning translators who say that they’re “so discouraged” because they’ve sent out 25 applications in the last month and they still have no work. In my own case, I contacted over 400 prospective clients during my first year in business and it still took about 18 months until I was replacing the income from my previous full-time job. I think that for most people, it takes at least a year to get your business to the point where you are working more than you are looking for work; once you break through this point, you will hopefully have a freelance business that becomes like a regular job where you have a great deal of control over your schedule and income.

Please feel free to add your own advice to beginners too!


Corinne McKay

What do you want to accomplish this year?

Like Glenn over at Yndigo, I’m not a huge fan of New Year’s resolutions. Mostly, I think that most of what we resolve (to lose weight, exercise more, swear off the snooze button, etc.) falls into the category of “shoulds”: things we think we need to do even though we don’t really want to. It’s no surprise that most of these resolutions fail, because our hearts aren’t really in them.  I’m more in favor of focusing on the things we actually want to do, because I think it puts the effort needed to get there in a much more positive light. So, where do you want your freelance translation business to go in 2009? I’ll start, then you can chime in!

In 2009, I would really like to:

  • Avoid working for the sake of working. Be more discerning about the work that I take on. Turn down unappealing work and use that time to look for more appealing work. In general, spend more time translating things that I enjoy working on and less time translating things that just pay the bills.
  • Translate another book. Back in late 2006, I translated a dictionary of terms about Native Americans and I really looked forward to working on it every day. This project fell into my lap (a hand-me-down from a translator who had originally agreed to work on it) but I would like to actively seek out more projects like it.
  • Release a second edition of my book on how to become a freelance translator. Alas, this is one of those goals that was on the “absolute must” list for 2008, and here it is again! This year I have reason to believe that it will actually happen.
  • Present something French-related at the ATA conference. I’ve presented sessions on open source software, freelancing, blogging and other topics, but never anything related to my actual translation work. This is the year, and session proposals are due in March. I have to get moving on this one soon!

    • One thing I’ve learned about major goals is that it’s very helpful (I’d even say crucial) to break the work down into small increments. When I published the first edition of my book back in 2006, I waited and waited for a big chunk of free time to come along, and of course that never happened. Finally I decided that I would work on the manuscript every day, even if I only wrote one sentence. Some days I really did write only that one sentence, but other days I had a burst of energy or inspiration and wrote eight or ten pages at a sitting. So, I think it’s important to set really small daily goals; contacting 100 new prospective clients seems daunting, but you could do one a day, right? If you did that every work day, you’d be done by May. Writing a 200-page book sounds pretty impossible, but if you wrote one page a day, your book would be in print by this time next year. Wouldn’t that be great!

    And now, over to you! What goals are you looking forward to reaching in 2009?


Corinne McKay

Perspectives on 2009

Thoughts on Translation is back from some computer-free vacation time  (the skiing was fantastic, thanks for asking!) and looking forward to the possibilities that the new year always offers. It’s interesting to read and hear what other translators have to say about the current economic climate and its effect, if any, on our work.

Just before the holidays, the Colorado Translators Association had a happy hour at which we talked about this topic. The answers really varied; a few people said that their work has been slower, a few said that major clients have asked them to cut their rates, a few said that they made more money during the fourth quarter of 2008 than during the fourth quarter of 2007, you get the picture.

Interestingly enough, my own workflow has been a bit bizarre; a few clients who I think of as semi-regulars have dropped off the map almost completely, but it has been the season of very large jobs. Most of my work is probably in the neighborhood of 3,000-5,000 words with a few 10,000+ word jobs thrown in, but in December I translated two 25,000 word jobs back to back. To me, this seems more like a fluke than a trend, but it was an interesting blip on the economic spectrum.

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting on Thoughts on Translation in 2008, and all the best for a healthy and lucrative 2009!


Corinne McKay

What can a translator outsource?

It’s about time to start thinking about business goals for 2009, and efficiency is always high on my list. One topic that I often think about but have never really acted on is outsourcing. To hear books like The 4-Hour Work Week (imagine yourself in that hammock on the cover!) tell it, outsourcing is one of the keys to increased business efficiency, even if you’re a one-person shop. On a more tongue-in-cheek note, my absolute favorite piece of writing about outsourcing is A.J. Jacobs’ article My Outsourced Life, which originally appeared in Esquire.

Outsourcing is big business these days; a recent NPR story on outsourcing reported that the U.S. Government now outsources so much work (including the production of U.S. passports, which is mostly done in Thailand), that it even outsources the management of its outsourced operations. So, are we translators missing out here, or do we just not have that much work that is outsource-able?

It seems to me that there are two possible goals of outsourcing: 1) freeing up your work time so that you can either generate more income or work less and 2) freeing yourself from tasks you aren’t good at or don’t enjoy doing. So far, I outsource a few tasks that fall into category 2: although my accountant, at $150 an hour, isn’t exactly a cut-rate worker, I think that outsourcing my taxes is a good business investment because they’re a task that I neither enjoy nor do well. Likewise, I sometimes hire other translators to edit/proofread my work for direct clients because I’m a much stronger translator than I am an editor.

When it comes to category 1, I’m a little stumped. I’m acquainted with a few very responsible high school students in my neighborhood who would probably do a good job at administrative tasks and charge a lot less than what I make per hour, but I’m not sure what I could ask them to do. I don’t take appointments from clients, send out paper invoices, do mass mailings or maintain a large database of contacts, so I have a hard time identifying lower-level work that I could trust someone else to do. In addition,  it would seem odd to remove my personal touch from certain aspects of the business, for example by hiring someone to write holiday cards to my clients.

As my base of direct clients grows, one option I’ve thought of is hiring a very competent but not very experienced translator (for example a recent graduate with top-notch skills) to work with me, and paying that person by the hour for a guaranteed number of hours per week. This would free me from being dependent on someone else’s availability, and could work well for direct client projects where profit margins are higher.

Any pro/con ideas out there about outsourcing?