Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Marketing


Corinne McKay

Some thoughts on volume discounts

I get lots of questions from beginning and experienced translators about volume discounts (charging a lower per-word or hourly rate for larger projects). I actually think that after “how much should I charge?”, “should I offer a volume discount” might be the second most frequently-asked question that I see. Here are a few thoughts, and feel free to add your own.

When I first started translating, I enthusiastically offered volume discounts. During my first year as a freelancer I worked about 10 hours a week and made $9,000. Seriously- there’s no zero missing! Out of that $9,000, $2,000 came from just one project on which I gave a substantial volume discount. Why? Because I didn’t have much work, and working for less than my standard rate was a lot more appealing than not working at all. Flash forward nine years, and I recently realized that not only do I not offer a volume discount any more, but sometimes I actually impose what might be considered a volume surcharge. Why? Because I have enough work at my standard rates and a volume discount would put me in the position of turning down other projects at my standard rate. However, I will sometimes do a small project at a lower rate as a favor to one of my regular clients. It helps them out, it doesn’t tie up too much of my time at a lower rate and it shows the client that I’m willing to show some flexibility within reasonable limits.

Volume discounts have their place. I think that the principle of volume discounts is fair: if a client guarantees you a week or two of work, you get to spend all of that time on the clock. Your administrative overhead is a lot lower, because you’re dealing with one client and one invoice rather than 10 clients and 10 invoices. You will probably work faster as you “ramp up” on the project rather than switching gears twice a day. You don’t have to stress out about juggling multiple projects because you’re just plugging away on The Big One. But when your client base grows, you have less of an incentive to offer a volume discount: you’re not desperate for the work, you’re busy most or all of the time anyway, and if you’re too busy, it’s time to raise your rates!


Corinne McKay

The importance of aiming low

…well, maybe not “low.” Maybe “The importance of setting realistic expectations” is a better way to put it.

Over the years, I’ve noticed that many translators fail to reach their long-term goals because (paradoxically) they aim too high. Typical case scenario: a translator who has been in the business for a few years wants to move into the direct client market. Instead of marketing to small consulting companies, other solo entrepreneurs or small professional associations, the translator targets Fortune 500-size companies and is disappointed in the lack of response. Following are some tips on how aiming low/setting realistic expectations can help you achieve your long-term professional goals.

  • Break daunting tasks into smaller chunks. Sandra Smith, the multi-award-winning translator of Suite Française and many other titles, told me that she finished her first book-length translation by translating two pages every morning. This is a great strategy: rather than waiting for that big block of time that is never coming (“I’m waiting to translate this book because I need a month with nothing else to do”), pick a daily chunk of work that you will actually do.
  • Stop waiting to be completely ready. I’m currently reading C.J. Hayden’s Get Clients Now, and really loved her tip- “You will never be completely ready. Start from where you are.” This relates to a post I wrote last year on the tyranny of the sub-goal. Don’t let the elusive goal of complete readiness hold you back. If you’re avoiding doing e-mail marketing because your website is out of date, go to some in-person networking events instead. If you feel like you need 100 prospects in order to market in a new specialization, find one prospect a day and contact each prospect as soon as you find them.
  • Focus on building critical mass. Especially if your goals relate to marketing, focus on how many contacts you will have made if you persevere over time. One contact a day doesn’t sound like much, but if you contact one potential client a day for three months, you will have made 60 contacts. And I’m guessing that if you wait until you have time to contact 60 potential clients at once, you will probably never get there.
  • Aim at the appropriate level. Over time (and through a combination of success, failure, frustration and elation!) I’ve learned that in order to land a new client, you need to be able to get to the person who can actually hire you. Hence, in the Fortune 500 example at the start of the post, the translator likely failed because he/she did not have the level of contacts to get to the person who actually procures translation services for IBM or Sanofi-Aventis or the World Bank. But if you focus on organizations where you can make a direct contact with the person who can write a purchase order for your services, you’ll be a lot more successful. Some freelancers are at the level of the aforementioned organizations and some are at the level of contacting small consulting firms. Either way, if you aim at the appropriate level, you’ll get some interest!
  • Aim in accordance with your personality. Case in point: I hate cold-calling. I’m actually not a big phone person in general, even with my own friends. So I don’t even think of cold-calling prospective clients. E-mail works if you do it correctly and really target your messages. In-person networking works, because you learn to ask people about themselves so that you don’t have to talk about yourself so much. People love getting handwritten notes because it shows an investment of time and attention on the part of the person who wrote the note. So regardless of what you think of the potential effectiveness of a marketing technique, focus on what you will actually do and what will actually work for you.

Readers, anything else to add?


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

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

Neat product: Moo mini-cards

We all know that one of the primary rules of freelance marketing is “always have business cards with you.” However, this can be harder than it sounds: first, you have to have a good location for the cards. The positive impression you’re trying to create is definitely ruined if you have to rummage through your bag for ten minutes to find where you put the cards, or if you extract a card that’s been folded and mutilated beyond all recognition. At networking events, I often struggle with the best place to put cards; loose in my pocket, they’re likely to get messy. In a holder in my wallet, they take too long to remove. Second, many freelancers have several styles of business cards. My business is fairly streamlined and I still have three kinds of business cards, which are tough to fit into my wallet-sized card holder.

Enter a suggestion from Portuguese and French to English translator Zoë Perry, who suggests solving all of these problems at once with miniature business cards from Moo and a mini-card holder that you can put in your pocket or on your keyring. I’m not easily sucked in by marketing swag, and I thought this was a really neat idea. Moo allows you to get multiple designs in one pack of mini-cards, and the card holder can accommodate 12 cards at once. At $25.00 for 100 mini-cards and a holder, this seems like a good marketing investment for 2011 (and this is not an affiliate deal!). This tiny card holder would be easy to carry in your pocket at a networking event, and with it on your keyring you could even network in the supermarket checkout line.

One thing: I just might have to wait to purchase these cards until Moo removes the cardstock accolade “We chose it for it’s [sic] thickness…” from their website. This is one of those errors I’m tired of seeing, especially from a media company! Moo, please fix this, because I really want a set of mini-cards and I can’t in good conscience support that misplaced apostrophe!

Readers, any other ideas for fun and useful new marketing tools for this year?