Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Marketing


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!


Corinne McKay

Reader question: cold-contacting with holiday cards

Here’s a followup to my post on What to send clients and colleagues for the holidays. This is a question that recently came up in the online course I teach, and I’d like to put it out to a wider audience. Is it appropriate to use holiday cards as cold contacts to potential clients? If not, why not? If so, what is the best method of doing this? Specifically, is it appropriate (always? sometimes? never?) to enclose one’s business card in a holiday card to a potential client? Is it appropriate to softly promote one’s own translation services, or should the card just express admiration for the potential client’s work and best wishes for the holidays and new year?

Over to the readers: I gave my students a brief opinion but I’ll refrain from commenting more fully until some readers weigh in.


Corinne McKay

Making translation easy versus making translation cheap

When you’re inquiring about a professional service, let’s say taxes, computer help or marketing consulting, which is more attractive to you: a service provider who seems ultra-competent and gives the impression that the process will be easy for you, or a service provider who charges low rates and gives the impression that the process will be cheap? While few clients are completely price-insensitive, I think that it’s important to always be looking for ways to make your clients’ lives easier and avoid bogging them down in the complexity of what you do.

For example, let’s say that you need a really good small business accountant. You know that accountants charge fairly high rates; upwards of $100 an hour and maybe as much as $200 an hour, so you have a ballpark figure in mind. You call CPA #1 and explain your situation. His/her response: “Well, switching accountants at this time of year is complicated. If only you had called me in January. I need your personal and business returns for the past 3 years, don’t give me the originals, you’ll have to copy them and drop them off. I’m only here 10-4 outside of tax season so you have to come during those hours” and so on. At that point, do you even care how little this person charges? Even if this accountant’s rates were below what I expected to pay, I would be turned off. I hate accounting, I hire an accountant to make my life easier, and this person has already bogged me down with too many details and too many hoops through which I have to jump.

But how about this: you call CPA #2 and explain your situation. His/her response: “No problem at all, thanks for calling. If you’re interested in switching to us, you’ll just need to sign a release form and then I’ll call your current accountant and ask them to fax us your past returns. Our hours are shorter outside of tax season but we do everything electronically with password-protected files so you can scan and submit your documents whenever you want. Also if you’re interested we could review your previous returns for errors or missed deductions and there’s no cost to you unless we find something.” At that point, I would be willing to pay the high end of the rate range I was expecting, because this person conveys the impression that my life will be immeasurably easier and I will save time (and therefore be able to work more and earn more money) by using his/her services.

Think about applying these types of scenarios to your own business:

  • When you receive an inquiry from a client, assume that the client wants you to solve their problem, not give them a deal.
  • Don’t get pedantic. Think: do you really care about the minute details of your service providers’ jobs? Right. Stick to the information that your client really needs.
  • Think of simple ways to streamline things for your clients. If you always translate their quarterly newsletter, can you contact them on a predetermined date to talk about the next issue? Can you set up a secure file transfer site so that your clients can access their translations whenever they want? Can you send them a short survey to ask how you can better meet their needs?
  • Try to frame things positively. Not “I can’t finish it by Thursday morning unless you can get it to me by Wednesday noon,” but “If you can get that to me by Wednesday noon, I could definitely have it back to you by the time you get into the office on Thursday.”
  • Don’t make translation sound easy (we know: it’s not!), make the client feel that you will make things easy for them.


Corinne McKay

Issue #2 of the ATA Compass

Issue #2 of ATA’s new publication for translation buyers and consumers, the ATA Compass, is online now. It’s entitled “First, Do No Harm: The Myths of Healthcare Interpreting” and features interviews with Dr. James Rohack, the Immediate Past President of the American Medical Association, and Doug Green of the Texas Association of Healthcare Interpreters and Translators. You can subscribe to the Compass (free!) and read issue #1 “Export or Die” (featuring an interview with Rosetta Stone CEO Tom Adams)  here.


Corinne McKay

Are your marketing materials missing critical information?

In the course of preparing for the ATA conference coming to Denver in October, I’ve been visiting the websites of a lot of Denver-area businesses. Many have excellent sites, but it amazes me to see the information that is missing from some of them. Actual examples: a restaurant that does not have its address or location on its website, and several restaurants that either don’t list their hours at all or bury that information in a non-obvious location. Don’t do this to your potential clients!  Prominently feature your language pair(s), e-mail address, phone number and other important information, or those potential clients will become someone’s else’s actual client!