Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

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Corinne McKay

Some thoughts on setting goals

Goal-setting is a critical element of running a freelance business, but many translators ignore it. Not surprisingly, this type of passive attitude can lead to job stress and low job satisfaction, because instead of feeling that you’re actively progressing toward your ideal freelance business, you feel like your clients are dictating how, when and at what rates you work. Here are some suggestions for active goal-setting:

Rank your clients. I think of my clients as A, B or C level, you can come up with your own categories. A clients are what you might call “drop everything” clients; they pay well, they’re easy to work with and they have interesting projects. The catch with A clients is that they normally don’t need your services regularly, so unless you have a lot of them, you need another income base. B clients are the foundation of your business. These clients pay fairly and on time and fill your inbox with work, which is sometimes interesting and sometimes tedious. In my case, my two biggest B clients provide about 60% of my income. C clients are clients with whom you work only when you have some external motivation; business has been slow, they offer an especially interesting project. etc.

Once you have ranked your clients, think about how you can find more clients at the A level. Identify specific characteristics of your A clients, and search around the web for more potential clients like them. This will also reveal some characteristics of your business, which is an additional benefit. For example, once a translator reaches a certain level in the profession, A level clients are increasingly going to be direct clients, because the translator will move beyond an agency’s maximum rates. A translator who has reached that level cannot increase his/her income without making the jump to working with more direct clients.

Inventory your likes and dislikes. Be honest with yourself about what you like and dislike about being a freelance translator. Do you enjoy the work but find your current specializations boring? Do you love the flexibility but hate the stress of rush projects? Then, find some ways to shift your work toward the aspects of it that you enjoy. This type of inventory is part of what led me to switch to a treadmill desk, once I realized that one of my main “dislikes” was sitting at a desk all day.

Set some specific, achievable goals. I think that these two characteristics, specific and achievable, are what make goals worthwhile. Instead of something amorphous like “make more money and be less stressed about work,” force yourself to come up with some measurable objectives that you feel you can reach. This could be finding two new direct clients that pay more than X cents per word within the next six months, or finding at least one new client that works in a specialization you want to pursue, or not working more than one night per week, or increasing your income by 25%, or any other concrete goal that you feel will help your business.


Corinne McKay

Supplier or demander?

When it comes to raising your translation rates, what’s the correct strategy: ask or tell? A colleague and I talked about this at length today, and it struck me as good food for thought.

In one sense, other professional service providers don’t phone you up and ask if it’s OK with you if they raise their rates. When you go to get your teeth cleaned or your taxes done, it generally costs more than the last time you went, but most of us simply accept this without question. We don’t haggle with the dentist about why a cleaning has gone from $150 to $175 in six months, we just write out the check or hand over the credit card and pay the bill. It would seem odd if these service providers made too much of an issue about rates; if I called my accountant and he said “Just to let you know, I’m now charging $10 an hour more than last year, do you still want to come in?” it would give me pause, not because of the money but because of his calling so much attention to a relatively small increase.

Clearly, these people view themselves as suppliers, and as such they raise their rates without consulting their clients. The mobile computer support consultant doesn’t call us up and ask if we’ll stick with him if he charges 25% more, and the bookkeeper doesn’t solicit our input before upping her fees; they just do it, and we decide whether to continue using them or not.

Translation is a little different. While the average dentist’s or accountant’s or bookkeeper’s income base is probably made up of hundreds or even thousands of clients, each of whose contribution to the service provider’s income is relatively small, the average freelance translator probably has fewer than 10 regular clients, and may even earn 50% or more of his/her income from one or two major clients. For a translator, the loss of a major client can be catastrophic, or at the very least result in a need to quickly find new clients to make up for the loss of income.

In our industry, it’s also not uncommon for the rates we charge longstanding clients to fall behind the rates we charge new clients. Most of us are as busy as or busier than we want to be, so it’s not much of a risk to quote new clients a higher rate than what our existing clients pay. But when we reach a situation where a major client is paying substantially less than our other clients, do we: a) take the dentist’s approach and simply start issuing invoices for a higher amount without saying anything, b) ask the client if they will agree to a raise, explaining that we’re now charging everyone else more than what we charge them, c) notify the client that as of X date, our rate is increasing, or d) another approach entirely?

I think that translators resist increasing their rates with existing clients partially because our per-word pay amounts are so small compared to a yearly salary. If we had a salaried job, most of us would see a $2,000 raise as real money, something worth haggling over. But if you translate 200,000 words a year for your top clients, a raise of 1 cent per word comes out to that same $2,000; a raise of 2 cents per word would put $4,000 in your pocket. So I think that too often, we avoid increasing our rates with longstanding clients because we tell ourselves that “it’s only 1,2,3 cents per word,” when in fact that adds up to a lot of money.

In the conversation today with my colleague, one barometer we came up with is our replacement value with our existing clients. For example, could those clients replace us with a translator of similar skill level at the same rates we charge? With some clients, the answer is clearly yes. If we’re honest, I think that most of us will admit that sometimes, we lob out a higher than usual rate because it’s Friday afternoon and we need some time off, or because we’re overworked and don’t feel like negotiating, and the client says yes anyway. In other cases, the answer is clearly no; we’re giving a client great work and fast turnaround times at below market rates, and we need to make a balanced business decision on when and how to try to change things.


Corinne McKay

Think like the clients you wish you had

Amybeth Hale, a Sourcing Strategist (one of those jobs your high school guidance counselor didn’t know existed!) who writes the blog Research Goddess, offers some excellent advice in her post Where do I go to find people?. We translators could replace “people” with “clients” and her advice is directly applicable to our businesses.

Amybeth comments that one of the most frequent questions she is asked by other recruiters and sourcing specialists is “Where do I go to find people in [insert industry]?” I think that the same is true of translators who would like to build up their base of direct clients; translators have a specific type of client in mind, but don’t know where to find that client. For translators, I think that Amybeth’s best piece of advice is to “Think like the person you’re looking for,” and avoid the large and often overused Internet marketplaces.

If you advertise your services on a large Internet portal for translators, you’re competing with many, many other translators, and a lot of those people probably charge less that you’re worth. A company that posts a translation job online is likely to be overwhelmed with responses. However, if you go to a trade show for companies that work in your target industry, you may be the only translator there. If you join and contribute to a discussion list for people who work in your target industry, ditto: you’re suddenly the expert, because no other translators are posting to that group.

So, think like the clients you want. If you worked for a (boutique hotel, law firm, advertising agency, pharmaceutical company, international aid project, financial services firm) and you needed a translator or information about translation, where would you go for information? Then go there! Be waiting to inform your potential clients about your services and the majority of your marketing work is done.


Corinne McKay

The basics of cold contacting

For beginning and experienced translators alike, there is often no way around the need to cold contact potential clients. Beginners need to find those crucial first few clients, and those of us who are established in the industry may want to look for better-paying work, work with direct clients or work in a new specialization. As in any profession, a warm or hot contact is always the most attractive; a personal referral from a colleague or current client has a much higher success rate than an e-mail, phone call or letter out of the blue. However, there’s no denying that cold contacting works when you want to launch or grow your translation business. Here are a few cold contacting techniques and some tips on how to apply them.

Phone calls are of limited use as a first point of contact with a potential translation client. I think that a phone call is appropriate only in response to a job posting that lists a phone number, or if a potential client’s other contact information (e-mail, mailing address etc.) is not available and you’re simply making the call to get that information. If you make a phone call to a potential client, be like e-mail: introduce yourself, get to the point (“what would be the best way to send you my resumé?”), and then let the client go.

Mass e-mail campaigns are another cold contacting technique that I would discourage. Although it’s tempting to write a “dear agency” e-mail, attach your resumé and blast it off to a few hundred translation companies, this technique may a) be perceived as spam and simply deleted and b) appeal to the type of clients you don’t really want to work for: low payers or clients who do not focus on quality.

Personalized e-mail forms the backbone of most translators’ initial marketing campaigns. Most translation companies have application instructions right on their website (look for a link to “contact,” “freelancers” or “employment”), whereby you use either the agency’s online form or send your application materials to an e-mail address that the agency provides. If you are sending a cover letter by e-mail, keep it very brief. Something along the lines of “To the attention of X translation company: I am a freelance X to X translator, and I am interested in offering my services to your agency. My specializations include X, X and X, and I have X years of experience working with X types of clients. In addition, I (am certified by X translators association, have a PhD in biology, am a CPA, worked in international trade for 10 years, etc.). My resumé is attached for your consideration and I look forward to speaking with you about how we might work together in the future.”

Postal mail is a technique that I think can work well with direct clients. When you’re applying to a translation company, you don’t have to convince the company that they need your services, but with a direct client you may. So, you may want to give the client more information than is appropriate to send in a cold e-mail; for example samples of your work, a brochure about your services, etc. Online printing services have also made it much easier to create professional-looking marketing postcards, and these are fast and inexpensive to create and send out to potential clients.

One element of cold contacting that translators often overlook is requesting a personal interview with local clients, or with clients who are in a city that you will be visiting. Especially if you are just starting your business but present yourself well in person, I think it can work very well to e-mail a potential client and ask if you can “stop in for a few minutes to learn more about their business and how you might fit in.” Take a small gift and treat the meeting as an informational interview, where you are not so much trying to sell yourself as to find out what the client’s needs are.


Corinne McKay

Break on through: some more tips

People posted such great suggestions in the Comments section for Break on Through that I think they deserve their own post.

Jill Sommer made a number of really helpful points. First, I should have clarified in the post that although working as an FBI Contract Linguist was the job that allowed me to get through the “in-between” phase of freelancing, the application process is in fact very long. In my case, the application, testing and background check process took over two years, and it was only because I applied on probably my third day of freelancing that the job worked out. If you are looking for a supplemental job starting immediately, FBI Contract Linguist is not a good option.

Jill offers a great suggestion about volunteering, which was seconded by Janine Libbey. Janine comments that volunteering your translation services “will create good will and [you] can also use these organizations as references. My experience has been that these “freebies” often produce referrals to paying clients.”

Another sideline business for translators that I didn’t mention is transcription. Most translators are excellent typists and already have the computer setup required to do transcription. Whether you are a native speaker of English or of another language, transcription could be a great way to supplement your income.

Ryan Ginstrom perceptively said “I think that specializing is the best overall way to earn more money: you work faster (because you’re familiar with the subject and have to do less research) and your work is better, so you can charge higher rates,” and also emphasized the importance of choosing a specialization that is in demand.

Thanks for these helpful comments!