Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Money


Corinne McKay

“Agencies won’t pay my rates, and I can’t find direct clients”: what to do?

Here’s a conundrum that I hear frequently from freelancers at all experience levels: agencies won’t pay my rates, and I can’t find any direct clients. What should I do? Well, let’s see:

  • First, adjust your mindset. Tough love tip: if you truly believe that *zero* agencies will pay your desired rates, and that you will *never* be successful finding direct clients, you need to either shift your thinking or find a different job. If you’re approaching every interaction with a potential client as, “Here goes round 1,000 of beating my head against the wall,” then that’s the first thing that needs to change. Use growth mindset statements like, “There are plenty of clients out there who need what I do. I’m going to keep knocking on doors until I find them,” or “Instead of just translating what lands in my inbox, I’m going to actively seek out the kind of work I enjoy and am good at,” or “The marketing methods I’ve used in the past haven’t worked very well. Now I’m going to try something new and see if that gives me different results.”
  • Assess what “won’t pay my rates” means. As I’ve written about before, you don’t need hundreds of clients to have a thriving translation business. If you apply to 100 agencies and 98 of them think you’re too expensive and two of them think your rates are fine, that’s success. And remember, thanks to a little thing called the Internet, you’ve got the whole world to work with. But…
  • Work the local market. When I started my freelance business in 2002, I knew essentially nothing about entrepreneurship. So I opened up the yellow pages (remember when?) and started cold-calling translation agencies in Colorado and asking for informational interviews. As it turns out, I had stumbled onto a marketing technique that was actually very effective. The vast majority of these agencies responded something like “We don’t have much work for French to English/only work with people with five years’ experience/already have a couple of French translators we like, but if you want to come in and talk to us for a few minutes, no problem.” And since I had very little work, I had tons of time, so I went and talked to them. And guess what, when they had a sudden and urgent need for more French to English translators, or their existing French to English person went on vacation/raised their rates/was suddenly unavailable, guess who they called next? In-person marketing really is worth the investment of time, whether you’re looking at agencies or direct clients.
  • Don’t market to direct clients in the same way you market to agencies. Agencies understand what you do. They know that they need you. They know the difference between a translator and an interpreter. Direct clients know none of this, and it’s not their fault. But they know that in a business sense, translation might be necessary, helpful, or both. So, it’s up to you to market to them in a way that they can understand: “Have you ever considered what an English website might do for your business?” “I’ve helped multiple US-based investment companies understand the financial statements of the Russian companies they invest in.” “When you work with me, I have one goal: to take the hassle and stress out of the translation process.” You’ve heard it before, but let’s say it again: focus on what’s in it for the client, not on how many words a day you translate and what TM tool you have.
  • Keep marketing to agencies, but be selective. When I launched my freelance business, I was 100% *un-selective* about the agencies I marketed to. I opened up my paper copy of the ATA corporate member directory and started at A, going to the agencies’ websites and seeing if they were hiring. By the time I hit the middle of the alphabet, I was getting some work from the As and Bs. But if you’re not a beginner, don’t do that. Even if you are a beginner, vet the agencies you apply to by checking their ratings on Payment Practices or the ProZ Blue Board before you apply. If you’re beyond beginner stage, target your marketing. Sort the agencies’ ratings on one of the sites above, and apply only to the ones with impeccable reviews. Ask translators in other language combinations who their favorite clients are, or what agencies they’ve heard good things about. Google “engineering translations” or “cookbook translations” or whatever your specialty is, and apply to the agencies that advertise those services.
  • Ditch the “I don’t have time” excuse. OK, I’ve used it too. But really, you have 15 minutes a day, right? And even 15 minutes can make a big difference. In 15 minutes, you can send a warm e-mail to a prospective direct client. You can apply to most agencies in 15 minutes. And most importantly, 15 minutes a day keeps the ball rolling and makes marketing a habit, which is one of the keys to success.

Readers, any other thoughts on how to break out of a mental block when it comes to marketing?


Corinne McKay

New podcast: outsourcing for translators

Eve Bodeux and I recently recorded a joint podcast with Tess Whitty, host of the popular Marketing Tips for Translators podcast. The topic is outsourcing for translators: not outsourcing your actual translation work, but outsourcing business, marketing and productivity tasks so that you can focus on the work that you enjoy and do best (while someone else handles the work you dislike or aren’t good at!). We’ve each offered tips on what to outsource, how to find people to outsource to, what newer translators should consider outsourcing, and some of the benefits of outsourcing.

Note that Speaking of Translation is now on iTunes! If you enjoy the episodes, please leave us a review there! And if you outsource any of your own tasks, leave a comment and let us know how it’s going!

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Outsourcing for translators


Corinne McKay

What's worth outsourcing or paying for?

At the recent Colorado Translators Association mid-year conference, a few of us got to talking about tasks that we outsource and services that we pay for. This got me thinking about what types of services we freelancers a) can and b) should be outsourcing or paying for.

It’s important to realize that having the proper tools and services for your business costs money. Running a freelance business entails a lot less overhead than running, say, a restaurant, but if you try to operate on zero overhead, your business will suffer. I’ll give you a list of services that I either outsource or pay for, and then I’m interested to hear what you have to say too.

A task is ripe for outsourcing/paying money for if:

  • You hate it, are terrible at it, and therefore avoid it (mine: accounting)
  • It provides you with information that would be time-consuming or impossible to obtain on your own (mine: Payment Practices)
  • It generates way more income than what you pay for the service (mine: E-Junkie)
  • You can hire someone who is much better at the task than you are (mine: graphic design and screencast videos)
  • It saves you a lot of time and hassle (mine: Adobe PDF conversion service)
  • It lets you bring in an additional revenue stream ( mine: MailChimp e-mail list)
  • It protects your business against disaster (mine: SugarSync online backup service)

The tasks and services that I currently outsource, and their approximate costs, are listed below. Note that these are not affiliate links, just services I love.

  • Accounting: my accountant does my quarterly payroll taxes and year-end corporate tax return. About $1,000 per year.
  • Subscription to Payment Practices so that I can vet agencies before I work with them. About $20 per year.
  • Subscription to SugarSync to fully back up my laptop hard drive every time I connect to the Internet, in case my laptop is lost/stolen/falls out of my bike bag and gets run over by a bus. About $75 per year.
  • Basic membership to E-Junkie, so that I can sell PDF copies of my book directly from my website with automatic downloads. $5 per month.
  • Graphic designer to do website banners, book covers, etc. Cost depends on the project, about $600 per year.
  • Instructional designer to make screencast videos for my online courses. About $500 per course.
  • Adobe’s online PDF conversion service, which works really well on really lousy PDFs. About $25 per year.
  • MailChimp mailing list service so that I can send out my weekly e-newsletter. $25 per month.

I also have various other paid pieces of software: an MP3 recording service for Skype calls, a scanner program so that I can still use my really old scanner, etc.

All of these services add up to a fairly substantial cost; but I also think that far too many translators think that “if it costs money, I’m not buying it,” which is a short-sighted way to run a business. If there’s a tool that helps you work better, or that frees up your time so that you can do what you’re good at while someone else does what they’re good at, I think it’s almost always worth buying.

It’s also important to think about the consequences of not having a particular tool or service. I don’t work with that many agencies, but since a Payment Practices membership costs less than a minimum charge, it’s clearly a good investment. In 13 years of freelancing, I’ve never had a major computer failure, partially because I’m pretty scrupulous about upgrading my main work computer every two to three years, but for $75 a year, I’m not risking what would happen if my laptop were stolen from my co-working office, or if I spilled coffee all over it. Those situations fall into the category of “penny wise, pound foolish” and every freelancer should avoid that!

Readers: over to you…what do you outsource or pay for?


Corinne McKay

Working with individuals: why do so many translators avoid it?

The individual client market–working directly with people who need anything from a birth certificate to a book translated–is a legitimate segment of the direct client market. But still, lots of translators avoid it. Let’s take a closer look.

I do quite a bit of work for/with individual clients; mostly certified translations of official documents, but I’ve also translated business plans, real estate purchase and sale documents, and yes, even a book, for individual clients. I like this kind of work because (in no particular order):

  • It’s gratifying; people need the service and appreciate it. Sometimes they really, really appreciate it–I once received a lovely bottle of wine from an individual client who needed a translation in a pinch!
  • It’s usually very straightforward. For certified translations, I charge a flat fee per page, I do not negotiate that rate at all, and I do not do the translation until the person pays via PayPal. So there’s zero quoting or haggling, and zero risk of non-payment.
  • It’s lucrative as compared to the time investment. These small, one-off projects are generally projects that agencies don’t want, or for which agencies would have to impose a very high minimum charge in order to justify their overhead. As a freelancer, you can also create templates for the kinds of documents that you translate over and over again, to further streamline the process.
  • Not that many freelancers are interested in the individual client market, so you can generate quite a bit of business simply by putting up a dedicated web page for this kind of service.

My sense is that most freelancers avoid the individual client market for two reasons: they’re afraid of not getting paid, and they don’t want to spend a lot of time negotiating a rate and turnaround time for a $100 job. I would argue that the solution is simple: require that individuals pay in advance, and don’t negotiate. If they don’t want to pay your rate, they can look for another translator; or if they don’t want to pay in advance, they can look for another translator. And for the record, even the individual for whom I translated a book did pay in full, in advance.

I do agree that when you work with individuals:

  • You have to have some patience with people who know nothing about translation. Can you also translate my Lithuanian driver’s license? Can you convert my grades from the French to the US system? Can you just leave out the classes that I failed? You can’t blame people for asking, so you have to be willing to explain these things.
  • A fair number of people will ask if you can “just certify” the translation that they already did. “I already translated it, so how much would it cost to just put your certified translator stamp on it?” My response to this is always “The certification statement requires me to certify that I translated the document, so for liability reasons, I cannot certify a document that I didn’t translate myself.”
  • You need a way to take payments online, and that costs money. Lots of people love to gripe and moan about PayPal, and I agree that their fees are annoying on large amounts. But I’m willing to pay $3.50 to collect $100 from someone, and I’ve never had issues with things like chargebacks (where the client complains to PayPal and then gets a refund). Additionally, lots of people already have a PayPal account, so it’s easy for them to send you money. You could also try Square, Stripe, etc. My sense is that the fees for all of the online payment services is about the same.

Readers, any other thoughts on this?


Corinne McKay

An atypical dilemma: "I need less work"

Here’s a question I received from a colleague: “You’re always writing about how to find new clients and get more work. I have the opposite problem: I have work coming out of my ears and I’m trying to cut back.” OK! Thoughts on Translation is committed to addressing issues at all points on the freelance spectrum, so let’s give this one a try.

This actually is not the first time I’ve heard this question, primarily from translators in their 60s and 70s who still want to work, but not full-time and not under stressful conditions. But it also applies to some translators with young kids, or people with other jobs. Definitely worth a look.

If you’re in the “I need less work” boat, first you have to accept that maybe 1% of freelancers have just the right amount of work. The other 99% of us have to choose between a little too little work and a little too much work. And because I hate worrying about money, my preference is to have a little too much work, then take longish vacations where I don’t work at all. But if you’re bound and determined to cut down on your work flow, first ask yourself:

  • What do you want and not want out of your work situation? For example I’d say the typical person in this category says, “I want some income, I want some professional activity in my life, but I don’t want to be stressed out and I want a significant amount of free time.” Even if your answer is radically different, make sure to answer that question. What’s your priority? What do you not want to deal with?
  • How much of a factor is money? If you’re on the semi-retired end of the spectrum, money might be less of a factor; you might have the luxury of working for clients you really like, rather than the clients who pay the most. If you have young kids, it may be the opposite situation: money is paramount, because you need to earn a semi-full-time income while working around your family’s schedule.
  • How much of a factor is job satisfaction? Again, this varies from individual to individual. Perhaps you’re that semi-retired translator who’s working primarily or even exclusively because you enjoy it; perhaps you’re that new parent thinking “$%&^& satisfaction…the point is to make money.”

Then, pick a strategy. Of course, the path of least resistance is to raise your rates. A lot. Own it; tell clients, “If you’re looking for an inexpensive option, it’s not me,” or “I only work with the very high end of the market,” or “Call me when you have a bigger budget.” That should do the trick pretty quickly, but it may also eliminate clients you want to keep working with, especially if job satisfaction is a priority for you. So you could also try:

–Putting some parameters on your availability or your working conditions. You don’t work on Fridays, or you don’t work with clients who require you to work in their online TM portal, or you don’t work with clients who send out work offers via mass e-mail.

–Taking longer vacations so that you’re working less overall. I’ll be honest: I’ve tried the “I need to work less” system a few times (I’m going to take Friday afternoons off, I’m not checking e-mail after 5, I’m not finishing stuff up in the evenings, etc.), and it’s never really worked. So my preferred solution is to take longer vacations where I may be checking e-mail, but I am not actively working. By timing these to coincide with most of my clients’ slow periods (Christmas/New Years, July and August), I don’t know that I actually lose a lot of income, but I definitely gain sanity. Each year I take about six weeks completely off, which is pretty normal outside the US but almost unheard of within the US. So that’s my recommendation if you’re in a decent financial position: give yourself a month off this summer and do some digital detox.

–Doing the “does this spark joy” test on every project. If you get that knot in your stomach, turn it down, or stop working with that client. Only work on projects that make you feel excited about working.

Readers, over to you! Any thoughts on this?