Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Translation quality


Corinne McKay

Why do some freelance translators fail?

I’m not a great “tough love” advice-dispenser, but I’m going to give it a try. I work with a lot of beginning translators in my online course (shameless self-promo: the next session starts on April 3 and there are four spots left!). When I follow up with students over the months and years after they finish the course, or when I talk to beginning/aspiring translators in general, some of them have “made it” as freelancers and some of them haven’t. In thinking about advice for translation newcomers and translation students, I’ve unscientifically identified a few pitfalls that can cause serious problems for people who are in the freelance launch phase. I’m sure that readers have great tips and anecdotes too…so feel free to add them!

  • Expecting too much return from too little marketing effort. I get a lot of inquiries from beginning freelancers who are “very discouraged because they’ve applied to over 30 translation companies and received no work.” I know I’ve said this a few (hundred) times before, but here it is again: during my first year as a freelancer, I applied to over 400 translation companies. Then, I sent every single company that responded positively a hand-written note with a business card, thanking them for their response and letting them know that I looked forward to working with them in the future.
  • Expecting the startup phase to be shorter than it is. I think that six months is the bare minimum that anyone can expect–two months to look for work, two months to do the work and two months to get paid. A year is probably more realistic, and I think that most freelancers reach “cruising speed” after about three years.
  • Having weak language skills. As often stated by Chris Durban, author of The Prosperous Translator, it’s hard to develop the linguistic and cultural competence that a translator needs, without spending at least a year in your source language country/ies. And don’t hang out with speakers of your target language the whole time you’re there!
  • Not putting yourself out there. I get it: you’re not good with strangers, you don’t want creepy exes finding your address online, and so forth. But the simple truth of freelancing is that people cannot hire you if they cannot find you. They can’t refer work to you if they don’t know who you are. So whether it’s in person or online, or preferably both, you have to come out of hiding.
  • Getting stuck on the low rate treadmill. This is a tough one. Most beginning translators don’t set out to be underpaid, but working is better than not working, and you have to start somewhere if you want to break in to the industry. Many beginning freelancers tell themselves that in a few months or years, they’ll trade up to better-paying clients. But if you’re translating 10 hours a day just to pay the bills, it’s hard to find that time, so you’re more likely to stick with the low-paying bird in the hand.
  • Remaining in denial about how much work it is to be self-employed. A wise self-employed person once said that being an entrepreneur means working 60 hours a week for yourself so that you don’t have to work 40 hours a week for someone else. I’m a firm believer in avoiding perpetual overtime, but the essence of this statement is true. I recently gave a talk on self-publishing, after which many of the attendees commented that the idea sounded intriguing, but “like a lot of work.” Um…yeah! It is a lot of work, but I’m more interested in putting that work into my own project than into lining a traditional publisher’s pockets. The same is true of being a freelancer. It’s a lot of work! Did we mention that it’s a lot of work? But the ability to make your own decisions and take responsibility for your own future makes it worth it.

Wise readers, over to you! Why do you think some beginning translators don’t make it?


Corinne McKay

Giving Coursera a try

As I mentioned in my recent people who rock the industry interview, I think that subject area knowledge is one of the most important trends we’ll see in translation in the next few years. To read a thorough explanation of how subject area knowledge relates to what we do, check out Kevin Hendzel’s fantastic blog post on the topic. [Read more…] about Giving Coursera a try


Corinne McKay

Billing by the word, the hour or the project

This topic started out as a Twitter discussion earlier this week, and I’m hoping that the translators who contributed there will join in here too! At the recent ATA conference, there was a lot of buzz about how translators should charge; not just the actual amounts, but whether it’s better to charge by the word, by the hour or by the project. So here’s a starter post to get the discussion going! It’s also worth noting that a post on the same topic that I wrote way back in 2008 is still one of the most popular posts on this blog, so clearly it’s a timeless topic! Here we go:

  • Charging by the word still seems to be the norm in our industry, at least in the agency market. On the plus side, if you charge by the source word count, everyone knows in advance exactly how much the translation is going to cost (down to the penny) before the project starts. Also, per-word billing favors more experienced and more specialized translators who are thus faster at their work, and encourages translators to incorporate productivity-enhancing technology into their work flow. On the minus side, per-word billing makes translation seem like commoditized piecework: we’re not selling a solution, we’re selling a bucket of words. Clients may argue (down to the penny) about unnecessary words, discounted words, and so on. Per-word billing also discourages translators from doing thorough and time-consuming research, because if we’re not typing, we’re not earning.
  • Charging by the hour seems to be gaining steam in the industry. Translators have historically charged by the hour for tasks like editing and proofreading, but now there’s a lot of talk about charging by the hour for translation too. During her preconference seminar at ATA, respected freelance translator Chris Durban noted that most direct clients are accustomed to paying for professional services (lawyers, accountants, marketing consultants, web designers) by the hour. Billing by the hour favors translators who work slowly because they are very thorough, and allows time for reading background material or doing in-depth research. But billing by the hour has its downsides: for whatever reason, most translation agencies seem to be resistant to paying an outright hourly rate that corresponds to what translators make when they bill by the word. For example, a translator earning 15 cents per word and producing 500 finished words per hour is effectively earning $75 per hour, well beyond the hourly rate that most translators report earning for tasks such as editing or proofreading. Billing by the hour also introduces the question of what is billable…phone time? e-mail time? FedEx time? revisions? And unless you have a very good handle on your translation speed for every document, or your clients will agree to start the project without a binding quote, it can be hard to know exactly how to estimate a given job.
  • Then we’ve got the third way: billing by the project. Billing by the project with no breakdown of words or hours isn’t out of the question (it’s what I do with the majority of my direct clients). This method has the advantage of allowing the translator to tweak the per-word or per-hour rate without a lot of fanfare. It also gives the client one number to focus on: no worry about words, hours, is this translator fast or slow compared to other people, etc. The obvious disadvantage is that the translator is locked in to the fixed bid; there’s no wiggle room if the project takes twice as long as expected.

Now, over to you!


Corinne McKay

The software companies respond!

Ahead of last week’s ATA conference, I asked readers what you would like to tell your translation tool vendor. And with 27 comments (although some of those were me!), the post generated a lot of activity and excellent feedback. I then compiled those comments into a three-page document and presented the results at an informal lunch that the ATA Translators and Computers committee held for the software companies who were exhibiting at the conference. After giving the vendors your comments to peruse, I asked them three questions:

  • Do you really not offer these features that people are asking for, or do people not realize what you offer, or both?
  • What are your thoughts on training? (i.e. many translators commenting “I pay for the software, then I have to pay to learn to use it too”)
  • Over to you: what do you want to tell the freelancers who buy and use your software?

So first, let me say that the software company reps who attended this lunch were incredibly, incredibly forthcoming and constructive. Part of the problem is that when we freelancers rant and curse about translation software issues while we’re alone in our offices, the software companies cannot hear us. They cannot hear us unless we tell them what is wrong. So I think that this discussion was a good step in that direction. Second, let me say that in my opinion, the software companies get it. They do not think “Well, we’ve got your money, now leave us alone.” They realize that it is not good for business if people can’t learn to use their programs. And they had lots of good feedback for us. Here it is in a nutshell, from the software vendors’ point of view.

  • There are lots of training materials out there, and most freelancers don’t use them. The SDL rep commented that even when people purchase (yes, pay in advance for) an SDL premium pack that includes training, only about 10% of them follow through with the training.
  • There are training videos out there, and most people don’t watch them. The SDL Trados YouTube channel has over 100 free training videos on it. Wordfast has a YouTube channel also, and memoQ has tons of free training materials on their website. The companies are frustrated that more of their customers don’t make use of what’s already there. A couple of the reps estimated that their marketing teams spend almost half of their time developing training, and that training goes largely unused even if it’s free.
  • People want something that’s cheap, feature-rich and requires no training to learn, and that’s hard to produce. One attendee gave the example that most professional photographers and graphic designers accept that they cannot work without Photoshop and/or InDesign. The list price of those programs is about $700 each and they aren’t programs that you master in 10 minutes. Translation environment tools are the same: if you want all of those features, the software is going to be expensive and it’s going to take time to learn to use.
  • When the software companies try to attract freelancers to in-person training events such as road shows, very few people attend even if the training sessions are free, and most comment that they can’t afford to take the time off work.
  • Interestingly, many of the tools vendors commented that translation agencies put too much of the technological burden on freelancers. They feel that agencies are sending out unprepared files, then expecting the translator to return a TM (sometimes in several different formats), a clean file and bilingual Word files, and generally “expect things that translators shouldn’t have to know how to do; if the agency is earning half the money on the job, it needs to take on some of these tasks.” Interesting!
  • Some tools (like Wordfast Pro) already offer a version that can run natively on Mac. But don’t hold your breath for many of the other big guys to produce a Mac version. They don’t have plans to do this because “the large user base isn’t there and it wouldn’t be profitable.”
  • Many attendees felt that freelancers should consider the option of hiring a “personal trainer” to help them learn the software. For the record, this is what I (Corinne) did when I bought Trados Studio 2011, and I felt it was a great investment. The vendors feel that it’s important to know your own capabilities and limitations; know whether you are someone who learns best from a manual, or from another person.
  • As far as interoperability, the software companies feel that they could use more “real-world perspective,” for example having some translators on the XLIFF committee, because apparently there are none right now.

So there you have it. I found this discussion to be incredibly educational and productive. Feel free to comment further, and hopefully we can find a way to keep the discussion going! Thanks to everyone who commented on my original post as well.


Corinne McKay

Goals for 2012: are you halfway there?

Shockingly enough, June 30, and with it the end of the second quarter of 2012, is on Saturday. It’s a great time of year to evaluate your progress on your 2012 goals, while you still have six months left before December 31. Before you panic and refuse to think about any goals at all, give yourself some slack. You still have six months, maybe your goals have changed since January 1, and now is a good time to refocus. So ask yourself:

  • What exactly were you planning to do this year? Did you write down some goals in January or just formulate some ideas in your head? Were some of your goals more critical than others? Have you achieved something that you hadn’t set as a goal but that felt good nonetheless?
  • How are you doing on your critical goals? If you haven’t made any progress on them, why? If you’ve branched out in other directions, why?
  • What’s your plan for the next six months? Keep chipping away at your general 2012 goals? Set some new ones? Take a break?

I know it’s always hard to go first, so I’ll go first! Overall, I feel good about the first half of 2012. In terms of work volume and income, the first quarter was slow-ish; not scary slow, but slow enough that I wanted things to pick up for the rest of the year. After finally getting my act together to do a direct client marketing campaign that had been on the back burner for approximately forever (one goal achieved!), the second quarter roared along at almost double my target income. So from the financial standpoint, things are looking good. My family is spending the summer in Switzerland for my husband’s job and I don’t have to stress out about how much I work while we’re here, which is a good feeling.

I also did a bit more marketing for my online course and my book, and three consecutive sessions of the class were full. Another goal achieved! My next book, a compilation of entries from this blog, is ABC (all but cover) and just today I updated my professional website for the first time in about two years. My super colleague Eve Bodeux motivated me to buy and learn Trados Studio 2011 and whaddaya know, I love it.

Not that 2012 has been all roses and kittens. During the past few months I’ve been largely in survival mode, working nearly every evening and barely keeping up with my non-translation tasks. On the day before we left for Switzerland, I answered 97 backlogged e-mails and my Inbox still wasn’t empty. In addition, I put a fair amount of time into some direct client bids that didn’t come to fruition; of course we all know that this is just part of the ebb and flow and freelancing, but it’s still a downer when it happens. So, my primary goal for the second half of 2012 is to try to achieve a better balance between sanity and income by continuing to work on marketing, finding new sales channels for my book and having specific tasks that I want to work on when I’m not translating.

Readers, how about you?