Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

Webinar questions


Corinne McKay

Agency marketing webinar followup

On September 3, Steve Lank and I presented a webinar for ATA, on “Effective marketing to translation companies.” We offered to answer the remaining questions from the webinar here. I’ll put the questions in bold, and our answers below them. If you’d like to purchase the webinar recording, it’s on the ATA website.

Corinne – You put “CT” after your name on your resume. Is that an official ATA abbreviation? Or can I put the same if I’ve been certified by another organization?

Corinne: “CT” is ATA’s designation for ATA-certified translators. If you’re certified by another organization, you should see what their designation is.

For experienced translators, do you have advice on how to increase rates with agencies you have been working with for several years? If a translator has a good, long-term relationship with an agency, will the agency stop using a translator if he/she raises rates?

Steve: I think you just need to be open about it. We have to go the same thing with our end-clients and the response differs depending on the individual. But it you have a good relationship you should be able to talk about and they should be expecting it (again, we have to do the same thing). They will let you know if it is possible or not and then you take it from there. Whether or not an agency will stop working with you based on a rate increase depends on the agency. If they have an upper limit they can accept then perhaps. More likely there will be some cost-sensitive projects they won’t be able to send to you, but there will be others they can. In the ideal scenario, because of the long-term relationship you have and the value you bring they can absorb the increase and nothing changes. I myself have never stopped working with a translator with whom I had a long-term relationship for increased rates alone.

How do you move from being in an agency database to actually getting assignments?

Steve: Persistence, I would say. If you are really interested in working with a particular agency, stay in touch. That will show you are serious and keep you top of mind. It takes time, but I think persistence pays off. Of course, I am talking gentle, professional; persistence, not the pushy, stalky kind! 😉

When asked for references, do I need to ask permission from current/past clients before listing them?  Asking more about individuals than agencies.

Steve: Yes, I think you should always ask permission to list someone (agency or individual) as a reference This in my mind is a question of professional courtesy. Besides, some companies have a policy against providing references so even if your PM loves you s/he may not be able to give a reference, so you need to check regarding their policy. And even if you know they will serve as a reference, you will need to find out how they would like to be contacted (e.g. phone or email). Finally, contacting clients for permission to list them as a reference also gives you an opportunity to reconnect with them (and to keep you top of mind) in case you have been out of touch, as well as to give them some details on the opportunity so they can be prepared and craft their response accordingly. For me, at least, there can be a real difference between how I respond to a reference request when I know it is coming vs. something out of the blue. and since you want to have the best references possible, you want to make sure your clients are prepared.

When you check the translator-scammers, do you look for the name or the email address of the translator? I just checked and my name is listed, but with an email address that does not belong to me.

Steve: I look for both the name and the email address and to date when I have found names on the list the emails have matched. However, if I found the name but not the email, I would still be cautious as these scammers are constantly making adjustments and can easily switch to another email address if another is identified as fraudulent. In the case of a mismatch, I might reach out to the individual to let her/him  know what I have found in the event s/he is actually legitimate

How do you remove your name from the list?

Steve: I am not sure of the process to get your name removed, but contact details for the site can be found here: http://www.translator-scammers.com/translator-scammers-contacts.htm

Any suggestion on how or where to find good, reputable, quality-conscious agencies to contact?

Steve: The definition of these terms can really vary by individual, depending what you are looking for and what you value. However, I would suggest looking at listings on professional industry organization websites (e.g. ATA or other national/international organizations) or industry publications, such as Multilingual and then going from there. However, I think the very best place to start is with referrals from like-minded colleagues who have had a good experience with a particular agency. I know that when I am looking for new partners (whether individuals or agencies) I look for referrals first from people I know and trust. When I have exhausted that I will go to industry listings.

Do agencies mind if translators take previously-announced vacation time?

Steve: As freelancers, you are, of course, in control of your own time and can take vacation when you want. That said, I always appreciate a heads up from my regular translators when they are going to be away so I can make alternative plans. What is problematic is when a  regular translator goes away with no notice. Again, this is the prerogative of the freelancer, but if it puts me in a bind it might lead to loss of business for the translator when s/he comes back, depending on the circumstances.

What’s your opinion of advertising your rates online (either on your website, LinkedIn, Yelp, etc.)?

Steve: I would advise against listing rates in a public forum and simply provide them when asked by individual prospects. Listing them online makes your services seem all about price and commoditizes them, basically inferring that the individual adds no value and one translator is the same as another. It can also lead to missed opportunities where someone who may have contacted you to discuss a project based on your credentials, and may ultimately be willing to pay your rate based on credentials and their conversation with you, may not ever reach out if they think they can’t afford you to begin with.

A lot of my current volunteer work is related to my religion, volunteering at the mosque, editing religious publications, etc. I hesitate to include this info because religion is such a touchy subject (and potential grounds for discrimination). 

Steve: We addressed this on in the webinar itself, but I think it bears repeating and a little elaboration. That is a personal decision that you need to be comfortable with. I would hope that people in an international industry such as ours would not resort to discrimination like this, but that unfortunately depends on the individual. In your case, I would say take it on a case-by-case basis and include it or not based on what you found in your research on the potential client you are approaching. This means you have to customize a little each time, but I think it is worth the effort.

How do you justify “volume discounts” when there are no true economies of scale?

Steve: This is again is a personal decision that can be based on a variety of factors. If there are not actual economies of scale in a project, one factor could be that a large project would keep you very busy during a period when you don’t have other work and would keep you from having to spend unbillable time rustling up work. Another could be that you can translate a particular subject matter faster than others and you feel that with the size of the project you could still make the money you need. A third is that working on a large project at a discount might help get you in with a client you have been wanting to work with by helping them out of a bind and could generate standard rate business in the future. Ultimately what is typically driving agency requests for volume discounts is end-client budget and you just need to decide if it is worth it to you. What you shouldn’t do is  accept just because you are asked for fear of losing future business. If it will keep you from more lucrative business in your pipeline, then the decision is obvious. But if it would help fill a gap, maybe it would be worthwhile. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. The key to keep in mind is that it is your decision that you need to make base on your individual circumstances and the relationship(s) you have with your clients.

 

 


Corinne McKay

Tips for first-time ATA conference attendees

Although I just posted a bunch of links yesterday, these are too good not to share! German to English translator Jill Sommer has presented the first-time attendees’ orientation at the ATA conference for many years, and she restyled that presentation into a webinar. It covers topics such as how to prepare for the conference, how to pick the sessions you want to attend, how to market and network effectively at the conference and much more. You can watch the webinar recording (it’s free!) and/or read Jill’s blog post with follow-up questions. This really is a wealth of information for newcomers to the profession; thanks to Jill for putting all of this together! See you in Boston!


Corinne McKay

Webinar question: small-diffusion languages

This is post #5 in my ongoing series of questions from the webinar on “Getting Started as a Freelance Translator” that I presented for the American Translators Association in December 2010.

A participant asks: Do you have any advice for small (exotic) language translators? My native language is Hungarian.
Short answer: Hmm. Tough to answer this in one sentence. Let’s move on to the longer answer.

Longer answer: First, how small is too small when it comes to small-diffusion languages? My sense is that there is enough of a market for Hungarian and similarly-sized languages to support a freelancer. For example, Hungarian is one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. That alone would seem to generate a fair bit of work, since any industry that is regulated in the EU (i.e. pharmaceuticals and medical devices) is required to produce product information in the official languages. However I do think that some languages are just so small/exotic that there may not be enough work to support a freelancer unless you really know where to look. For example, I once talked to a project manager at a fairly large agency who happened to be a native speaker of Albanian. She told me that in her multi-year tenure with that agency, she had never seen an Albanian project come through their pipeline. But let’s say that you translate a language that is small (i.e. Hungarian) but large enough that you can make a go of it as a translator. Here are some ideas:

  • Team up with other translators and form a small, single-language agency. Many large agencies probably struggle to deal with high-volume projects in, say, Hungarian. While a medium to large agency can probably assemble a German (French, Spanish, etc.) team to translate 100,000 words in a week, they may panic when they have to deal with a similar situation in Hungarian, Slovene or Maltese. So by forming a small team of translators, you could be a one-stop shop for other, larger agencies. Instead of spending a whole day on the phone trying to find 8 Greek translators who are available for 2 weeks, the larger agencies could just call you.
  • Find clients who really need you. Various sources have said that the European Commission can only meet 70% of its demand for Romanian, Latvian and Maltese interpreting because it cannot find enough qualified candidates. Especially if you translate one of the EU official languages, European governmental entities are probably a good target.
  • Be open to a variety of subject areas. Beginning French, German and Spanish translators are often advised to specialize as narrowly as possible in order to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. My instinct about smaller-diffusion languages would be the opposite: especially if you’re going to accept outsourced work from larger agencies, you probably need to accept a wide range of subject areas.

And now over to the readers! I’m probably not the best source of advice on this topic since I translate a large-diffusion language, so let’s see if we can get some tips from small-diffusion translators out there!


Corinne McKay

Webinar question: how many words per day?

This is post #4 in my ongoing series of questions from the webinar on “Getting Started as a Freelance Translator” that I presented for the American Translators Association in December.

A participant asks: For a translator who doesn’t use CAT tools, what is the average turnaround/output in words per day?
Short answer: If you want to work for agencies, you probably need to translate 2,000-3,000 words per day in order to meet their deadlines. If you work for direct clients, you can work more at your own pace. I know translators who average anywhere between 200 and 1,000 finished words per hour, so obviously your mileage will vary!

Longer answer: First, I’m not completely convinced that CAT tools save translators a lot of time unless the project is extremely repetitive (i.e. updating a previously translated document). When I use WordFast or OmegaT, I find that my translation speed increases by about 10% because I’m not constantly finding my place in the source document and glancing back and forth between screens, but I also find that my editing time increases because my writing is more “chunked” and does not flow as well. I avoid using CAT tools on anything that is for publication, but that’s another post!

If I had to put a number on it, I would say that the average translator produces between 400 and 600 finished words per hour. However, most people can’t translate for 8 hours without stopping, and most of the time you’ll encounter a section in the document that you have to research or read about, so you’ll slow down. In addition, most translators’ work speed varies enormously depending on the subject matter and format of the document. Years ago I used to translate market research surveys that were so repetitive I could listen to audio books while I worked and still produce about 800 finished words per hour. However, this also meant that the work was not very stimulating/fulfilling/intellectually demanding and therefore not very satisfying. I’ve worked on really complex legal documents that involved multiple cross-references and layers of meaning, and I’ve dipped as low as 250 words per hour.

As I mentioned in the short answer to this question, I think that agencies expect that translators will produce 2,000 to 3,000 finished words per day, and in general you have to be able to translate that fast in order to make a healthy income on agency rates (of course there are exceptions!). I’m not in the “faster is better” camp, but if you want to translate faster, you could:

  • Work on your typing. It sounds simplistic, but a lot of translators could translate faster if they typed faster. Recently, someone doing a research project on translators’ typing speeds asked me to take this typing speed test. I scored 83 words a minute (eternal thanks to my 10th grade keyboarding teacher!); according to the typing website, this means that I save 5.5 hours per 10 hours of typing as compared with “the average typist” who does 36 words per minute. Moral: typing speed matters!
  • Use speech recognition software or hire a transcriptionist. Most speech recognition software and most transcriptionists should be able to handle 80-120 words per minute. If you’re at that 36 word per minute average, this could really increase your productivity. I haven’t tried speech recognition software because I just don’t think that fast! And I don’t mind typing. But most of the ultra-productive translators I know (800-1,000 words per hour) do use speech recognition software.
  • Concentrate on your specializations. I think that the best way to increase your translation speed is to become really knowledgeable about your areas of specialization and stick to them. Once you start to know the terminology, sentence structure, typical phrasing, and even your regular clients’ writing styles, you’ll really speed up.

Any other thoughts on translation speed?


Corinne McKay

Webinar question: Preparing for the ATA certification exam

This is post #3 in my ongoing series of questions from the webinar on “Getting started as a freelance translator” that I presented for the American Translators Association earlier this month.

A participant asks: How can I prepare for the ATA certification exam?
Short answer: Order a practice test from ATA; at $50 (including return of the graded copy of your exam) as opposed to $300 for the real exam (not including return of the graded copy of your exam), it’s a good investment and a good indicator of your chances of passing the real exam.

Longer answer: If you’d like to take the ATA exam, you need to do a few things:

  • Join ATA
  • Make sure you meet the eligibility requirements for the exam. If you don’t meet them and you do not currently work as a translator, your most expeditious route is probably to get a translation certificate from an approved program; there’s a list on the ATA website.
  • Gather (buy, borrow, check out of the library) enough paper dictionaries and reference books for the exam. At present, ATA does not allow candidates to use any electronic resources for the exam, but you can use all of the paper dictionaries that you can carry. When I took the test, the woman next to me brought a rolling suitcase full of dictionaries covering a variety of subject areas.
  • Familiarize yourself with the error marking framework for the exam, the tips for candidates and the other resources on ATA’s website.
  • Take a practice test and see how you do. The magic number is 17; with 17 or fewer error points, you’re in. If you take the practice test and get 20 error points, you probably have a chance of passing the real exam (this happened to me) but if you get 40 error points, well…

And a few random thoughts on the ATA exam:

  • I am ATA-certified and find it to be a boost for my business. At the very least, someone browsing the ATA online directory is likely to call the certified translators first. I do a pretty brisk business translating official documents for individual direct clients, partially because I’m one of only three ATA-certified French to English translators in Colorado. However, the highest paid freelancers I know, people in the 40+ cents per word market, are not certified. You can definitely earn a very healthy income as a freelance translator without being certified.
  • As was recently discussed on Jill Sommer’s blog, there are lots of issues with the ATA exam. The handwriting factor is huge; personally I don’t hand write anything except my grocery list, and I found it excruciating to hand write the whole exam. In nearly a decade as a freelancer, I have never hand written a translation other than the ATA exam. Ditto with paper dictionaries; most of us have moved over to entirely electronic terminology resources and it’s tough to translate without using them. When I took the exam, the general passage was much, much harder than the specialized passage, and I felt that the grading standards were heavily swayed toward a fairly literal, word-by-word translation; the kind of translation I try to avoid when I translate for publication. ATA is working on a lot of these issues. And to be fair, it’s hard to deal with some of them (for example the long turnaround time to get your exam graded) without raising the price beyond most translators’ means.
  • The pass rate for the ATA certification exams is very low. ATA does not release exact statistics, but the pass rate seems to be about 20%. However: a) this is comparable to, or even higher than the pass rates for similar exams such as the Federal Court Interpreter certification exam. Some court interpreter certification exams even have a pass rate around 5%. b) if you fail the ATA exam, it means that two separate graders agree that you failed. Every exam is reviewed by two graders to start out with. If they disagree on the result, the exam is then sent to another grader for a third review. So you cannot fail the exam based on only one person’s assessment of your test. c) I would be interested to see the pass rates broken down by language. Anecdotally, it seems that some languages’ pass rates are much lower than others
  • If I were to give ATA some business advice, I would advise them to start producing preparation materials for the certification exams. I think that this would serve the twofold purpose of making the exam and the grading process more transparent and of generating revenue for ATA. For example, ATA could publish preparation manuals of old exams with graded example translations. They could even offer preparation courses. Hey, if people will spend several thousand dollars for a bar exam preparation course, ATA should be able to charge real money for a translator certification exam preparation course.

Other thoughts?