Training for Translators

Classes for translators and interpreters

direct clients


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

Marketing to Direct Clients: reserve your spot

The next session of my online course “Marketing to Direct Clients” starts on April 11, and registration is open on my website. This is a four-week, fully online course for translators who want to market to and work successfully with direct clients. Your registration fee ($320; $305 for ATA members) includes four sets of weekly slide shows with audio tracks, eight live question and answer sessions (recordings provided if you don’t attend live), four sets of weekly readings, and 20 daily tasks.

By the end of the course, you’ll have direct client marketing materials, a marketing plan, and a financial plan for the direct client component of your business.

A recent participant in one of my online courses commented that “This course is an absolute must for anyone looking to jump into the freelance world. Whether you’re an absolute beginner or someone returning to freelance work (like me), you absolutely must make time for this class! It is the best investment you’ll make in yourself.”

If you resolved to ramp up (or launch!) the direct client component of your business this year, let’s get you going on that goal.


Corinne McKay

The direct-to-direct client route: can it work?

I’ve noticed a trend, or at least a micro-trend, among the students who take my classes for beginning freelancers: more and more of them are interested in working with direct clients right off the bat. Typically, these are students who know that their language skills are solid; for example they currently work in a job where they use their non-native language all the time, or where translation is one of their job tasks, and they have significant experience in the business world, just not as freelancers. Is this a viable pathway? Is it a smart pathway? Let’s take a closer look.

In my mind, a translator has four core skills: language(s), writing, specialization(s), and business skills. In an ideal world, we’d all have those in equal measure. And certainly, some of those skills are deal-breakers: if your source language reading skills or your target language writing skills are terrible, you’re simply not going to make it as a translator. And in countries/regions where, when you say “I’m a translator,” it’s assumed that you have a degree in translation, that may be a deal-breaker (for better or worse, not the case in the US, where translation programs seem to be dwindling rather than expanding).

I’d also theorize that there are some market factors underlying this trend. The hardest market niche to break into is the middle; the edges of the market are easier. And in our industry (my take here…feel free to disagree), the edges are huge agencies, which base their hiring primarily or even exclusively on their own tests, and direct clients, who will trust that you can do what you say you can do. In the middle, you’re mostly looking at small to medium agencies, which often, and understandably, have barriers to entry such as three to five years’ experience, ATA certification or a Master’s in translation, and thus are not a great option for people with solid skills but not much experience. A typical student in this situation will tell me something like The higher-quality agencies won’t take me because I don’t have enough experience, and I’m not interested in working for the Wal-Marts of translation or they don’t need my specialization, so I’m thinking of just going straight to direct clients.

My honest answer to the direct-to-direct client question is “I’m not sure…I see pluses and minuses.” On the plus side:

  • For translators who work in specializations that many agencies don’t handle (sports marketing, art history, nanotechnology), it may be the only way to pursue that specialization.
  • For translators who work in language pairs with a lot of downward price pressure (English-Spanish, English-Russian, etc.), direct clients offer a way around the reverse auction scene that prevails on online job boards.
  • I think that many direct clients are less concerned with formal qualifications than with what you can do for them: if you can solve their problem, you’re in.

But then again:

  • To do this, you have to be really, really sure that your language skills are good enough. The direct client market is not the place to be working on your language skills.
  • You have to get some objective assessment of your translation skills: if you’ve never done a translation that anyone else has reviewed, don’t start pursuing direct clients just yet.
  • You don’t know what you don’t know, and that can lead to a lot of problems. Example: I recently translated a marketing brochure for one of my direct clients. When they sent me the pre-press PDF, it included a bunch of errors (text pasted incorrectly, etc.), and a tagline that didn’t make sense. But I never would have seen this, had I not told them to send me the pre-press PDF; things can go wrong when you don’t even know what to ask.

Wise readers, over to you: thoughts?


Corinne McKay

Breaking Into the Direct Client Market- FULL

This class session is now full. To view upcoming dates for all of my online courses, visit my website.

My new quick-start course Breaking Into the Direct Client Market starts on July 1, and I have about three spots left. This is a three-week course with minimal homework, three sets of slide shows with audio tracks (finding direct clients, marketing to direct clients, working successfully with direct clients), three question and answer conference calls for the whole group, and an hour of individual consulting time for every student. Registration is $190, or $175 if you’re an ATA member. The class is aimed at people who have experience as translators but are new to the direct client market. If you’re an established translator and you’d like to take my longer, full-featured course Beyond the Basics of Freelancing, it starts on August 19. We just wrapped up the inaugural session of my other new course, Breaking into the Agency Market; the session was full and I got some excellent feedback from the students, so I think that this new format is a good fit for people who want a shorter, less homework-dependent class. One student commented that: “This course rocks! Many of us have had training & experience in the “how to translate/interpret” end of things, but T&I programs, as far as I know, don’t cover the business end. This course fills this gap that’s not covered much by otherwise very good T&I schools.” If you’re interested in joining the July 1 session, hop on over to my website to read the full description or to register!


Corinne McKay

Theories about direct clients

Recently, a reader posted this comment on my Wrapping up 2009 post: “I just wonder how one goes about getting direct clients. It seems ideal, but it also seems like a hurdle to get over, that many of us have not learned how to do.” I think that a lot of translators feel this way: they’d love to work with more direct clients but they struggle to find them. So, here are a few of my theories about working with direct clients, feel free to add your own:

    • You’re not going to find direct clients all in one place. Or as I heard someone else put it, “You need to think of ten ways to find one direct client, not one way to find ten direct clients.” I think that many of us who started out working with agencies did so by applying to many, many agencies that we found all in one place. For example, during my first year in business I applied to over 400 potential clients and I found the bulk of them by using just a few sources, such as association directories. See this post for more information about applying to agencies. So, first of all, I think it’s important to restrain yourself from looking for that gold mine of direct clients and accept that you are probably going to find them one at a time.
    • Many direct clients will find you, rather than the other way around. Think of it this way; when you receive marketing materials from professional service providers (accountants, web designers, etc.), do you most often save them because you might need them in the future? Do you click on the links in most of the marketing e-mails you receive? I don’t either. So, you have to make sure that you’re easily findable when clients need you. I would say that 90% of the initial contacts I get from direct clients are in a moment of crisis; they have the opportunity to bid on a big contract but the RFP response has to be in English and it’s due next week, they’re exhibiting at a trade fair and just realized that they need their handouts in English, etc. So, make sure that you’re easy to find. Have an engaging and updated profile in the online directory of any associations you belong to; write articles for translation industry websites; get on LinkedIn and similar websites for your non-US countries; write a blog; have a good-looking professional website; join associations related to your specializations. I receive a lot of cold contacts from direct clients because if you Google “freelance French to English translator,” I’m on the first page: this really helps when direct clients are panicking and need a translator.
    • You need to be the kind of person colleagues refer clients to. Quite a number of my direct clients have come to me through colleagues. One colleague closed her business to take an in-house job and gifted me a couple of clients; one colleague who works in English>French refers her clients to me when they need the opposite direction, and I receive a lot of referrals through people I meet at conferences and seminars. I know, this involves talking to people and potentially even putting on nice clothes and leaving your house, but it really works.
    • Consider putting up a website that is only in your source language. Personally, I think that potential clients are attracted to a website that is exclusively in their language, because it makes you seem more approachable to them. For example, my colleague Eve Bodeux and I invested a very modest amount of money into putting up an exclusively French website. We picked a French domain name and the content is in French only (translated by our trusted colleague Marianne Reiner) and we have gotten excellent feedback on it from potential clients. Just for reference, this site cost us just a few hundred dollars to put up.

I don’t think that direct marketing to direct clients is worthless; personally I like postcard ad campaigns because they’re inexpensive and if you put a nice image on the card, clients may keep it just because they like it. However I do think that for most direct clients, “pull” marketing (where the client comes to you) is much more effective than “push” marketing where you go to the client.