Musings from an overworked translator

Respond now or you will be out of luck… January 27, 2011

There is a new project in the [Agency] Order Pool. We have matched this project to your translation abilities and would like you to confirm your availability and interest in completing this assignment. The Order Pool is designed to notify all eligible translators of new projects. By confirming your interest in a project from the Order Pool, you are not guaranteed to be assigned that project. Please do not begin working on this project until it has been assigned to you.

There is nothing I hate more than receiving a generic e-mail from a client that has been sent to what seems like every single translator in their database. By the time you click on the enclosed link to look at the job (even if the e-mail arrived in your e-mail inbox a second ago…) the job has inevitably been accepted by someone else and is no longer available in “the queue.”

I have gotten to the point where I automatically delete these e-mails without even looking at them. I understand a system like this saves the project managers a lot of time since they don’t have to keep contacting translators who may not be available; however, I feel this also makes the company so impersonal that I no longer want to work with them. Looking at my client list I seem to prefer agencies who value me as a translator and show this by taking time to determine my availability and sending me a personal e-mail or quick Skype or Twitter message. If you run an agency and are reading this blog I hope you will consider this post and the comments below when you are deciding whether or not to implement such a system.

So dear readers, how do YOU feel about automated e-mails? Do you prefer them? Do you hate them as much as I do? I’m sure everyone here would really like to know what you think about them and why.

Money, money, money… Money! January 14, 2011

For U.S.-based translators, tomorrow’s January 15th and quarterly taxes are due. You should also be thinking about getting your tax preparation started. (Thanks to Caitilin I now know we have until the 18th (see the comments). Thanks, Caitilin.) This fact and the blog post cited below have me thinking about money today.

Even though this blog is run by a company pushing their online invoicing/billing system, this guest post by Joseph D’Agnese & Denise Kiernan, authors of The Money Book for Freelancers, Part-Timers, and the Self-Employed (Crown/Three Rivers, 2010) entitled Five Money Mistakes Freelancers Make is well worth reading. These tips bear repeating over and over again, because freelancers need to hear this advice and embrace it. If you don’t I can guarantee you will have sleepless nights worrying about how you will pay your bills and could possibly run yourself into bankruptcy (if you don’t follow tips #2 and 3). Been there, done that (the sleepless nights – not the bankruptcy part).

They include:

1. Mistake #1: Not Having an Emergency Fund
2. Mistake #2: Not Saving for Taxes
3. Mistake #3: Not Paying Estimated Taxes
4. Mistake #4: Not Treating Yourself Like a Business
5. Mistake #5: Living for the Big Score (aka Save for Retirement!!! and don’t lease or buy things you can’t afford right now)

And one commenter suggests one more – Mistake #6 Not Hiring a Decent Accountant (if you’re more than a one person shop). …although I just have to say that hiring an accountant is a good idea in general. There are quite a few freelancers who do their own taxes, but they are generally stressing themselves out a day or two before taxes are due compiling their tax return. And while they are doing their taxes they aren’t translating (and are turning down any jobs that come in). It takes me a half hour to print out my report for my accountant and e-mail it to him and an hour to meet with him, sign it and pick up a copy for my records.

In a nod to Patenttranslator, here is the inspiration to the title of this blog post:

Worker’s Compensation and the Independent Contractor January 10, 2011

I received an e-mail from a client the other day telling me I was required to fill out the attached Worker’s Compensation form or I would not be able to work with them in the future. My first reaction was “Heck no, I’m an independent contractor. We aren’t subject to Worker’s Compensation.” I immediately called my project manager to clarify, who then double-checked with the “Subcontracts Coordinator” who had sent the e-mail in the first place. Luckily I also twittered my indignation about my client not understanding the “Independent” in Independent Contractor.

An agency owner who is one of my followers graciously explained why the agency was doing this (and did a MUCH better job than the Subcontracts Coordinator, who just said I needed to fill it out “because she is a contractor… and resides in the U.S.” – talk about a non-answer…). The agency owner shall remain nameless, but according to her, “These are the kind of he-said she-said issues that need to be addressed at ATA. These are the things Independent Contractors don’t know but should understand.”

Her agency did not have a worker’s comp policy until this past summer because they refused to put their people through the paperwork. Many worker’s comp companies will not grant policies to LSPs unless they have their contractors complete the forms. The form is used by the worker’s comp company to then evaluate that you ARE for sure an Independent Contractor and determine for themselves if you are an Independent Contractor or an employee because if the LSP misclassifies you, and you get hurt, you can sue and win and the policy would have to cover you if the state reclassifies you as an employee.” There are some companies out there that don’t require them to do this, but they are very hard to find. It apparently took her agency 3 years to find a company that didn’t require this.

Herein lies the rub… apparently agencies even have to get the forms filled out by people they don’t use if they advertise them. According to her example, “Say we have a database of 1200 translators. If we only use 68 in a year, you still need 1200 forms because it’s on your website.” You need 100% compliance, because otherwise the insurance company thinks you are hiding something if you have fewer forms on your contractors than you claim. Her reasoning was “Some guy in China who makes $25/yr shouldn’t have to.” Her company kept looking for a new insurance company who wouldn’t make them jump through all those hoops. However, the state found out they didn’t have a worker’s comp policy and fined the company $75,000. Luckily, they were able to get the fine reduced, but in essence they were fined because they didn’t want to inconvenience their Independent Contractors.

As she graciously sums it up: “This whole independent contractor vs employee issue, misclassification, work comp, unemployment and all is a nightmare for LSPs. … The Association of Language Companies has a committee that only helps bail members out when they get sued or fined in situations like these. That’s why it’s über-important that independent contractors see themselves as such and hold up their end too. There’s one LSP I know that had to literally pay the state millions because an audit said they had misclassified employees as independent contractors since the 80s so they had to pay back everything. What made the difference? What made these independent contractors employees instead? According to the company owner, name tags with the LSP name on them.”

So the moral of this story is that even though we are Independent Contractors we should fill out the form and make our clients’ lives easier. If you don’t want to submit form, you can show proof of your own worker’s comp policy, but let’s be honest – there probably isn’t a single freelance translator out there who has their own worker’s comp policy…