Musings from an overworked translator

Show me the money September 2, 2008

No, this is not another post about clients who are late payers. This is about my dismay with some of our colleagues who wait weeks to send their invoice. I simply don’t understand that – especially in light of slow-paying agencies. Why wait a couple weeks to send an invoice and then wait another 4-8 weeks to get paid? That makes no sense to me. I send clients my invoice either with the job or no later than the next day. Chances are too great that I will get busy and/or forget to send an invoice entirely.

I forgot to invoice one client for a year until I was writing the invoice for another project manager and noticed I hadn’t been paid – and hadn’t ever written the invoice! One time was enough for me! I’ve been vigilant ever since. Our project managers and agencies are too busy to send reminders, so I can’t even imagine the number of invoices that simply don’t get submitted.

I subcontracted a job a few weeks ago and had to send a reminder this morning to my colleague, who claimed she has been busy with work and family and thanked me for the reminder. I have to regularly remind another colleague to send me invoices. She’s also constantly complaining about money problems.

The following example is drastic, but I swear it is true. I used to work with a guy in Germany who would wait months to invoice our company. His invoices were then quite large, covering practically full-time employment for 4 to 5 months at a time. The company wasn’t happy about it either, because they had to shell out a huge amount all at once instead of spreading it over the regular time frame. I have no idea how he managed to pay his rent and eat in the meantime.

I know many of our colleagues wait until they have a slow day to invoice. This just doesn’t make sense. First of all, the need for translations keeps growing, and we keep getting busier and busier. You may find yourself issuing tons of invoice at the end of the month to cover all the translations you did that month. This doesn’t make much fiscal sense. You want to spread your payments evenly – not all at once – to cover your cash flow. If you wait too long you may find yourself out of needed capital to pay your mortgage/rent, buy groceries, pay for gas, etc.

If your invoicing process takes up so much time that you need to spend more than 5 minutes to generate an invoice and enter it into your accounting system, you need a new system!!

Is it worth it to expand? August 14, 2008

Sarah Dillon’s blog post, The Royal We: Why Small is the New Big, made me stop and think today in the midst of translating my 11,000 word marketing survey (ok, think about something other than mobile phones 🙂 ). She writes about whether translators market themselves as “we” or “I” and lists various reasons why translators might not necessarily decide to use the royal “we” when marketing themselves. Count me as an “I.”

With my workload, I could certainly branch out and hire on other translators to help (and I sometimes do), but the risk is high that I would be unhappy with the quality of an unknown translator. One of my colleagues was recently burned when she subcontracted a job and the subcontractor left her in the lurch, leaving early for the weekend and delivering a sub-par and incomplete translation. She spent the night fuming and translating the document for delivery to the client the next day. I only work with translators I know are responsible and professional, but everyone can have a bad day. At least if I screw up I only have myself to blame.

I was offered a translation agency two years ago – for free. The owner knew I was responsible and diligent and wanted his agency to go to someone who would run it properly. This was a tough decision for me, and I debated for several weeks, talking to several agency owners I knew and weighing the pros and cons. In the end I decided I would miss translating too much, so I decided not to do it.

I have never regretted that decision. I for one prefer to be an I. It’s safer, and I can control the quality of my work better than if I were to work with others.

More v Network Omni, Inc. August 5, 2008

I received a reminder postcard in today’s mail about More v Network Omni, Inc., the class action suit against Network Omni for failure to pay wages to its interpreters. I had heard rumblings of the suit and had received a notice packet last year, but I didn’t do anything about it because Network Omni didn’t owe me any money. I had worked for Network Omni in the past, but not as an interpreter. I also stopped working with them as soon as I heard the rumblings.

I was contacted by one of my agencies yesterday about a translation job. I informed them since they owed me $1400 in overdue invoices I would not be working with them until they paid them. And frankly, depending on how quickly they pay up and provided they pay all the outstanding invoices, I will probably stop working with them altogether unless business is REALLY slow (which never seems to be the case). That has been my method of choice in dealing with slow-paying agencies. That and finding agencies that have a good reputation and pay within 30 days. There are plenty of good agencies out there that have good payment terms and don’t wait 60 or 90 days to pay you. There is no reason to keep working with a bad apple.

I did a Google search just now and discovered an anonymous Rip Off Report about the case itself and a first-person Rip Off Report from one of the affected interpreters. There is also a discussion about this and accusations of sex discrimination and racial insensitivity here. Frankly, if the company owed me money I wouldn’t be posting anonymous posts on some web site. I would be hiring a lawyer and writing letters to the ATA Chronicle. How did Network Omni let things get so out of control? I remember a posting on the message boards at last year’s ATA conference, but I am frankly surprised that this has actually turned into a class action suit.

The only bright side to this is that if Network Omni loses the case other slow-paying agencies might be inclined to reconsider their business practices.