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…

Be an ant and not the grasshopper November 30, 2010

Have you heard the Aesop fable about The Ant and The Grasshopper?

One summer day a grasshopper was singing and chirping and hopping about.  He was having a wonderful time.  He saw an ant who was busy gathering and storing grain for the winter.

“Stop and talk to me,” said the grasshopper.   “We can sing some songs and dance a while.”

“Oh no,” said the ant.  “Winter is coming.  I am storing up food for the winter.  I think you should do the same.”

“Oh, I can’t be bothered,” said the grasshopper.  “Winter is a long time off.   There is plenty of food.”   So the grasshopper continued to dance and sing and chip and the ant continued to work.

When winter came the grasshopper had no food and was starving.  He went  to the ant’s house and asked, “Can I have some wheat or maybe a few kernels of corn.  Without it I will starve,” whined the grasshopper.

“You danced last summer,” said the ants in disgust.   “You can continue to dance.”  And they gave him no food.

I was reminded of this by a recent ProZ.com poll on private pension plans. I was shocked to see that 64.4% of the respondents do not have a private pension plan and only 31% do. I started paying into a private pension plan (well, a German annuity) when I was 30, and I also have a Roth IRA set up here in the States. I currently pay about $400 a month into my various pension plans. I reduced the payment to the German annuity when I moved back to the States, but I still continue to pay a small amount into it every month from my German earnings.

I saw how tight things were for my great-aunt when she was living on Social Security – plus I have no doubt that Social Security will be bankrupt by the time I am old enough to collect on it. When I get older I plan to continue translating, but I am certainly not going to keep going at the pace at which I am currently working. This will require some savings, which the private pension plans will provide. This gives me some peace of mind.

Oliver Lawrence did a very good job summarizing exactly how I feel: “I think that those without their own pension provision may find themselves with the choice of continuing to work into their old age or living in something close to poverty in 20-30 years time. Given that more and more people are living longer and longer, combined with the somewhat short-sighted public resistance to increasing the retirement age, where is the state going to find the money to pay all these pensions?” I couldn’t agree more!

So how about you, dear readers? Do you have a private pension plan, and why or why not?

You win some, you lose some November 16, 2010

Putting projects “on hold” is a common occurrence in our industry. I just had another large project put “on hold” today. This is a great euphemism that can range from “sorry, we decided we just didn’t have the money for the project” to “we went with another provider but don’t want to hurt your feelings”. Hey, it happens and I no longer get upset by it. However, I also don’t sit around waiting for the project to pan out. After the first e-mail from the client saying their client was still making a decision I had a feeling it wouldn’t pan out, so I accepted a large OCR job for another client. The job was supposed to start last Wednesday, and I got the cancellation notice this afternoon (Monday). I am now happily plugging away at OCRing 670 pages of English legal texts.

It is important to not give up paid work for something that may or may not happen. Agencies understand this. If the project that you have expressed an interest in working on is delayed and somehow magically gets approved but you have since accepted other work, agencies will usually understand if you are no longer available. Hey, them’s the breaks and they know this.

What clues in your experience indicate a project just may not pan out? Are there any tips or tricks you would like to share with someone who may have just experienced this for the first time or is still trying to break into the industry?