Musings from an overworked translator

Tightening the belt February 26, 2009

It’s hard not to escape the fact that our global economy is in serious trouble. We are bombarded with bad news every day, both in the media and in professional forums. Even Microsoft is laying off employees. And yet we are also hearing about all the corporate and government waste that is going on even while times are supposedly tough. Every day I read a new report in the newspaper about how a bank that received bailout funds spent millions on a corporate event, this corporation gave its CEO several billion dollars in bonuses despite having laid off a ton of workers, or how FEMA has a $2 billion surplus that it isn’t distributing to those who need it.

Many translators have also been increasingly getting e-mails from clients asking us to reduce our already low prices. I have been doing this for at least 15 years and am amazed that the average word price really hasn’t increased with inflation. Freelance translators are constantly asked to reduce their rates “for this job” or “for this client” “because the margin is tight” – this was happening even BEFORE the economy tanked! I realize agencies have to make a profit, and one of the ways is to pay less for the translations they are selling to the end clients, but it’s hard to get blood out of an already anemic stone.

One way to combat this is to stop working with low-paying agencies and concentrate on finding more direct clients. I love working with translation agencies, because it allows me to not have to do all the hand-holding and hoop-jumping working with direct clients entails. However, if one more agency sends me an e-mail asking me to lower my rates “because of the economy” I’m going to scream. They aren’t doing it because of the economy; they are doing it because it makes fiscal sense to take advantage of the bad economy.

Translations cost money, and good translators cost money. Having seen the results of translations by lower-paid “translators” I realize they get what they pay for. Most of the translators I know are no longer willing to proofread, because agencies are also trying to save money by farming the translation to a machine or a cheap translator and then hiring a more expensive translator to try to save the translation through proofreading (at $0.02 or $0.03 a word). This practice is useless, because it is often easier to retranslate the document than try to correct all the errors and still have a halfway decent translation in the end. And those accepting a per-word rate for proofreading certainly don’t earn a decent wage from the hours of hair pulling proofreading a bad translation entails. This is why an hourly proofreading rate is always advisable. I went to school and got a Master’s degree, which obviously doesn’t mean beans to less reputable translation agencies, and have invested thousands of dollars in dictionaries and equipment over the years. Doing your job well costs money. I wish some agencies would stand up to their clients and do a little client education and explain why paying peanuts is not necessarily a good thing.

In the meantime, we need to follow Adam@Home’s lead and tighten our belts. If you haven’t read Corinne’s post on freelance frugality I suggest you head over there right now and check it out. We may be earning less for a little while until the economy improves again, so it pays to practice frugality and perhaps tap into the cushion you hopefully have been setting aside for times like these.

I’m sticking to my rates and if the agency doesn’t like it they can find someone else and I will do the same. Despite all the doom and gloom out there right now, there still are plenty of good agencies that value their independent contractors out there. You just need to look for them.

Surviving the holiday lull December 29, 2008

This is always the toughest few weeks for me, because most of my agency clients are closed between Christmas and New Year’s and checks simply don’t get sent out promptly in January (I think because companies are closing up their books). The only way to survive the holiday lull is to have a financial cushion you can use to pay your bills while your invoices are still outstanding. Most personal finance experts suggest setting aside a cushion of three months’ pay. I have worked my way up to one. I hope to achieve the three months’ cushion some time this year. At this point I have $2,300 in unpaid and overdue invoices.

I woke up early this morning from a dead sleep worrying about paying my bills, but realized that I had forgotten that I had the financial cushion to rely on and rolled over and went back to sleep. It doesn’t help that this is the month the expenses from the ATA conference come due on the credit card. It is so nice to no longer have trouble sleeping because you are worrying about paying your bills and buying groceries. I was in that situation six years ago, when my sister bought me a gift certificate at a grocery store so I could “treat [myself] to some meat.” I hadn’t had any work come in for the entire month of October back in 2002 and money was really tight. Once I realized that clients needed to know I was there in order to send me work, I started an e-mail marketing campaign and have been busy and overworked ever since.

But that doesn’t mean that things aren’t slow around the holidays for me either. I have been relaxing and allowing my tendonitis to heal, but I am now starting to get antsy and can’t wait until the work starts flooding in again. I hope you all had a relaxing holiday. Hopefully some of you newbies took advantage of the fact that most seasoned translators were on holiday and were swamped with potential new clients. I wish you all a happy and prosperous 2009. See you in the New Year!

Holiday greetings to clients December 18, 2008

I’m updating my Christmas card database in Access and thought it would be interesting to share how I thank my clients with whom I have worked in the last year. I made a list of all the clients I have worked with this year. There were 32 of them, many of them returning or long-term clients. I think it is important to send out a Christmas card thanking your clients, even if you only worked for them once or twice or decided to part ways during the year for one reason or another. They still played a role in your success and should be thanked. I then do a mail merge and print out address labels, sign the cards and seal up the envelopes. I always make sure to thank them for playing a role in my business and wish them a happy and prosperous new year.

I also had my favorite Cleveland chocolatier mail-order a big holiday gift of chocolate and peppermint-covered Oreos and assorted chocolates to my favorite client. I know it arrived today, because I got a lot of fun thank you messages from the company owner and several employees via e-mail and Skype. I earned $35,000.00 from that client alone this year, so a little Christmas basket is the least I can do to show my gratitude for their continued business.

If you don’t want to send out Christmas cards, you should pick a holiday to send out cards to your client. One of my clients sends a Thanksgiving card every year. I think that is a great idea, because that way the cards don’t get lost in the Christmas rush of holiday letters and cards. In my case, I am already sending out cards to friends and family, so an extra 30 cards isn’t that big a deal. They just don’t get my holiday letter 🙂

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have address labels to print and cards to stuff. I chose a multi-holiday card this year with a Christmas tree, menorah, etc. to cover all my bases. Happy Holidays!

How not to market yourself August 18, 2008

I just received the following e-mail (the details have been removed to protect the clueless):

Subject: English>Arabic / Italian>Arabic freelance translator
Dear sir or Mm,

I am a freelance translator, proofreader and editor based in Egypt. I am very interested to develop long-term cooperation with your esteemed agency. Please find enclosed my cv. All related certificates are available upon your request.
Looking forward to hearing from you.

—
B.regards
[Name deleted]

Really? Did you even look at my web site? First of all, I am not an agency, but rather a fellow freelancer. Secondly, I don’t work in Arabic or Italian. I only translate German to English. Thirdly, you couldn’t even take the time to spell out “madam” or “best” in “Best regards,” which is just lazy. On the plus side, there was some grammatical awkwardness, but at least there were no typos (if you don’t count the non-capitalized “cv”). And you attached a PDF of your resume instead of a huge, multi-megabyte file or a Word document that could possibly contain a macro virus. Anyways, thanks for the spam, jack! Better luck next time.