Musings from an overworked translator

Not all clients are created equal July 14, 2009

Maybe I’ve been spoiled by my wonderful clients, but I am always surprised when a less-than-wonderful client contacts me. Maybe I reacted differently than I usually would because I had just finished translating 3,904 words in six hours and was looking forward to some time off, but I like to think I would have reacted in the exact same way on any normal day. A client with whom I have never worked before called me at 5:15 p.m., which isn’t that unusual, about a potential job that they were looking to fill. I agreed to check my e-mail, take a look and get back to her. If I had heard the name clearly and not assumed it was a call from the client to whom I had just delivered the job, I probably would have told her I was busy. I was surprised to see it was from this other agency (BTW, why do all translation agencies have names that start with Tech, Trans or Lingo – and why can’t project managers speak slowly and enunciate their words on the phone?). Anyway, I received the following e-mail with four PDF attachments:

We have a new potential order that we need a translator for. This will be from German to English, and the turn around time will be for 7-16-09. I need a word count to determine the price for our client, please let me know as soon as possible.  Thank you.

Do you see what irritated me? Trying to be diplomatic, I wrote back stating that she had not specified a deadline when we spoke on the phone, I was already booked for tomorrow, and I would need at least two days for the job. I then not so subtly (or I guess subtly because she missed it) referred her to ABBYY FineReader or PDF Transformer and Practicount to determine the word count, but estimated the files to be around 3,300 words. What can I say? I was feeling generous…

She responded with “Let me see if I can get an extension, but in the meantime if you can provide a word count that would be great.  Thank you.”

Um, how can I put this diplomatically? Dear clients, it is not your freelance translators’ job to do the word counts or other project manager duties for you. If you want us to do word counts you should offer/expect to compensate us for our time. Also, if you want Word files back it would be very much appreciated if you could OCR the files yourself and send source Word files to us. Otherwise we reserve the right to charge you a surcharge.

As one colleague put it so eloquently on Twitter: “PDF xl8 – plus 20%. Doing her job counting? Your minimum fee. :)”

Translators should read Kevin’s eHow article on How to Profit from PDF Translation to get some good ideas on how to negotiate rates that involve PDFs. I personally prefer to OCR the files myself, because then I know what the source document looks like and can fix any potential incorrectly scanned words. If you don’t know how to OCR files and are attending the upcoming ATA conference, I invite you to attend Tuomas Kostiainen and my presentation, “Making Portable Document Formats (PDF) work for you” on Saturday, 10/31/09, from 9:00-10:30 a.m.

In the meantime I had accepted another job from another long-standing client and was no longer available for the rest of the week. I then politely let her know she should find another translator. I am so glad that I did not spend time OCRing the files and then running them through Practicount, because that would have been an uncompensated waste of my time.

How not to use a blog for self-promotion June 23, 2009

Wow, I had to share this little gem with you all. Someone on PT found the link on Craigs List for Berlin. For those who don’t read German, he says “I’m not much of a translator. My German isn’t that great, but we offer ‘tranlsations’ [sic] of documents, web sites and whatever else you want. We offer you over 150 languages, and our prices are great!  Contact us today your free offer [sic].” I don’t know about you, but I’m sold… so I click on his link and find one of the worst examples of a blog I’ve ever seen.

If your blog posts are primarily all about how wonderful you are and all the services you offer – and one blog post makes you scroll fifteen times to get to the end, chances are slim you will have anyone subscribing to your RSS Feed or taking you seriously. This isn’t a blog – this is a cheap, bottom of the barrel alternative to a pseudo-professional website.

I’m ashamed that this “translation company” is from my home state of Ohio. Oh, and if you are pushing your language skills and trying to convince clients to hire you, Jon, you really should use proper English like capitalizing “English” – and a list of every topic you have ever translated also isn’t all that impressive.

A networking tale June 3, 2009

I just got a phone call from someone in Wisconsin looking for a state-certified translator recognized in Spain to translate some official documents for him. He asked if any of my NOTA members were a “traductor jurado” (sworn translator – thanks to @nj_linguist on Twitter for helping me with the term and its spelling). My first reaction was to tell him no and refer him to the ATA member directory, but then I realized the directory probably didn’t offer a search field for that. At that point I had a flash of brilliance (if I can call it that…). I suggested he contact my former mentor at Kent State and ask her for the names of some KSU graduates living in Spain – and specified one person who I think might best be able to help because he is active in the translation industry in Spain. I knew that from talking with Marian Greenfield several years ago, because she had told me he had said hello when she was invited to speak there.

Networking truly pays off. Maybe not for me in this case, but it feels good to know I was hopefully able to help him and at least point him in the right direction. When he called me he was getting pretty desperate. I hope my past connections – even if I haven’t spoken with them in 15 years – will be able to help him. It’s always a good idea to be able to refer colleagues who might be able to help even if you can’t. They might return the favor some day.