Musings from an overworked translator

Culling the herd (a.k.a. It’s so hard to say goodbye…) June 26, 2008

As I have mentioned before, I have reached the point where I can be more selective about my clients. I have already raised my rates and still find myself regularly turning down two to three (or more) jobs a day from new and existing clients. I am finding the process difficult on several different levels.

I severed ties with a particularly difficult client (a European PR agency) several months ago after a nasty e-mail exchange with one of its employees. I had been working with them since 2006. They would frequently send me texts that were due within a few hours and had asked me to translate a difficult batch of software strings and other technical website features for their client’s new portal. They also expected me to use a specialized, proprietary tool without being able to answer any of my questions about it (in all fairness the client had sent them the tool and they had no idea how to use it. Luckily I am adept enough with software to be able to figure it out on my own). When I would turn the jobs down they would literally beg me (“bitte, bitte“) to accept the job. The whole month of the site launch had rankled my enjoyment of working with them.

I had been getting more and more frustrated with their demands and complete cluelessness about the field of translation. All my attempts at client education were met with complete disregard. After the employee demanded I send her the character count of the multiple-file job I had delivered a few days before and had already archived, I told her my final line count, which was how I billed them, and said if she needed the character count she could do it by opening the files and using the Word count feature in Word (the files had no text boxes or anything that wouldn’t be counted). She replied that she wasn’t my employee, which set me off, so I replied that I wasn’t her employee either and suggested she find someone else to translate her texts in the future. It left bad feelings on both sides, which is a shame because I really enjoyed working with the agency owner.

I recently found myself in a similar, yet slightly different situation at the end of last week. I have been working with a European translation agency for about a year now and was never really happy with the remuneration because they insisted on using five different Trados rate classifications. They approached me about translating a large job that would take up the entire month, which I considered accepting provided I still had time for my other clients’ jobs. However, when I asked about an outstanding invoice that was three weeks overdue I was told that their payment terms were 60 days, which was news to me. Payment up to now had always been made within 45 days, which had been acceptable. At that point I decided I needed to let them go. It was a tough decision, because they agreed to make an exception and honor my payment terms of 30 days. However, they asked that I start billing them in U.S. dollars, which would cost me bank transfer fees, instead of paying me in euros to my German account. And then there was still the problem with the Trados rate scale. But that is another post in and of itself…

I realize I made a good decision in the first case, but I am questioning the second. We ended our e-mail discussion on very good terms. She thanked me for my “frank response” and said she would take my arguments about Trados into consideration and discuss it with her colleagues. She also wished me all the best and said “If in the future your circumstances change please don’t hesitate to get back into contact with us.” Such an understanding response and willingness to compromise makes it very difficult to have the resolve to stick to a decision.

I would love to hear your opinions on the matter. Where do you draw the line in the sand with a client? How have you handled having too many clients and not enough time in the day to translate all the jobs offered to you? I am opposed to the idea of outsourcing extra work or expanding to become an agency, because I am proud of my work and love what I do.

Spreading the love June 24, 2008

Inspired by the Masked Translator’s post, When your client goes bankrupt, I want to stress the importance of “spreading the love.” By that I mean the importance of not relying on one or two customers for all of your work. I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. If one of those customers goes bankrupt or the project manager you work with leaves to strike out on their own or go work for another company, you might find yourself in dire straits.

When I was first establishing myself on the U.S. market after relocating to the U.S. in 2001, one of my colleagues gave me the best advice when she told me you need 7 clients to be successful. I realize the wisdom of those words and strive to cultivate a large client base. I didn’t realize how many clients I actually had until I entered them all into my Translation Office 3000 database. It has reached the point where I am trying to cull some of my clients who are difficult to work with or have unacceptable payment terms, but more on that another day.

Not every client is going to contact you as their first point of contact, but that isn’t necessary to build a thriving translation business. I can confidently say that I am the “A translator” for two of my clients. When they contact me (at least once a week, if not some weeks every day) I do everything I can to make sure I have capacity for their work. One of them tends to send a small job every day or every couple days, but those small jobs add up when I issue my invoice to them at the end of the month (I only issue monthly bills for three clients – everyone else gets billed when the job is delivered). I also have numerous clients for whom I am their B or C translator, but that is okay too. Having several clients who contact you with job requests (perhaps not every day, but at least several times a month) ensures that you will be kept busy throughout the month.

This also translates into a steady inflow of payments, so there is no major ebb and flow in the bank account (except for maybe right after my quarterly tax payment when the clients have also had to pay their quarterly taxes and are a little slow in issuing payments). I must be extremely lucky, because I have never had a client go bankrupt while owing me money. However, I also don’t tie myself up with one client’s job for an entire month, ensuring no other money will be coming in. If you spread the love, you’ll find things go relatively smoothly most of the time (but be sure to tuck aside some money as a cushion to cover the dry spells – and never, never tap into your quarterly tax payment fund).