Musings from an overworked translator

Operating as a business August 12, 2010

I don’t even know where to start with this, so I’ll just come out with it. I just found out today that one of my colleagues is owed €20,000 by a client (a client with whom I used to work and gave the boot to several years ago). To make things worse, some of those jobs had been given to another translator to translate and he has paid her for her work. So essentially he has LOST money on this customer! How on Earth did this person let it come to this? I was completely speechless when I heard about it (which, believe me, almost never happens).

I don’t know about you all, but I would have cut this “agency” off after being owed €1,000. Never in a million years would I have allowed the bills to pile up to €20,000. That’s just insane. I also would have been reporting my experience on Payment Practices after the first majorly overdue invoice (my rule of thumb is 30 days overdue is too long), so other translators won’t fall into the same trap. People, people, we aren’t translating for the fun of it – or at least we shouldn’t be. I don’t know about you, but I have rent to pay, groceries to buy, a dog to feed, and bills that need to be paid. I am not in the business of working for free. I am absolutely aghast at some of my colleagues’ business practices.

If you learn nothing from this blog but this I will have achieved my goal – to be successful you need to act like a professional! That means treating your clients with respect, responding promptly to e-mails and phone calls, billing within a reasonable time frame and following up on overdue invoices. If a client lets the overdue invoices pile up you need to stop working for them. Whether you decide to continue working with them after they have caught up on the invoices is entirely up to you, but please don’t ever let the overdue invoices total half, a third or even a fourth of your annual revenue. Read Corinne’s book on How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. Read Judy’s book called The Entrepreneurial Linguist. For goodness’ sake act like a businessperson!

Caution is good, but trust is better July 23, 2010

I was sitting at my computer the other day and received a Skype message from one of the agency owners with whom I work, out of the blue, thanking me for being such a professional. I believe the quote was, “THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for being such a professional.” Turns out she was filling in for her Director of Translation, who is out on vacation, and was having all kinds of troubles with the vendors. The incident that was making her want to bang her head against the wall – hard – was with an into Spanish translator. The job had been assigned on Tuesday and two days later (on the due date) the vendor told her he wouldn’t do the job because “we never sent a contract.” She had sent him all the preliminary stuff she had sent me when I started working with them and told him “if you have something else, we’ll sign it.” He told her flat-out “I don’t trust your agency.” In fact, his response was: “I am paranoid of not getting paid. If you are reputable agency that is in this type of business you would have had an agreement ready. I asked you that several days ago and you played games with me. I really do not trust your agency.” She had to scramble to find someone who could translate the file that day in order to meet the deadline and told him “Next time, please let us know sooner.  Your paranoia has discourteously cost another translator two days.” This is one of the most upstanding agencies I know. They bill themselves as being a socially conscious agency. The fact that he doesn’t trust the agency shows me he doesn’t know them very well at all.

I understand that some translators have heard the horror stories about agencies that don’t pay, but, folks, they truly are very rare. For every Ursula Bull or Language Promotion, there are tons of reputable agencies like CETRA, Syntes Language Group, Partnertrans, Geotext, Schofield & Partner, etc. Caution is good, but trust is better. It is so important to build a good working relationship with your clients. By establishing a relationship with your clients you get to know each other and they come to rely on you – and most importantly come back time and again.

I have all kinds of clients with all kinds of different business practices. Some make me sign a contract before working with them. Some send me a P.O. for every job. And some send me an e-mail in which they tell me I have the job and when I need to deliver the file(s). In my eyes, an e-mail telling me I have the go-ahead to do the job is just as valid (and in most cases legally binding) as signing a contract. Because I know the people I am working with and have established a good working relationship.

I’m not saying you should implicitly trust everyone who contacts you, but try getting to know or learn about your contact and his/her agency before automatically painting them with the “Big Bad Agency” brush. Caution is a good attribute to have, but by being paranoid you may unnecessarily alienate a potential long-term client.

It’s official… I hate moving! June 16, 2010

I know I have been really quiet here of late. Regular readers and my Twitter followers know that I moved at the beginning of the month. The first couple days were tough. Yes, I translated 10,000 words DURING my move and several thousand immediately afterward. Ah, the life of a freelance translator… I worked off my back-up computer with an English keyboard. After two days of that I set up my office computer and German keyboard on a provisional solution of the legs and the middle panel of my new desk. I’m still waiting for my friend who gave it to me to come by and help me put it together. I still don’t have the office set up to anywhere near what I would call comfortable, but at least I can walk in the room amidst the boxes. I can’t find my hanging file folders for this year’s check stubs, bills, business expenses and bank statements, which is frustrating. And to top it all off, yesterday our estimated taxes were due and I can’t find my refill checks in any of the boxes. I need to check the garage to see if a box slipped through the organization process. But at least most of the important things have been unboxed and have found a home in the new place. It took about a week for my dog to settle into the new place and feel comfortable. I love the new neighborhood and the serenity. And most of all, I love having a real office with a tall ceiling and walls I can hang things on! OK, maybe moving isn’t SO bad…

Are you a self-injuring translator? March 29, 2010

One of my colleagues posted this to one of my listservs, and I thought it was well-worth sharing with the rest of you. The post is entitled “Toxic Translation: A Twelve-Step Program for Self-Injuring Translators.” We need to keep reminding ourselves that the only behavior we can truly change is our own. My favorite quote from the post is “Translation rates are dropping because translators accept low rates. If you want rates to stop descending, you must take your finger off the elevator button.” If you are unhappy with the way an agency is treating you, you need to stand up for yourself and ask for what you want. And if the agency isn’t able or willing to give you what you want, you need to have the courage to walk away – and most importantly let them know why! If more of us walk away we will be in a better position in the long run. There are good and bad agencies out there. Let’s encourage the good ones and run from the bad ones. We need to stick together. United we stand, divided we fall!