| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Mega-rant: my one-year experience as a new translator Thread poster: Yehezkel Tenenboim
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I gave it a shot. I gave up. Here's why.
Rates
You won't be surprised to see this at the top of the list. I've been working with dozens of agencies. I'm yet to find even one that would agree to pay even the lowest rates listed on the famous rates table here on ProZ. Makes me wonder whether this table is a myth. Heck, why don't I mention some agencies: Acclaro, Argo, and Taika from USA; EDU from Turkey, Hever, Lingo, and Tomedes from Israel. All with ste... See more I gave it a shot. I gave up. Here's why.
Rates
You won't be surprised to see this at the top of the list. I've been working with dozens of agencies. I'm yet to find even one that would agree to pay even the lowest rates listed on the famous rates table here on ProZ. Makes me wonder whether this table is a myth. Heck, why don't I mention some agencies: Acclaro, Argo, and Taika from USA; EDU from Turkey, Hever, Lingo, and Tomedes from Israel. All with stellar reviews on the Blue Board, and all won't agree to pay the average (or even minimum) rates.
When I confront them with the infamous table, they present a whole array of excuses for why they should be exempt: they provide me with constant work so that I don't need to search for clients; I'll get faster with time, therefore my hourly rate will increase; and so on. Some of my end clients in the past year were Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and AstraZeneca. Names ring a bell? Does it make sense that someone translating for them should earn less than minimum wage?
Ridiculous deadlines
Obviously we're all free to reject any job with a deadline we're not comfortable with. But if you end up needing to reject 90% of the jobs, this isn't feasible. It never fails to anger me getting a job with Ford as an end client, translating 100 words of an error message for an SUV dashboard, with a deadline in 3 hours. You wanna tell me this is the only thing preventing the launch of a new car or something? How could this possibly be so urgent?
Obviously I don't understand all the entire workings of the agency's work, but I hate the concept of being treated like a child, with zero transparency. My theory is that the agencies, who are mostly populated by lazy, incompetent cretins, botch the deadlines themselves and then try to save the situation by stressing the translators. This, combined with a business-world notion that stressing the workers and keeping them "on edge" is best practice for increasing productivity. I'm not playing this game.
BTW, I was never offered any extra rate for expediency. This could've sweetened the pill for me, but it's just not done. Apparently in the translation world, urgent delivery in the middle of the night or on Christmas, or handling an ultra-sensitive, intricate, complicated document doesn't earn you any extra points (or cents).
Impossible translations
Half the jobs I get, especially in the "localization" realm, contain sentence fragments devoid of any context. "Drag". Is it mouse drag? Friction? Drag queen? A verb, a noun? When I ask, the annoyed agency says they'll ask the client. After several days I get a vague reply that doesn't help. Do clients and agencies enjoy working like this? I can't see the value they gain from this.
Jobs where you lose money
Half the jobs I get contain one sentence. Payment: 20 cents. With me needing to process the e-mail, login to their online portal, change the password because it expired, download the source files, try again because it failed, and so on and so forth, I'm losing money on this job. But agencies seem to think that this is a normal mode of operation. When I reject such jobs, they ask baffledly: "Is it because this isn't your field?"
MTPE
This, like all my other points, is discussed elsewhere in the forums: agencies have seemed to figure out an ingenious money-saving trick, whereby they throw their text into Google Translate and ask us poor translators to fix it for half the normal rate. How could anyone agree to this? From my experience most of the translation needs to be redone. Does anyone ever go to McDonald's and ask for a burger for half the price in return for doing the frying yourself? In the translation world anything goes.
Over-zealous evaluators
I haven't yet performed any translation test where the evaluator didn't scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to find mistakes, and even then they were false negatives. This too has been discussed here, and a bunch of reasons were given, with a general advice to just move on. Fine -- but it doesn't mean I need to like it.
No human connection
Aside from the rates, this is perhaps what disturbs me the most. I'm imagining that before the digital age, translators used to meet their direct (!) clients on a cup of coffee, asked them how their wife was doing and commented about the weather, and then cordially discussed the project. The translator would point to an ambiguous sentence, the client would explain what they meant. I want to believe that this is still done in prose (how do you even get such jobs nowadays without sleeping with the author?), but maybe I'm naive.
Instead, we're doomed nowadays to deal with faceless agencies. The people who work there mostly know nothing about languages or translation, and it's impossible to discuss anything of substance with them. We receive daily mass e-mails, addressed to dozens of translators, and need to respond quickly to get the job. We're often tasked with correcting the translations of other faceless translators. We crave to ask them why they chose a certain word here -- maybe we're missing something -- but that's not how it works. We work with TMs that were populated by hundreds of other faceless translators, often with inexplicable choices.
CAT tools
This is certainly not the thing that made me quit, but anyone else despises them like me? I see how they might come in handy when translating technical specifications, but I never do, and still I'm required to use them even for prose-like content. To me they are like Photoshop: a steep learning curve and hundreds of features of which we commonly use around 10%. Incidentally, all the CAT jobs I've ever done didn't feature a TM or a glossary, which is arguably the main reason for using CAT in the first place. Or am I missing something? And more incidentally: I'm not some computer-averse boomer. I'm a web developer and an IT technician -- and still I find these tools to be an unnecessary burden that slows down my work (and yes, I know, when using CAT you don't need to worry about layout). Hell, I've often been asked to merge segments that the CAT had erroneously split. Seriously? Is this what being a translator means?
Two small things about myself
First, I'm not a quitter. Some of you may think that I haven't tried long enough, or that I haven't truly given it my best. Trust me, I have. But after a year of working nights and weekends and barely making ends meet, I'm just not seeing any trend of improvement. Second, some of you may think that maybe I'm just a lousy translator, maybe combined with being a lousy person, making it difficult for clients to work with me. This, of course, is not related to any of my points above. But I'd just like to point out that my translations and my work ethics and mannerisms have been praised by agencies without exception. Just in case you think this is relevant.
Summary
I'm not expecting you guys to beg me not to quit, or to express your condolences for my bad experience. Let's turn this instead into a positive discussion, where you guys share why you love translating more than anything else in this world, and why this is the best job imaginable, and where you politely point me to where I'm looking at things wrongly. Sounds good?
[Edited at 2021-12-09 09:49 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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What a fantastic rant! Loved it.
The obvious answer is that you’re dealing with the wrong agencies. You need to move off the sea floor.
For example, I regularly do tiny jobs of one or just a few lines. I get paid an hour every time.
The other day I got paid an hour to add a full stop to a syringe label.
What do I love? Taking my time to do a good job. Doing stuff pretty much nobody else could do. Having loads of free time to spend all that mo... See more What a fantastic rant! Loved it.
The obvious answer is that you’re dealing with the wrong agencies. You need to move off the sea floor.
For example, I regularly do tiny jobs of one or just a few lines. I get paid an hour every time.
The other day I got paid an hour to add a full stop to a syringe label.
What do I love? Taking my time to do a good job. Doing stuff pretty much nobody else could do. Having loads of free time to spend all that money they keep throwing at me.
This is not to brag. Just to show it can be very different. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Exactly my experience in the last few years... | Dec 8, 2021 |
Especially regarding the low rates, the impossible deadlines, the crappy pen-pushing agencies. If were to start today, I'd run a mile!
| | | | Michael Newton 
United States
Local time: 10:54
Japanese to English
+ ...
| New Translator | Dec 8, 2021 |
By now you have learned the wisdom: agencies are not friends. I am familiar with a number of the agencies mentioned and shudder when I read their names. Arrogance, rudeness, abusiveness and on one occasion, foul language. Who staffs these agencies? Children of former STASI members? Mafiosi/mafiose? Escapees from mental asylums? One of the agencies mentioned pays for docs under $499 within 30 days and for docs $500 and over, you have to wait as long as 80 days. I researched them and they are some... See more By now you have learned the wisdom: agencies are not friends. I am familiar with a number of the agencies mentioned and shudder when I read their names. Arrogance, rudeness, abusiveness and on one occasion, foul language. Who staffs these agencies? Children of former STASI members? Mafiosi/mafiose? Escapees from mental asylums? One of the agencies mentioned pays for docs under $499 within 30 days and for docs $500 and over, you have to wait as long as 80 days. I researched them and they are some sort of religious cult. Translators are nothing more than cockroaches for them. You would do well to search out direct clients rather than working with these goniffs. Replying to the "jobs" offered is useless, like playing darts blindfolded. At the end of the day, they will demand CAT tools and a discount. After 20 years, I have canceled my proz membership. No regrets. ▲ Collapse
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| General advice -- Work with smaller agencies and try to secure direct clients | Dec 8, 2021 |
Yehezkel Tenenboim wrote:
I gave it a shot. I gave up. Here's why.
Yehezkel, consider refocusing your marketing efforts. Forget about big translation companies and agencies.
From my 35-year translation/interpreting experience, my best clients have been and remain a few direct clients (I am taking steps now to increase the direct-client base) and smaller agencies serving the higher-end translation market. Typically, smaller agencies (1) don't boast 100,000-strong databases of translators and interpreters; and (2) don't cover every single language spoken worldwide. Instead, they are quite selective when adding new talent to their pool, offering a few language pairs (or a single language pair), and a few specialist areas (or, again, a single area, such as Legal, or Finance, or Cryptocurrencies, or IT, etc.)
Rates
I'm yet to find even one that would agree to pay even the lowest rates listed on the famous rates table here on ProZ. Makes me wonder whether this table is a myth.
I secured ~90% of my clients through ProZ.com (job postings, searches for EN-RU translators with relevant expertise and skills, referrals, etc.). And my regular rates (for agencies) are at the "Standard" level stated in the famous rates table for my language pair.
Ridiculous deadlines
BTW, I was never offered any extra rate for expediency. This could've sweetened the pill for me, but it's just not done. Apparently in the translation world, urgent delivery in the middle of the night or on Christmas, or handling an ultra-sensitive, intricate, complicated document doesn't earn you any extra points (or cents).
I charge a markup for rush jobs ranging between 20% and 100%, depending on the turnaround times involved, to be agreed on a case-by-case basis. Frequently, the urgency vanishes as soon as I quote a rush rate
Impossible translations
Half the jobs I get, especially in the "localization" realm, contain sentence fragments devoid of any context. "Drag". Is it mouse drag? Friction? Drag queen? A verb, a noun? When I ask, the annoyed agency says they'll ask the client. After several days I get a vague reply that doesn't help.
Warn them that in the absence of context (such as screenshots or otherwise) you can only come up with an educated guess that may prove to be entirely wrong.
Jobs where you lose money. Half the jobs I get contain one sentence. Payment: 20 cents. With me needing to process the e-mail, login to their online portal, change the password because it expired, download the source files, try again because it failed, and so on and so forth, I'm losing money on this job. But agencies seem to think that this is a normal mode of operation.
Charge a minimum fee equal to what you would charge for 100, 200, 300 words, whatever.
MTPE
... agencies have seemed to figure out an ingenious money-saving trick, whereby they throw their text into Google Translate and ask us poor translators to fix it for half the normal rate. How could anyone agree to this? From my experience most of the translation needs to be redone.
I do use MT suggestions for my own purposes when working in Trados Studio, but I don't accept MTPE/PEMT jobs, at least at this point.
Over-zealous evaluators
I haven't yet performed any translation test where the evaluator didn't scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to find mistakes, and even then they were false negatives.
A superb professional reviser/editor is a rare God-sent gift
No human connection
... we're doomed nowadays to deal with faceless agencies. The people who work there mostly know nothing about languages or translation, and it's impossible to discuss anything of substance with them. We receive daily mass e-mails, addressed to dozens of translators, and need to respond quickly to get the job. We're often tasked with correcting the translations of other faceless translators. We crave to ask them why they chose a certain word here -- maybe we're missing something -- but that's not how it works. We work with TMs that were populated by hundreds of other faceless translators, often with inexplicable choices.
Again, don't work for mega-LSPs.
CAT tools
To me they are like Photoshop: a steep learning curve and hundreds of features of which we commonly use around 10%. Incidentally, all the CAT jobs I've ever done didn't feature a TM or a glossary, which is arguably the main reason for using CAT in the first place. Or am I missing something? ... I find these tools to be an unnecessary burden that slows down my work (and yes, I know, when using CAT you don't need to worry about layout). Hell, I've often been asked to merge segments that the CAT had erroneously split. Seriously? Is this what being a translator means?
I have been using CAT tools since 2003, and I started building up my own industry-, client, and project-specific TMs and termbases from day one. For instance, I started working for various UN agencies in 2007, and my relevant TM contains over 1M translation units (and my UN-related MultiTerm termbase contains ~30K entries).
Summary
I'm not expecting you guys to beg me not to quit, or to express your condolences for my bad experience. Let's turn this instead into a positive discussion, where you guys share why you love translating more than anything else in this world, and why this is the best job imaginable, and where you politely point me to where I'm looking at things wrongly.
Hopefully, my 2 (or 3) cents will make you reconsider quitting our fascinating profession
[Edited at 2021-12-08 13:06 GMT]
| | | | Michael Newton
United States
Local time: 10:54
Japanese to English
+ ...
| New Translator | Dec 8, 2021 |
Kudos to you, Yehezhel! You have learned in one year what it takes other translators several years to learn. I wish you the very best in your career.
| | | | Kevin Fulton
United States
Local time: 10:54
German to English
| This used to be a dignified profession | Dec 8, 2021 |
Judging by the comments of many new translators here at Proz, this is no longer the case. I've been very fortunate; the vast majority of my clients over the years have treated me as a professional. My encounters with crackpots, cheats and deadbeats have been few, partly because of luck, but also because my early experiences allowed me to cultivate a clientele that respects translators.
I'm in the twilight of my career, and I've pared down my client list to a small handful of agencie... See more Judging by the comments of many new translators here at Proz, this is no longer the case. I've been very fortunate; the vast majority of my clients over the years have treated me as a professional. My encounters with crackpots, cheats and deadbeats have been few, partly because of luck, but also because my early experiences allowed me to cultivate a clientele that respects translators.
I'm in the twilight of my career, and I've pared down my client list to a small handful of agencies and direct clients. Given current market conditions, I certainly wouldn't recommend entering this line of work.
[Edited at 2021-12-08 13:33 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:54
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Couldn't be bothered | Dec 8, 2021 |
Yehezkel Tenenboim wrote:
I gave it a shot. I gave up. Here's why.
Rates
You won't be surprised to see this at the top of the list. I've been working with dozens of agencies. I'm yet to find even one that would agree to pay even the lowest rates listed on the famous rates table here on ProZ. Makes me wonder whether this table is a myth. Heck, why don't I mention some agencies: Acclaro, Argo, and Taika from USA; EDU from Turkey, Hever, Lingo, and Tomedes from Israel. All with stellar reviews on the Blue Board, and all won't agree to pay the average (or even minimum) rates.
When I confront them with the infamous table, they present a whole array of excuses for why they should be exempt: they provide me with constant work so that I don't need to search for clients; I'll get faster with time, therefore my hourly rate will increase; and so on. Some of my end clients in the past year were Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and AstraZeneca. Names ring a bell? Does it make sense that someone translating for them should earn less than minimum wage?
Ridiculous deadlines
Obviously we're all free to reject any job with a deadline we're not comfortable with. But if you end up needing to reject 90% of the jobs, this isn't feasible. It never fails to anger me getting a job with Ford as an end client, translating 100 words of an error message for an SUV dashboard, with a deadline in 3 hours. You wanna tell me this is the only thing preventing the launch of a new car or something? How could this possibly be so urgent?
Obviously I don't understand all the entire workings of the agency's work, but I hate the concept of being treated like a child, with zero transparency. My theory is that the agencies, who are mostly populated by lazy, incompetent cretins, botch the deadlines themselves and then try to save the situation by stressing the translators. This, combined with a business-world notion that stressing the workers and keeping them "on edge" is best practice for increasing productivity. I'm not playing this game.
BTW, I was never offered any extra rate for expediency. This could've sweetened the pill for me, but it's just not done. Apparently in the translation world, urgent delivery in the middle of the night or on Christmas, or handling an ultra-sensitive, intricate, complicated document doesn't earn you any extra points (or cents).
Impossible translations
Half the jobs I get, especially in the "localization" realm, contain sentence fragments devoid of any context. "Drag". Is it mouse drag? Friction? Drag queen? A verb, a noun? When I ask, the annoyed agency says they'll ask the client. After several days I get a vague reply that doesn't help. Do clients and agencies enjoy working like this? I can't see the value they gain from this.
Jobs where you lose moneyHalf the jobs I get contain one sentence. Payment: 20 cents. With me needing to process the e-mail, login to their online portal, change the password because it expired, download the source files, try again because it failed, and so on and so forth, I'm losing money on this job. But agencies seem to think that this is a normal mode of operation. When I reject such jobs, they ask baffledly: "Is it because this isn't your field?"
MTPE
This, like all my other points, is discussed elsewhere in the forums: agencies have seemed to figure out an ingenious money-saving trick, whereby they throw their text into Google Translate and ask us poor translators to fix it for half the normal rate. How could anyone agree to this? From my experience most of the translation needs to be redone. Does anyone ever go to McDonald's and ask for a burger for half the price in return for doing the frying yourself? In the translation world anything goes.
Over-zealous evaluators
I haven't yet performed any translation test where the evaluator didn't scrape the bottom of the barrel in order to find mistakes, and even then they were false negatives. This too has been discussed here, and a bunch of reasons were given, with a general advice to just move on. Fine -- but it doesn't mean I need to like it.
No human connection
Aside from the rates, this is perhaps what disturbs me the most. I'm imagining that before the digital age, translators used to meet their direct (!) clients on a cup of coffee, asked them how their wife was doing and commented about the weather, and then cordially discussed the project. The translator would point to an ambiguous sentence, the client would explain what they meant. I want to believe that this is still done in prose (how do you even get such jobs nowadays without sleeping with the author?), but maybe I'm naive.
Instead, we're doomed nowadays to deal with faceless agencies. The people who work there mostly know nothing about languages or translation, and it's impossible to discuss anything of substance with them. We receive daily mass e-mails, addressed to dozens of translators, and need to respond quickly to get the job. We're often tasked with correcting the translations of other faceless translators. We crave to ask them why they chose a certain word here -- maybe we're missing something -- but that's not how it works. We work with TMs that were populated by hundreds of other faceless translators, often with inexplicable choices.
CAT tools
This is certainly not the thing that made me quit, but anyone else despises them like me? I see how they might come in handy when translating technical specifications, but I never do, and still I'm required to use them even for prose-like content. To me they are like Photoshop: a steep learning curve and hundreds of features of which we commonly use around 10%. Incidentally, all the CAT jobs I've ever done didn't feature a TM or a glossary, which is arguably the main reason for using CAT in the first place. Or am I missing something? And more incidentally: I'm not some computer-averse boomer. I'm a web developer and an IT technician -- and still I find these tools to be an unnecessary burden that slows down my work (and yes, I know, when using CAT you don't need to worry about layout). Hell, I've often been asked to merge segments that the CAT had erroneously split. Seriously? Is this what being a translator means?
Two small things about myself
First, I'm not a quitter. Some of you may think that I haven't tried long enough, or that I haven't truly given it my best. Trust me, I have. But after a year of working nights and weekends and barely making ends meet, I'm just not seeing any trend of improvement. Second, some of you may think that maybe I'm just a lousy translator, maybe combined with being a lousy person, making it difficult for clients to work with me. This, of course, is not related to any of my points above. But I'd just like to point out that my translations and my work ethics and mannerisms have been praised by agencies without exception. Just in case you think this is relevant.
Summary
I'm not expecting you guys to beg me not to quit, or to express your condolences for my bad experience. Let's turn this instead into a positive discussion, where you guys share why you love translating more than anything else in this world, and why this is the best job imaginable, and where you politely point me to where I'm looking at things wrongly. Sounds good?
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:54
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Couldn't be bothered | Dec 8, 2021 |
I couldn't be bothered reading your rant, which seems to be something about you not getting work, or the right kind of work, or the rates you would like. So instead, after quickly scanning what you wrote (which is too much) I looked at your profile.
There's almost nothing in it.
To make the most of Proz you must have your profile 100% complete. Above all you must offer a field of specialisation - the narrower the better. That's the best way to make yourself noticeable.... See more I couldn't be bothered reading your rant, which seems to be something about you not getting work, or the right kind of work, or the rates you would like. So instead, after quickly scanning what you wrote (which is too much) I looked at your profile.
There's almost nothing in it.
To make the most of Proz you must have your profile 100% complete. Above all you must offer a field of specialisation - the narrower the better. That's the best way to make yourself noticeable.
Think of yourself as running a small translation store in a large shopping mall of translation stores. What's going to make people stop at your store and look in the window?
Glad to hear you're not a quitter. Carry on.
[Edited at 2021-12-08 13:27 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mr. Satan (X)
English to Indonesian
Michael Newton wrote:
Kudos to you
Correction: it should be "KudoZ to you". 
[Edited at 2021-12-08 23:28 GMT]
| | | | Danielle Crouch
Germany
Local time: 16:54
Member (2019)
German to English
+ ...
| Have I just gotten lucky? | Dec 8, 2021 |
I started my freelance translating career in January 2019, so I've been at it almost exactly three years. I was told before I started that I should expect it to take about three years to actually be able to earn a full-time income from my work, but in my case I felt I was earning a decent income sometime in the second year. With a few exceptions, the agencies I work with pay what I ask and the project managers are on the whole pleasant to work with (and in many cases actually have a background a... See more I started my freelance translating career in January 2019, so I've been at it almost exactly three years. I was told before I started that I should expect it to take about three years to actually be able to earn a full-time income from my work, but in my case I felt I was earning a decent income sometime in the second year. With a few exceptions, the agencies I work with pay what I ask and the project managers are on the whole pleasant to work with (and in many cases actually have a background and/or education in translation).
Like you, Yehezkel, I live in Germany and work almost exclusively with agencies in Germany and Switzerland. In my experience, smaller agencies in Germany are much more likely to pay what I ask. For various reasons, I have completely stopped working with the one American agency I was collaborating with in the past, and I just don't bother with agencies outside of western and central Europe. Agencies in other parts of the world are less likely to pay well (and honestly I just can't be bothered with the sales tax considerations that other countries might entail).
Have I really just gotten lucky? I obviously know that there are agencies out there, even in central Europe, with laughably low rates, but I have found enough with good rates that I am more than set for work. The few that weren't paying me nearly what I was worth (I can relate to 20-cent jobs, since early on I was getting jobs that would literally pay me 1 cent, with the justification that they were providing large volumes... give me a break!) I cut ties with and never looked back. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Use advice and continue | Dec 8, 2021 |
Tom in London wrote:
"...So instead, after quickly scanning what you wrote (which is too much) I looked at your profile.
There's almost nothing in it.
To make the most of Proz you must have your profile 100% complete. Above all you must offer a field of specialisation - the narrower the better. That's the best way to make yourself noticeable.
Think of yourself as running a small translation store in a large shopping mall of translation stores. What's going to make people stop at your store and look in the window?
Glad to hear you're not a quitter. Carry on.
[Edited at 2021-12-08 13:27 GMT]
Here's some more ideas:
Use your standardized proz profile view as the default view as long as your customized view doesn't contain more important info.
Use a different EN-GER sample that is flawless.
Do you have your own website? If not, get one.
Be flexible with rates .. but draw the line at clear BS.
Don't rely on jobs on here.
Stay in touch with previous clients and inquire about new jobs.
Look for and contact new prospective clients and jobs elsewhere on the Internet. This you have to do a lot.
Consider/offer additional work in related fields: tutoring, teaching languages.
Consider interpreting jobs with agencies/authorities in Berlin.
Take care.
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Adieu
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
| Just set a minimum | Dec 8, 2021 |
$50-ish
If they still want to send you 10 cent jobs marked up to $50.00 USD, well, that's JUST FINE
| | | | AnnaSCHTR
United States
Local time: 09:54
English to Czech
+ ...
| The first year | Dec 8, 2021 |
The first year in any business is difficult, despite a few lucky exceptions. It takes a while to figure it out, and it takes some hard work - and luck, plenty of it - to move forward. You have chosen a difficult year to start in a new profession. Social media, with their endless "I am a king of the jungle, hear me roar" attitude (including this forum) might create an impression that every single translator is rolling in big fat projects while exceedingly generous "direct" clients beg for their a... See more The first year in any business is difficult, despite a few lucky exceptions. It takes a while to figure it out, and it takes some hard work - and luck, plenty of it - to move forward. You have chosen a difficult year to start in a new profession. Social media, with their endless "I am a king of the jungle, hear me roar" attitude (including this forum) might create an impression that every single translator is rolling in big fat projects while exceedingly generous "direct" clients beg for their attention. Rest assured it ain't so. It might be better to have an alternative source of income so that you can avoid bad clients and unsustainable type of projects. One year is nothing. Don't be discouraged. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Vicious circle | Dec 8, 2021 |
One danger of being a freelance translator is that you can get stuck in a vicious circle. You're getting paid low rates so you have to work long hours to earn a living. You work long hours so you don't get time to work ON your business (as opposed to working IN your business). Maybe it's time to take a step back and re-evaluate what you are doing.
There are other clients out there than big agencies who behave the way you describe but you have to go out and find those clients. That m... See more One danger of being a freelance translator is that you can get stuck in a vicious circle. You're getting paid low rates so you have to work long hours to earn a living. You work long hours so you don't get time to work ON your business (as opposed to working IN your business). Maybe it's time to take a step back and re-evaluate what you are doing.
There are other clients out there than big agencies who behave the way you describe but you have to go out and find those clients. That means having an attractive web presence that does justice to your knowledge and skills. It may also mean getting out and spending time where your ideal clients actually hang out so you can meet them in person (conferences in your specialism, for example).
As others have said, small agencies are more likely to treat you like a human being than the very big ones.
Maybe some marketing training would be a good idea .. there are lots of courses out there. Also, you do need to invest in yourself sometimes to reach new markets (website, nice photos, etc.). ▲ Collapse
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