Sarah's Archives

an archive of content from ≈ 2005 - 2015, relating to international business, translation, freelancing, and working online.

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Turning the tide: freelancers returning to salaried work

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I’ve spoken before about how I wonder what might happen if I were to return to traditional employment. How much of a shock would it be to my system? What would I have to do to help make it work for me again?

An interesting discussion is taking place on this very issue over at Freelance Switch, following Raj Dash’s article Can Freelancers Return To Salaried Work. Raj raises some potential pitfalls that I’d not even considered, and as usual, the comments and experience-sharing in the comments section proves just as valuable as the (excellent) article itself. Worth checking out.

Has anyone heard of experienced freelance translators who have returned to employment? Or any studies or articles looking into this?

Portfolio careers deserve a closer look

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business card wallFirst published July 2008
As new career structures go, portfolio careers are only slowly starting to get the airtime they deserve. Marci Alboher calls them slash careers, Michelle Goodman refers to them as patchwork paychecks – dressed up however you like, many of us are already living this way whether we realise it or not. Best of all, it’s a phenomenon that transcends the much-hyped generational gap and could see us all the way through the retirement. What’s not to love?

The term was first coined to describe the experiences of so-called third-age workers (i.e. broadly, those in their fifties to mid-seventies), many of whom were being forced out of more hierarchical career structures by ageism. There are lots of definitions of what it means to have a portfolio career today, but Monster.co.uk gives it an especially thorough rundown:

A portfolio career is the pursuit of more than one income source simultaneously, usually by applying the various skills you’ve developed throughout your career to different types of work…

Another portfolio career characteristic is that you’ll work at different rates. Some jobs will pay well and others won’t, but the lower-paying positions might be fun or offer intangible benefits, such as an opportunity to give back to your community.

You will also likely deal with a fluctuating income stream, which you can smooth by securing ongoing part-time contracts. Alone, these contracts might not be enough, but when added to other contracts and jobs, they should give you enough to live on.

So where does being self-employed come into it? And are all freelancers portfolio workers?

This is not just a CV-friendly way of describing those stretches when you’ve held down more than one part-time job, I’m afraid – student/waiter/bartender doesn’t really cut it. Even when employed, i.e. holding down a paid part-time position, portfolio workers are usually self-employed too. This may be by virtue of the kinds of roles they take on and/or for tax purposes. Ultimately, they have a greater degree of autonomy and control over their work and have made a conscious decision to make a career out of pursuing multiple income streams. So portfolio workers tend to be freelancers too, although depending on the degree of variety among their work providers, it can be said that freelancers are not necessarily portfolio workers.

The obligatory either/or perspective

From a wider industry perspective, there seem to be two clear camps when it comes to viewing a portfolio career: those who see it as a panacea for all our modern work woes, and those who see it as yet another way to get away with paying less than the minimum wage. Stephen Overell from Personnel Today summed this up nicely when he said:

Normally, there are two camps. The first – shared by loaded downshifters and a certain type of gormless, grinning management expert – is that portfolio working is all about choice. They will tell you its about opting out of the soul-deadening rat race, doing your own thing, freedom, becoming ‘me plc’, and so on. The other camp – inhabited by melancholy economists and anxious liberals – is that portfolio work is better explained by lack-of-choice. Satisfactory employment options dip in certain sectors of the economy, and the lonely, itinerant ranks of portfolio workers witness a corresponding rise.

In fact, in some quarters it’s even considered bad for your mortal soul. In a 2004 interview with the Times, the Archbishop of Canterbury linked portfolio working with an inability to hold down relationships and a lack of integrity, saying that it destroyed the quality of human interactions. Dramatic claims indeed, so don’t say you weren’t warned.

It’s probably fair to say the reality is a little less black and white. Clearly, a portfolio career is not for everyone but for those who are prepared to make a go of it, it can mean a rewarding and satisfying career path whatever your age.

Thanks to sensesmaybenumbed on Flickr for the photo of the business card wall.

Fancy translating for the Olympics?

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Apparently the International Olympic Committee is looking for an inhouse translator to work from English and French to Spanish, based at their headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. Full transcript of the announcement here.

A big hat tip to Julio A. Juncal for this. I’ve just come across his blog Translation Notes and was impressed to see that not only has it been around since 2002, but it’s regularly updated and often features inhouse translation positions at top international organisations. Definitely one for my blogroll.

Some words of wisdom never get old

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A portrait of Johnson from 1775 by Joshua Reynolds showing Johnson's intense concentration and the weakness of his eyesJohnson was annoyed to see his
favourite blogger copping out on
fresh content again.
Image via Wikipedia

Some more lazy link love today – but don’t let that put you off, these little posts really do deserve another look (even if I say so myself):


Zemanta Pixie

Beware the fine line between spamming and "reaching out"

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Address BookImage via Wikipedia

Translators who buy email lists of industry contacts to send their CV to, beware: you could be making enemies of the very people you wish would hire you.

As editor-in-chief of Wired, an online magazine reporting on technology trends across all spheres of society, Chris Anderson is a key industry leader. So if you were promoting a new book about technology, you might think he’d be a good contact to send your press release to, right?

Wrong. Chris gets over 300 of unsolicited emails a day with just this kind of untargeted, randomly emailed information, and has resorted to drastic measures. On his blog, he has published the email addresses of anyone who has sent him “inappropriate” material over the past month. Plain as day, for all the world to see.

As always with these kinds of posts, it’s the discussion that takes place in the comments afterwards that is most interesting. Some people think he should get over it, and that unsolicited emails are a tool freelancers simply have to use if they are to compete with the big boys. Others cheer his actions, and love the idea that spam bots are likely to harvest these addresses as they crawl the web, resulting in a deluge of spam for their owners. In fact, even some of the named and shamed emailers themselves have responded, with (it must be said) some legitimate and valid explanations as to why they sent him these emails in the first place.

It’s worth pointing out too that Chris doesn’t take issue with unsolicited emails per se. He says:

…I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I’m interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that (I love those emails; indeed, that’s why my email address is public). Everything else gets banned on first abuse.

I think many of us can see ourselves at both sides of the face-off here. Emailing agencies to look for work is a key (and often very necessary) marketing strategy for many start-up translators. But in an era of MySpace friends and Facebook pokes, it’s too easy to forget that commercial email is a whole different ballgame. Taking a legal eagle view doesn’t help as there seems to be little real, practicable guidance, especially when working across borders.

I have a few ideas of my own on this, but until I pull it into post, I’d be interested to hear: what do you think? What’s the best way to approach a potential work provider without being branded a pest?

Is Skype overrated for business use?

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UPDATE: One year on from writing this post and I’ve renewed my SkypePro service. I had no issues at all with the service in the year following this post, and while I still wouldn’t recommend relying on them 100%, I am impressed with the flexibility the service has offered me. Here’s hoping Skype have upped their game for good.

Skype is running an advertising campaign with a difference. They’ve kitted out Rebecca, their 26-year-old Australian travel nomad, with some mobile Skype gear. She has to remain in perpetual motion for 33 days while travelling around the world, using Skype to blog, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and MySpace her way into our hearts and minds. And she’s a copywriter, so we should expect some readable writing too (Twitter constraints aside).

Now, I know translators are a crazy bunch of early adopters when it comes to technology (ahem), so before anyone gets too excited, I feel it’s my duty to sound a cautionary note: Be sure you know what you are letting yourself in for before relying on Skype for your business needs – and always have a Plan B!

Let me explain. I’ve been using Skype in a non-work capacity since early 2006, but as a handy-to-have novelty, rather than a key part of keeping in touch. There were a couple of things I didn’t like about it in the early days which stopped me throwing myself whole-heartedly into the revolution. But hey, it was a reasonably cheap way of making calls to my many family members and friends overseas, and Skype never pretended to be a fixed landline replacement (you can’t use them to make emergency calls, for example).

Technology moves on, of course, so in view of my pending move to Australia in February this year, I decided to upgrade to the paid service to give it a more serious (read: business) try. I’d heard some horror stories, but I’d also spoken to a few people, including other translators, who use it in a work capacity to great success. I signed up for a package which allowed me to set up a fixed UK line-land number and a voicemail service in a couple of very quick and easy steps. Skype is not always the cheapest way to make or receive calls when you involve landlines or mobiles, so it wasn’t really about saving money (although that’s always welcome, of course). But I figured the benefits of having a local number for my clients to call would be enormous, especially as I’ve had a couple of jobs on the go over the move, and given the time change of 10 hours, a voicemail service was definitely a welcome service too. The set-up cost for this particular package was only about €20 a year. So far, so good.

A couple of months in and I have to say, I still have my reservations. Calls out (i.e. me making calls) are great – no complaints there. I’ll certainly continue to use Skype to make business and personal calls.

But the call-in service (i.e. me taking calls) is still not reliable enough for my liking. The fixed-line numbers are occasionally down and my voicemail is frequently out-of-service. And that’s just the times I’ve “caught” it. Realistically, I’ll probably keep the landline numbers until my subscription runs out, given the lack of alternatives that suit my needs, but I’ll be withdrawing the numbers from circulation in the meantime. And I definitely won’t be having them printed onto my new business cards.

I’m not complaining, mind you – I was aware of the pitfalls before I signed up and I knew not to rely on their non-existent customer service to bail me out either. It’s just that personally, I’d rather not have the hassle of wondering if it is or isn’t, so I’ll do without until the next best thing comes along. Fair enough. With all this in mind, my little trial has not had too much of an impact on my business either – I’d given clients some other non-Skype numbers to reach me just in case, and we tend to communicate mainly via email anyway.

So is Skype worth giving a go within your business? Definitely – in fact, you’d be crazy to ignore it. But just don’t say you weren’t warned.

I’d love to hear about your Skype experiences – please leave a comment and let me know.

HT to WebWorkerDaily for the Skype Nomad story.

The mixed blessing of regular gigs

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Translation jobs which repeat or need regular attention are a great source of regular income. Indeed for many translators, especially those establishing themselves as freelancers, they are the holy grail of translation jobs and something to aspire to. That’s all well and good, but more experienced translators might want to consider this advice getting sucked into a repeat-gig rut:

…if you’re not careful, you could be accepting a regular gig for the wrong reason—and create work that will do nothing for your freelance career.

The prospect of regular money is always very tempting, especially for freelancer who has nothing to fall back on. That makes it easy for freelancer to accept a regular gig only for the money. A contract worker trapped in such a situation will find himself going through the motions, finishing the work for the sake of getting things done.

There’s nothing wrong with meeting deadlines or working promptly through your pending items. But if you find yourself working solely for the paycheck, you’ll probably do some sub-standard (by your standards) work, for the sake of having something to submit. This does nothing for your freelance career, because you will not be pushing the limits of your creativity, while prospective clients who see what you’re doing will wonder if you have anything distinctive to offer.

Excellent advice from Rico over at Contract Worker. Of course, that also means that the sourcing-work roundabout never ends… 🙂

How to move countries, keep your freelance business running and live to tell the tale

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Six tips on keeping a business running while moving countries (and continents):

1. Remember that instant internet access is not an automatic right in every developed country. Even when you’re willing to pay handsomely for the privilege. Finding yourself unexpectedly “internet-less” can be a source of enormous stress when you’re trying to maintain a modicum of professionalism during a potentially turbulent period in your personal life (a clash we freelancers find ourselves grappling with far more frequently than we like to admit, I’m sure). And it’s easy to get caught up in the frustration, which doesn’t solve anything. You’ll know this is happening to you if you find yourself starting thoughts with, “It’s hardly the back of beyond. Surely, in this day and age, I’ll be able to just…?”. Surely nothing, my friend. The only way forward is to accept it, get over it, and get on with it. And make sure you plan for it the next time (bearing in mind point 2, below).

2. Be prepared to be totally unprepared. No matter how much you plan, the unexpected will still catch you out. Thankfully I learnt this lesson long before my move Down Under.

3. Forget fancy productivity tools and go back to basics. Pen, small notebook – it’s not pretty, but you’ll be glad of it when you find you’re still living out of rucksack two months after your move date. (Yes, you heard me. I lived out of a rucksack for two months 🙂 ).

4. Forget getting things done, because you won’t. If you’ve chosen to keep working while you move, then focus number one has to be work. You’ll be doing well to do much else beyond that. Even the most basic tasks take so much longer without the knowledge that comes from being familiar with your environs. Just get the basics sorted (internet, place to live… in that order) and don’t worry too much about the little things (beds, cups, curtains, blog posts, etc). There’ll be plenty of time to sort that out later.

5. They might speak your language, but it doesn’t mean you won’t find things “foreign”. Don’t let that scare you! And I mean this with all clichés and stereotypes aside. As an Irish woman, I thought I’d worked this out after 6 years in London. I had moved to the UK almost on a dare, with very little real knowledge of the country or its culture. (And it was very hard for a long time.) In contrast, I thought I knew what I was letting myself in for with my move to Australia. I’ve had close ties to a certain special Australian for ten years now, and have made several trips out here, including an eight-month working stint in 2001. But still, it surprises me how Australian society feels more foreign to me than any European country I’ve ever lived in. Language really is only the tip of the iceberg.

My advice? There’s nothing for it but to pack a set of open eyes, ears and mind, take a deep breath in and strap yourself in for the ride. Another blogger I know captures this with great wit and intelligence over here, where he blogs about his experience as a Brit on an MBA in the US.

6. Have fun! Moving countries and starting again from scratch is an invaluable albeit extreme way to gain perspective on all aspects of your personal and professional life. Keeping your freelance business running while you relocate may seem stressful, but it’s well worth it. It creates a starting point in your new life, which adds structure, opens doors and acts as an anchor to what it was you liked about the “old you”. Best of all, you’ll remember what you like about your job, and why you wanted it to be part of your new life. You may even find you enjoy working more than you have for a long time. So don’t be in too much of a hurry to get straight back into the same set-up you had before you moved, either in work or in play. Instead, make the time to stop and smell the frangipanis.

Take it all in. Make the effort to capture your experiences, impressions and feelings whatever way you can. You’ll be glad you did when you have time to make sense of it some day, maybe from your rocking chair on the verandah.

To test translate or not to test translate?

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There’s a very interesting post on test translations over here. I have my doubts about them myself, so was very interested to read this.

For the record, while I’ve not done as many test translations as Mr. Gerasimov, I have done my fair share and my experience has been pretty much in line with his, i.e. agencies inform me I am on their “freelance list” but I never hear from them again, or I get contacted with jobs well below my usual rates. Generally, I’m left wondering why I ever bothered. And then there was the agency who insisted on contacting me at 4.30pm every Friday for a period of about 6 months with a series of 5,000 – 6,000 word jobs due in for 9am the following Monday, even when I had told them that I didn’t work weekends… given I was usually working to my own COB deadlines on Fridays, I eventually decided I didn’t need the hassle and politely asked them to remove me from their database.

Nowadays, I demonstrate my abilities to potential clients in other ways, e.g. with references, extracts from prior translations (suitably sanitised), etc. and so far, all my clients have been happy with this. But overall, the advice I suggested in this post last year still stands, especially when it comes to doing test translations.

Finally, I don’t like plain old them-against-us posts, and it’s only fair to say that I can understand why agencies feel they need to ask for test translations. But there are loads of other ways to demonstrate your competence, and experience has taught me that nine-and-a-half times out of ten, test translations are a complete waste of time.

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Why being your own boss is not as hard as you think

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working from home

I often hear people comment that they are not motivated enough to work for themselves.

They imply the temptations of tellie, tea and comfy slippers would be too great. As if, somehow, the kind of willpower and discipline required to resist these delights are the preserve of a lucky, very motivated few.

This idea seemed to be re-enforced during a discussion following an interesting but unrelated post over at Employee Evolution. An artist aspiring to self-employment asked:

…since you are working for yourself how do you avoid the temptation to sleep in on rainy days and get daily motivation? … I fear the “oh I’ll do it later” mentality and being secluded, which I feel would get lonely…

To which another commenter suggested that working for a small company might better suit this person’s “mindset”.

It’s good to see people offering suggestions and support to others within an encouraging environment. But I’m concerned that comments like this lack vision.

Mindsets are just that – minds which have been set in a certain way. But it does not mean they are set in stone.

I don’t consider myself to have a lot of willpower. I’m not especially disciplined either, and, as I’ve explained before, I sometimes have to work hard to motivate myself to work. I’d bet these factors alone would see me fail many of the ubiquitous online quizzes offering to assess my suitability to be my own boss.

So how have I done it?

I suggest aspiring freelancers turn their fears around and ask themselves, “what do I need to do to ensure that I don’t feel secluded / lack motivation / [insert any other concerns here]?”. This technique really helped me when I was starting out, and still does today.

Greg Hollings over at Location Independent Living did a great job of showing how he overcame his freelancing fears in an excellent post called Three Fears I Had About Leaving The Rat Race That Came True (And How I Overcame Them). Best of all, he prompted some really useful and empowering suggestions from other freelancers in the comments section.

Properly thinking through the answers to these kinds of questions will offer you a more realistic insight into whether self-employment is a step you are truly willing and able to take.

Ultimately, it’s about creating new habits and a new mindset for yourself.

I’m not for a minute underestimating the skills required to work for yourself, or the complex combination of other internal and external factors. But I can’t help thinking that if I can work for myself, then there’s a lot more people out there who could too – if they really wanted to.

All of this shows that if you’re seriously considering whether you can cut it on your own, feeling afraid and unsure of yourself should not be reasons in themselves to deter you.

Instead, you can use your fear as fuel to feed your likelihood of success.

What fears do you have about freelancing? How can you turn them around?