clients — Sarah's Archives

Surviving versus thriving as a translator

Corinne McKay over at Thoughts on Translation looks at some of the common features she’s identified in high-earning translators in an excellent post called Secrets of six-figure translators.

Personally, I think working for direct clients has the biggest potential impact on earnings for freelance translators, and her point about being a businessperson/translator is spot on. Direct clients certainly make the world of difference for newly established and mid-career translators as they work towards a high degree of specialisation (very likely in a completely unrelated field) and try not to starve in the process. Finding these direct clients is of course another story (and one Chris Durban is eminently able to tell, in my opinion).

On another note, I do love posts like Corinne’s that acknowledge the diversity of a group, weigh up a couple of factors from a range of sources, add some personal insights and then draw something useful from it all. Excellent stuff!

Making sure you get paid

by Sarah Dillon

This one has been around a few months already but is still worth mentioning: a post evaluating various agency rating lists over at About Translation.

Agency rating lists are sites or groups specifically devoted to collecting information about translation agencies from translators. These ratings are then made available to other translators, either for free or for a small fee. The idea is you check these lists before taking on a new agency client to avoid being caught out by bad or late payers.

Riccardo gives an excellent summary of the pros and cons of each of the following services: Payment Practices, Translator Client Review List, ProZ’s Blue Board, Translators Café’s Hall of Fame and Shame, the WorldPaymentPracticesFree group, the Translation Agency Payment group and TranslationDirectory.com’s Black List. Well worth a look!

Small wins…

by Sarah Dillon

I’m really excited. I’ve recently had a couple of jobs in from the kind of client I’ve dreamed of having for a long time now – a direct client, an organisation I admire, interesting work, extremely pleasant to deal with so far. It’s early days yet and I won’t make my millions just yet, but it feels great. How did I find them? I got chatting to one of their directors at a networking event and I asked whether they had any use for someone with my skills 🙂 I’d done pro bono work for a similar organisation before and I think that’s what prompted this contact to offer to put me in touch with the right person.

Yipee!