Disclaimer: This book is published by Two Rat Press and Translatewrite, Inc., who acknowledge all trademarks. All information contained in this book is believed to be correct at the time of printing. However, readers are advised to seek professional advice where necessary, as the information in this book is based on the author’s experiences. The author of this book is not professionally engaged in providing legal, financial or career planning advice. Please send comments or corrections to corinne@translatewrite.com.
© 2015 by Corinne McKay. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, without permission in writing from the author. ISBN: 978-0-578-17007-7 eISBN: 978-1-483-56339-8
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction to the third edition
1 A quick start guide to freelance translation
1.1 Who can become a freelance translator?
1.2 Translator certification
1.3 Interpreter certification
1.4 Clients
1.5 Your range of services
1.6 Pricing and income potential
1.7 What you need to get started
1.8 Tax and legal issues
1.9 Your first year as a freelancer
2 Myths and truths about freelance translation
3 An overview of the translation business
3.1 What is a translator?
3.2 What does it take to become a translator?
3.3 Why do some freelance translators fail?
3.4 Improving your language skills
3.5 A translator’s working environment
3.6 What kinds of work do translators do?
3.6.1 Translation
3.6.2 Editing
3.6.3 Proofreading
3.6.4 Voiceover
3.6.5 Transcription
3.6.6 On-site document review
3.6.7 Machine translation post-editing
3.6.8 Software Localization
3.7 Who do translators work for?
3.7.1 Working for translation agencies
3.7.2 Working for direct clients
3.8 Agencies vs direct clients
3.8.1 Working with individuals
3.9 A bit about interpreting
3.10 How do translators set their rates?
3.10.1 Charging by the word versus charging by the hour
3.11 Professional Associations
3.11.1 American Translators Association
3.11.2 National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators
3.11.3 American Literary Translators Association
3.11.4 Fédération Internationale des Traducteurs
3.11.5 International Association of Conference Interpreters
3.12 Certification for Translators
3.12.1 American Translators Association
3.12.2 Federal Court Interpreter Certification Examination Program
3.12.3 State Court Interpreter Certification
4 Launching your freelance translation business
4.1 The start-up phase
4.2 Ways to start
4.3 The start-up checklist
4.4 Preparing to market your services
4.4.1 The basics of writing a translation resume.
4.4.2 A new resume for a new career
4.4.3 The structure of your resume
4.4.4 Your name
4.4.5 Your tag line
4.4.6 Your contact information
4.4.7 Your objective
4.4.8 Your summary of qualifications
4.4.9 The body of the résumé
4.4.10 The professional/related experience section
4.4.11 The education section
4.4.12 The professional development and memberships section
4.4.13 The computer skills and equipment section
4.4.14 The interests and activities section
4.4.15 What about a cover letter?
4.5 Finding your first clients
4.6 Building up your business
4.7 Starting a part-time translation business
4.8 Business skills you’ll need
5 Setting up your office and your business
5.1 The ups and downs of working from home
5.2 Communication devices and services
5.3 Reference materials
5.4 Office setup
5.5 Organizing your business
5.6 Maximizing productivity
5.7 For working parents
6 Marketing your freelance services
6.1 Marketing to translation agencies
6.1.1 Finding agencies to apply to
6.1.2 Optimizing your application materials
6.1.3 Keeping track of your contacts
6.1.4 Following up on your contacts
6.2 Marketing to direct clients
6.2.1 Identifying your target clients
6.2.2 Using your existing network
6.2.3 Expanding your network
6.2.4 International business organizations
6.2.5 Your local business news
6.2.6 Trade publications
6.3 Making contact with potential direct clients
6.3.1 Highly personalized e-mails
6.3.2 Attending conferences and trade fairs
6.3.3 Networking and referrals
6.3.4 A website in your clients’ language
6.3.5 Paper letters and postcards
6.3.6 LinkedIn groups
6.3.7 Free sample translations
6.3.8 Advertising
6.4 Making yourself findable
6.5 Marketing materials
6.6 Creating a website
6.7 Ten ways to please a translation client
7 Breaking into the direct client market
7.1 Why consider working with direct clients?
7.2 Potential drawbacks of working with direct clients
7.3 The direct client marketing mindset
7.4 If you don’t know where to start
7.5 Untapped niches
8 Translation Technology
8.1 The bare necessities
8.2 What kind of computer?
8.3 Speech recognition
8.4 Which operating system?
8.5 What else?
8.5.1 Searching
8.5.2 Renaming files
8.5.3 Dealing with PDFs
8.5.4 Project Management/Invoicing
8.5.5 Word counts
8.6 Translation environment tools
8.6.1 Wordfast Classic
8.6.2 memoQ
8.6.3 Trados Studio
8.6.4 OmegaT
8.6.5 Memsource
8.6.6 How to choose the right Translation Environment Tool
8.7 Machine Translation
9 Your online presence
9.1 Setting up a basic professional website
9.1.1 Cost
9.1.2 Buying a domain name
9.1.3 Setting up website hosting
9.1.4 Using domain name e-mail
9.2 Listserves and e-mail discussion lists
9.3 Online forums
9.4 Social networking sites
9.4.1 LinkedIn
9.4.2 Facebook
9.4.3 Twitter
9.4.4 Blogs
9.4.5 Podcasts
9.4.6 Pinterest and Instagram
10 Rates, contracts and terms of service
10.1 Setting your translation rates
10.1.1 Gathering objective data about rates
10.2 Charging by the word versus charging by the hour 176 10.3 Rate sheets
10.4 When a client asks for a discount
10.5 Contracts or work for hire agreements
10.6 Terms of service
10.7 Questions to ask before accepting a project
10.8 Researching your potential clients
10.8.1 Handing potentially problematic clients
10.8.2 Recourse against non-paying clients
10.9 Payment terms and methods
10.10 International payments
10.10.1 Wire transfer
10.10.2 Foreign currency checks
10.10.3 Overseas bank accounts
10.10.4 PayPal
10.10.5 TransferWise
10.11 Setting the stage for payment
10.12 When things don’t go as planned
10.12.1 Arbitration and dispute resolution
10.13 Cash flow issues
11 Research tools and methods
11.1 Sources for printed dictionaries
11.2 Web-based research tools
11.3 Installed electronic dictionaries
11.4 What to research
12 Taxes, insurance and retirement plans
12.1 Incorporating and planning for taxes
13 Beyond the basics of freelancing
13.1 Raising your rates
13.2 Six figures: increasingly doable?
13.3 Reviewing your own performance
13.4 Giving yourself a promotion
14 Basic translation techniques
14.1 Reproducing formatting
14.2 Inserting translator’s notes
14.3 Noting errors in the source document
14.4 Reproducing register
14.5 Preparing a glossary and managing terminology.
14.6 Preparing a style guide
Resources
Glossary
Index
Acknowledgments
Thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the first and second editions of this book, encouraged me to keep writing, and suggested improvements for the third edition. Especially Eve Bodeux, Lillian Clementi, Chris Durban, Melanie Guedenet, Marian Greenfield, Jonathan Hine, Judy and Dagmar Jenner, Freek Lankhof, Karen Mitchell, Marianne Reiner, Jill Sommer, Karen Tkaczyk, Caitilin Walsh, Tess Whitty and Jane Wolfrum. A huge thank you to Jost Zetzsche for agreeing to write the technology chapter. The biggest thanks go to my family–Dan and Ada Urist and Bruce and LaNelle McKay, without whose love, encouragement and support it would be hard to succeed at anything at all.
Introduction to the third edition
The freelance translation and interpreting landscape has changed dramatically since 2006, when I wrote the first edition of this book. Happily, the industry is booming; the US Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that the demand for translators and interpreters will increase nearly 50% by 2022, which is great news for new and established translators alike. This demand has led to a corresponding increase in the number of people who would like to become translators and interpreters. This is also great news, because the next generation of translators and interpreters has to come from somewhere; but it presents some challenges to the industry as a whole. How do we assess or control quality in an industry with no barriers to entry? How do we strike a balance between our clients’ needs in terms of quality, speed and budget? How do we find enough translators and interpreters to work in Middle Eastern, African and Asian languages that few native English speakers know? It’s an exciting time to work in our industry, and I’m energized by the possibilities that the next decade offers us! Whether you’re a student exploring the possibilities of translation and interpreting, or you’re a veteran looking for some tips to rejuvenate your business, thank you for using this book as a resource, and feel free to join the conversation on translation-related topics on my blog Thoughts on Translation thoughtsontranslation.com.
1 A quick start guide to freelance translation
You may be deciding if freelance translation is the right career for you; or you may want an overview of the basic concepts in this book. So, let’s start out with an executive summary of what you need to know about working as a freelance translator.
1.1 Who can become a freelance translator?
In the United States, there are very few barriers to entry for someone who wants to start a business as a freelance translator. There is no standard licensing procedure for freelance translators; translator certification is not available for every language, and there are successful freelance translators from a huge range of backgrounds. In theory, almost anyone who has near-native skills in at least one foreign language and is a good writer in their native language can become a translator. In practice, the majority of successful freelance translators have several qualifications in common: nearly all have at least a Bachelor’s degree and many have a Master’s degree or higher, either in translation, in a foreign language, or in their area of specialization; they have lived or worked for an extended period of time in a country where their non-native language is spoken; they have excellent writing skills in their native language; they have in-depth knowledge of at least one specialization and they are very motivated to launch and run a business on a self-employed basis.
If you don’t have a Bachelor’s degree, it’s not impossible to start a freelance translation business, but you may face some barriers that don’t apply to translators with a higher level of education. It’s more difficult (but not impossible) to meet the eligibility requirements for the American Translators Association certification exam; you may face competition from other translators with higher levels of education; you may face questions from clients who wonder if you are qualified to do the job. So although there is no absolute requirement that translators have a college degree, it’s certainly advisable to earn at least a Bachelor’s before launching your business.
1.2 Translator certification
Many beginning translators wonder about the importance of being certified. Because translation is largely unregulated in the United States, there is not even a standard definition of what “certified” means. In general, when people talk about “certified translators” in the United States, they are referring to translators who are certified by the American Translators Association atanet.org, but they may also be referring to translators who have completed a university-level translation certificate program.
For most translators, ATA certification, if available in your language pair, is a plus but not a must. Some clients may insist on using ATA-certified translators, some may prefer to use ATA-certified translators and others may not care about certification. At the very least, a client who is browsing online to find a translator is probably more likely to contact the certified translators first. Translation agencies often have eligibility requirements for translators who want to work for them; one of the ways to meet that requirement may be ATA certification. Compensation surveys show that ATA-certified translators earn more than those who aren’t certified. ATA-certified translators can also use the initials “CT” after their names. However, the ATA offers certification exams only for certain language combinations, the exams are open only to ATA members and taking the exam is a significant financial investment. If you would like to pursue ATA certification, you must first join the Association (as of 2015, individual membership is $190 per year), then have your eligibility verified ($35), take the exam at least once ($300), and it is definitely advisable to take a practice certification exam before you take the actual exam ($80 per passage); so it’s a significant investment. With the overall ATA exam pass rate hovering around 20%, you also cannot be sure that you’ll pass on the first try. When I took the exam in 2002, I failed the practice test by a small margin and then passed the real exam on the first try, so it’s definitely possible!
1.3 Interpreter certification
For interpreters, the importance of certification depends on the type of interpreting you do and where you work. Court interpreters can be certified at the state level (various language-specific tests are available, check with your state court system for specifics) or at the federal level (tests are offered in Spanish, Navajo and Haitian Creole). In some states in the U.S., it is now difficult or impossible to find work as a Spanish court interpreter unless you have state or federal court interpreter certification. For other languages, there may be no certification exams at all. Medical interpreters can take certification exams offered by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters (cchicertification.org) which offers the CHI and CoreCHI credentials, or the National Board of Certification for Medical Interpreters (certifiedmedicalinterpreters.org) which offers the CMI credential. Many elite-level conference interpreters are members of the International Association of Conference Interpreters aiic.net, which goes by its French acronym AIIC (pronounced eye-eek), and you can read about the US State Department’s Conference, Seminar and Liaison Interpreter exams by visiting state.gov/m/a/ols/c56573.htm.
1.4 Clients
Freelance translators and interpreters generally work for two types of clients: translation or interpreting agencies and direct clients. Translation agencies take on translation projects from end clients and subcontract the work to freelance translators, in exchange for a portion (often a significant portion) of the amount paid by the end client. In a best-case scenario, translation agencies allow their clients to focus on doing business and allow their freelance translators to focus on translating because the agency handles the non-translation aspects of the project. Translation agencies vary in quality. Some translators love working with agencies because it frees them up to concentrate on translation, while other translators avoid agencies because they prefer to have direct contact with their clients and don’t mind handling marketing, billing, and collections in exchange for the higher income that direct clients offer.
Direct clients are generally businesses, but might also be individuals, government agencies, universities or any other entity that needs translation services. Direct clients may choose to work with freelancers because they want a more personal relationship with their translator, a higher degree of consistency and confidentiality, or because they want to have direct contact with the person who’s working on their texts. As a translator, when you work with a direct client you handle every aspect of the project from the initial quote to the final invoicing and collections, and any issues that arise in between. Some translators enjoy this and some don’t; some are well-suited to it and some aren’t.
Before you start your freelance business, you should have an idea of the types of clients you would like to work with. Most beginning translators start by working with agencies, because they allow you to focus on translating, and because they can help you identify specializations that you enjoy and are good at. Working with direct clients can be very stressful for a beginning translator, but it may be something to consider if you have significant translation experience (for example if you previously worked as an in-house translator), or if you want to pursue a specialization that agencies don’t generally handle.
1.5 Your range of services
In the U.S., most translators work into their native language only. So, if you are a native English speaker and learned Japanese as a second language, you would generally translate from Japanese to English. This policy generally holds true in the languages for which there is a large pool of qualified translators. In smaller-diffusion languages, translators may work in both directions (for example from English into Farsi and Farsi into English). Some translators also consider themselves native speakers of two languages; if you grew up speaking one language at home and one language at school, you might have native-level skills in both languages. In general, if you are offering translation services into your non-native language, you should explain to prospective clients what makes you qualified to do that. Interpreters generally work in both directions (for example Spanish to English and English to Spanish), for purposes of efficiency; if interpreters worked in only one direction, clients would have to hire at least two interpreters for every job.
In addition to translation into your native language, you may wish to offer other services. Many translators do editing (generally defined as doing a quality check and revision of a translation by comparing it with the source document), proofreading (may involve comparing the translation to the source document or may involve reading the target document only) and glossary development (preparing a glossary for a certain project’s or client’s terms). Other services that translators may offer include transcription of audio materials, foreign language voiceover, alignment (matching the sentences in a source and target document so that they can be used in a translation memory program), cultural consulting, language lessons and more. Your range of services is really only limited by your skills and the demands of the market.
1.6 Pricing and income potential
Pricing is a huge issue for beginning and experienced translators alike. Many translators and interpreters base their rates on factors such as a) fear of ever losing a job because their rates are too high, and b) vague rumors and suspicion about what other translators and interpreters in their language combination are charging. This is a bad idea: the factors you should be considering include: a) how much you need or want to earn and how much you can or want to work; b) who your ideal clients are; c) how much you are interested in marketing/willing to market your translation services; d) what rates your target market will bear.
In general, translation agencies have specific rates or at least a rate range for each language pair, so if you want to work with the agency you will need to agree to the rate that the agency offers (but it’s always worth asking for more!). You should always have a target rate in mind, but be aware that agencies may have little or no flexibility in the rates that they pay for each language combination.
When you work with direct clients, it is up to you to decide what rates to propose or insist on. You need to first determine what your profitability point is. For example you can either determine how much you want to earn per year, then divide that by how many hours you want to work and by how many words you can translate per hour. In general, an experienced translator can produce between 400 and 600 finished words per hour, although there are many successful translators who fall outside this range, on both the high and low ends.
If you charge by the word, make sure to specify whether you will charge based on the source or target word count. For tasks such as editing and proofreading, many translators charge by the hour. For direct clients, you may wish to give a total price for an entire project rather than breaking down your price by the word or hour.
1.7 What you need to get started
Most freelance translators work from home. For a functional translation home office, you need a dependable computer that you back up regularly, a high-speed Internet connection, and a way to receive business phone calls. As technology improves, translators and interpreters have many more choices for how to set up an office: some translators work from an office that looks like a traditional office, with a desktop computer, multiple large monitors and a dedicated business phone line. Others work from co-working offices which offer the flexibility of working from home, plus the social aspects of working in an office. Still other translators have a totally mobile office setup with a laptop computer, electronic dictionaries and even a folding external monitor. If you use a laptop computer as your primary work computer (which I’ve done for about the past three years), make sure that a) you have an ergonomic setup, probably including an external keyboard and mouse, and b) your laptop is completely backed up, preferably using a “set it and forget it” syncing program that runs whenever your computer is online.
You will also need office software, a way to keep accounting records and possibly a translation environment tool or translation memory software. Before you invest in translation-specific software, make sure that you need it and that you know which tool best fits your needs. See Chapter 7 for lots more information on translation technology!
1.8 Tax and legal issues
As a freelancer in the US, you can either work as a sole proprietor or as a corporation. If you are a sole proprietor, you declare your income on the IRS Schedule C form and pay self-employment tax on everything that you earn, minus your business expenses. In most states you don’t need a business license to work as a freelancer, but check with your state government (generally the state Secretary of State’s office) to make sure.
If you choose to incorporate, you can be either an S Corporation, a C Corporation or a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). It’s best to talk to an accountant about which structure would be best for you. Working as a corporation may allow you to (legally) pay less money in taxes by taking some of your income as wages (which are subject to self-employment tax) and some as corporate profit (which is not subject to self-employment tax). However, corporations generally require more paperwork in the form of quarterly payroll taxes and/or a separate end of year tax return for the corporation.
1.9 Your first year as a freelancer
For the first six months to a year after you start your freelance business, expect to spend most of your time marketing and networking rather than translating. If you work in a high-demand language pair or specialization you may have a high volume of work sooner than this. One of the biggest mistakes that beginning freelancers make is to expect too much return from too little marketing effort. You may get really lucky, or you may have just the skills that clients are looking for, or you may want to work with very large agencies that give you high volumes of work, in which case you may be working full-time in a short amount of time. However, most translators will take the better part of a year to move past the initial startup phase. When I launched my freelance business in 2002, I sent out over 400 resumes in the first year, and it still took about 18 months until I was earning a full-time income.
To start out as a freelancer, you will need a functional office setup, a translation-targeted resume and cover letter, translation-specific business cards and possibly a basic professional website. Also, if you join some translation-related professional associations, you will probably get a listing on their website where you can describe your services.
If you are starting your business from scratch, the easiest and fastest way to find work is probably to start applying to translation agencies that you find in the directory of the American Translators Association or a similar entity. Go to the agencies’ websites and then follow the application procedures listed there (usually under the Employment, Freelancers or Contact tab). If you have strong qualifications and well-written application materials and you apply to 10-20 agencies per week, you will start to get some work. If you would like to start out working with direct clients, follow a similar procedure. Research businesses that seem like they could use your services and contact them by mail, e-mail or phone, whichever method you are most comfortable with. Again, if you set high but achievable goals for the number of potential clients you will contact, you will find work.
2 Myths and truths about freelance translation
Many beginning translators have a lot of questions and misconceptions about the industry. So, let’s look at a few myths and truths about freelance translation.
1. Myth: Anyone who is bilingual can be a translator. Truth: Knowing at least one foreign language is definitely a crucial skill for a translator, but it isn’t enough. Translators have to be excellent writers in their target language and they have to know the specific terminology of the specializations that they translate in. Freelancers also have to be able to juggle multiple clients and deadlines and manage the business aspects of their work.
2. Myth: Translators translate in both “directions” of their language pair. Truth: In the U.S., the market is heavily geared toward translators who translate into their native language only.
3. Myth: Most translators do both translation (written language work) and interpreting (spoken language work). Truth: some freelancers do both translation and interpreting, but most concentrate on one or the other.
4. Myth: Most freelance translators are starving artists. Truth: The average full-time freelancer in the American Translators Association makes a little over $60,000 per year. Six-figure income (or the part-time equivalent) is becoming increasingly common among translators who work with at least some direct clients, or who work fairly long hours.
5. Myth: Human translators will soon be replaced by machine translation and will be obsolete. Truth: Machine translation is becoming more sophisticated all the time, but machine translation and human translators are good at very different tasks. Machine translation is great at “getting the gist” of a document or translating a huge volume of documents when speed is more important than quality. Human translators are crucial to conveying cultural nuances and producing high-quality translations of complex documents.
6. Myth: Translators have to be certified. Truth: If certification is available for your language pair (in the U.S., check the website of the American Translators Association atanet. org), it is definitely a plus if you are certified. Some clients may require certification for certain projects, but there are generally no legal or regulatory obstacles to working as a translator if you are not certified.
7. Myth: If you send out five or 10 resumes, you will probably have enough work to be translating full-time. Truth: For the first six months to a year that you are in business, expect to spend most of your time looking for work.
8. Myth: Most translators can translate 7,000-10,000 words per day. Truth: Speed and output vary, but most translators can produce 2,000-3,000 finished words per day. Some translators work much more slowly, translating as few as 250 words an hour.
9. Myth: Most translators charge by the hour. Truth: Most translators charge by the word for translation and by the hour for editing and proofreading.
10. Myth: You have to have a degree in translation to work as a translator. Truth: In the U.S., there are so few university-level programs in translation that most translators do not have a degree in translation. However, it’s definitely an asset if you do have a translation-specific undergraduate or graduate degree.
11. Myth: Translators do not need to have good computer skills. Truth: Translators do nearly all of their work on the computer. In order to be successful as a freelance translator, it really helps to be a fast typist and to be comfortable using office software and possibly a translation memory tool.
12. Myth: Most freelance translators work in a large number of language pairs. Truth: In the U.S., most translators work in one or two language pairs. Outside of the U.S. where foreign languages are more widely taught in school, translators sometimes work in more language pairs.
13. Myth: The source (original) and target (translated) documents normally have the same word count. Truth: Different languages have radically different word counts. For example, most Romance languages use about 30% more words than English for the same text. For this reason, always establish whether you are charging your client for the source or target word count.
14. Myth: There is no way to find out if a translation agency is reliable to work with. Truth: There are several online rating services where you can read what other translators have to say about an agency. Among them are Payment Practices paymentpractices.net or the ProZ Blue Board proz.com.
15. Myth: Freelancers’ clients deduct taxes from what the freelancer earns. Truth: As a freelancer, you are responsible for paying all of your own taxes unless a client hires you as an employee. If the client pays you more than $600 in a calendar year, they must send you an IRS form 1099-MISC stating the total amount that they paid you.
16. Myth: Most freelance translators work for one or two clients. Truth: A good way to ensure a steady volume of work is to diversify your client base. It’s a good idea to have at least four to six regular clients who send you work.
17. Myth: You can easily fit freelance work into your spare time. Truth: Freelance translation is a profession, not a hobby. If you want to translate just a couple of hours a week or only when you feel like working, you are probably better off volunteering your services rather than starting a freelance business.
18. Myth: Put up a website and clients will come. Truth: A website can be a great marketing tool for a freelancer, but it’s certainly not enough. Surprisingly, many freelance translators do not have a website at all, so you are ahead of the game if you have a well-done professional website. Just don’t depend on your website to do your marketing for you!
3 An overview of the translation business
3.1 What is a translator?
A translator is a human being who changes written words from one language to another, as opposed to an interpreter, who works with spoken language. If you know that the expression “speaking through a translator” is incorrect (because translators work in writing), you’re already ahead of most people!
Translators are also, by definition, fluent in more than one language. In the language industry, these are referred to as the source, or “from” languages, and the target, or “into” language, which is almost always the translator’s native language. So, for example, a translator who is a native English speaker and speaks German as a second language would translate from German into English. If you work in the most common language pairs, such as English paired with French, Italian, German or Spanish (known as FIGS in the translation industry), chances are that you will never translate into your second or third language, because the translation market in the U.S. is heavily geared toward translators who work into their native language only. If you work in a less common language pair, you might find yourself as the exception to this rule. A client might need a document translated from Thai into English, a job that would usually be handled by a native English speaker who has Thai as a second or third language. In practice, it’s often easier to find a native Thai (or Lingala, Malayalam, Fulani, etc) speaker who has English as a second language since there are many more native Thai speakers who also speak English than the other way around. In this case, the job might be handled by a native Thai speaker, and then proofread by a native English speaker.
In the United States, most translators work from one or two source languages; it’s extremely common for translators to have only one working language pair, like Spanish into English, or Japanese into English. In other areas of the world where foreign languages are more widely studied, most translators work from at least two source languages, and often many more. It’s not at all unusual to find Europe-based translators who work, for example, from English, Spanish and French into German, or from Norwegian, Swedish and English into Danish.
3.2 What does it take to become a translator?
Being multilingual isn’t the only skill a translator needs, but it’s certainly the most important. Translators learn their languages in many different ways; some grew up in bilingual households or countries, some learned their second or third language in school and then pursued experience abroad, some took intensive language courses or worked in a foreign country for several years, and it is also common for translators to become freelancers after working as military or government linguists. Almost all translators working in the U.S. have at least a Bachelor’s degree, although not necessarily in translation. As a rule, most professional translators have at least some experience working and/or living in a country where their source language or languages are spoken; many translators lived and worked in their source language country for many years, or pursued higher education in their source language(s). In-country experience is a big asset for a translator, since translation work involves knowing not just the structure of the language to be translated, but the cultural framework that surrounds it. This isn’t to say that classroom study doesn’t produce excellent translators, but it’s important to realize that to be a successful professional translator, you need near-native proficiency in your source language(s); if you’re starting from scratch, a few semesters of part-time language class won’t be enough. As a point of reference, the U.S. Government’s Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center offers a program to teach Middle Eastern languages to government employees, and the basic program involves 63 weeks of full-time study.
Translators today work in almost every conceivable language pair; while the market in the United States has historically been very strong in high-volume languages such as French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, there is a potential market for nearly any language. In most language pairs, the amount of work available is proportionate to the number of translators in the language. While there is obviously a great deal of English to Spanish translation work in the U.S., there are a correspondingly large number of translators in this language combination and a lot of competition from translators who live in countries with a lower cost of living than the U.S. There may not be as much work for translators of Swedish to English, but there are many fewer Swedish translators than Spanish translators living in the U.S., and the cost of living in the U.S. is probably lower than it is in Sweden.
In addition to near-native knowledge of their source language(s), translators need other skills too; probably the most important are excellent writing skills in their target language, in-depth knowledge in one or more areas of specialization and business management skills. Some would-be translators are in practice not very successful because they have weak writing skills in their target language, making their translations difficult or unpleasant to read. Highly specialized translators are among the highest-earning members of the profession; for example a bilingual intellectual property attorney, stock broker or biomedical engineer may earn many times the per-word rate of a “jack of all trades” translator with a B.A. in Russian. Some translators turn a previous career into an area of specialization, while others take additional courses in areas of specialization or learn specialized terminology from more experienced translators. Paradoxically, specializing can also lead to more work, not less, as the specialized translator becomes known as the go-to person in his or her area of expertise, whether it’s environmental engineering, textile manufacturing or annual reports.
The translation industry in the United States has made the transition to the independent contractor model, in which the vast majority of translators are self-employed and work for a variety of clients. As such, translators need business management skills such as the ability to find and retain clients, work on tight deadlines with little supervision or management, handle increases and decreases in work flow and cash flow and perform tasks such as bookkeeping, tax planning, and computer upkeep and maintenance. In fact, most self-employed translators spend 25–50% of their time on non-translation work, largely involving management of the day to day tasks of running a business, so these skills are just as important as translation-related skills in succeeding as a freelance translator.
3.3 Why do some freelance translators fail?
I work with a lot of beginning translators in my online courses, and when I follow up with students over the months and years after they finish the course, or when I talk to beginning/aspiring translators in general, some of them have “made it” as freelancers and some of them haven’t. Here are a few factors I’ve identified that can cause some freelance translators to be less successful than they might be, or to give up on the business entirely:
