tranfree issue 1 - 31 March 1999

"Tests - To Do Them or NOT?"

Welcome to issue 1 of tranfree - the newsletter for translators.

Let me first introduce myself - Alex Eames - I've been involved in the translation industry for several years both as freelance language translator and founder of ALMAL Translations

This puts me in a good position to understand both points of view. I sometimes write from the point of view of the translator and sometimes the agency worker because I am both - I hope you won't find this confusing.

I think translation agencies and freelance translators often misunderstand each other. This is why I decided to start this newsletter to help explain away some of the differences. I also hope it will help us all to do better business.

Alex Eames
tranfree editor, Author -
How to Earn $80,000+ per Year as a Freelance Translator

This tranfree contains...

• Hot Topic - To test or not to test? That is the question!
• Senior Staff Column
• The 4 T's - Tips, Tactics, Tricks and Techniques to improve your translation business

Hot Topic - To test or not to test? That is the question!

By Alex Eames

There's been a lot of discussion of this subject recently in the sci.lang.translation newsgroup and Payment Practices mailing list (to subscribe to PP click here.)

The questions on people's minds appear to be:

Question 1: Are agencies giving out parts of a large job disguised as a test to many different translators in the hope of getting it translated for free?

Short answer 1: Not unless they're stupid AND crazy.

Question 2: Why haven't I had any work yet - I sent the test back 3 months ago?

Short answer 2: Because either they haven't had anything in your subject and language combination yet or maybe you're not their first choice translator.

No agency is likely to try to split up a job, disguised as a test, among many translators. It would be suicidal. Half of all the tests I send out never come back! I guess the reason for this is that people either find them too hard or get another paid job at the same time. Then when they find my test in the bottom of their pile 2 months later they think "well even if I do it now what's he going to think of me if I send it back this late?" So it gets thrown away. I've done this myself many times when working as a freelancer for other agencies.

On top of this if you split up a job between many people the quality suffers because everyone has their own individual style and choice of vocabulary. It would be more expensive to rework everyone's "test" into a usable translation than it would be to pay proper rates for it to begin with. Any agency who tries to get away with not reworking the text would not last long.

Many agencies have no idea what kind of work is coming through the door tomorrow, let alone next week or next month. Since they can't control what and when they like to cover all possibilities by having several translators available for each language combination and specialist subject. In practice they will usually have a first choice person who they've developed a relationship with over a period of time. This person will usually be first to be offered everything in their language combination because they are trusted.

It does happen that translators go on holiday or have a busy period. So if the agencies only had one person for a given language combination they would lose money if that person is not available when an assignment comes in. It may be that you have been tested for the number 2, 3 or 4 position (or more if it's a large agency). If this is the case you might have to wait until number 1 goes on holiday or turns down an assignment before you have a chance. It will happen eventually though and when it does you must make sure you do a superb job. Then maybe they will...

...remember you first next time.

Senior Staff Column

This column is designed to help translators understand the "inner workings" of agencies so that agency-translator interaction may be improved and less time wasted on both sides. This will usually involve examples of things which translation agencies find annoying and things which make them decide not to choose a particular translator again. I hope we can all learn how to keep our customers!

This senior agency staff column comes from SM who works for a leading London translation agency SM@translatortips.com (this is a forwarding address to protect SM's anonymity)

Don't annoy your agency customers by making procedural errors.

1) FILENAMES - Always quote the job reference number in the filename of the file you send back. Add the language if possible (e.g. 1234pol.doc), and try to keep the filename to eight characters or fewer for those of us still using DOS for our modems! The reason for this is that if the same project is being translated into several different languages, if everyone uses the same filename, files could easily be over-written. If sending files by direct modem to modem connection this could happen automatically. Don't use your own job reference No. for the filename because it makes files very difficult to trace. You might have only 1-5 projects ongoing but an agency may have hundreds at once.

2) INVOICES - Also related to 1). It's essential to quote the client's job reference number on invoices! You'd be amazed how many people don't bother, and we spend hours going through the whole week's jobs to find theirs. If people make a habit of this, we stop using them. Twice is enough!!

3) ROUNDING - While we're on the subject of invoices, translators should not round up their word counts to the nearest hundred or thousand. A few do this and it doesn't encourage us to use them again. I got an invoice for 1500 words today for a job for which I have to invoice the client on the actual word count of 1416. A bit of a discrepancy, especially when you think that it was Japanese and that's very expensive! Use the exact word count and agree in advance whether you are charging on source or target text. A good way of getting round the problem of languages which run shorter in the language on which you'll be paid is to charge different rates depending on whether your client will be paying you by source or target language. Then there are no arguments on whether you should add a percentage to the word count, round up to the nearest thousand.

4) INSTRUCTIONS - Read Purchase Orders from agencies carefully!! Today's instance was a job due by 10:00, I phoned at 10:15 to chase progress and was told "I haven't started it yet"! This isn't the only example - layout instructions are ignored, "do not translate paragraphs 3, 4 & 6" is ignored. On one occasion someone actually translated the purchase order itself! Yes - really - we couldn't believe it either!!

I think what I'm trying to say is, getting an agency client is no problem if you're a good translator. Keeping them is another matter - only the *very best* are kept on after doing unforgivable things like missing a deadline. Late delivery when it's the client's fault is another matter though e.g. adding 5000 words after starting the job.

Some translators, despite our best efforts, insist on submitting jobs late. This is a shame - they really are good translators, but they lose a lot of business from us because we can't promise a client a job by a certain time as we just know they won't deliver on time. On the other hand, a nice Russian lady once called 2 days before a job was due. She told me she was having difficulties and she'd like an extension on the job if possible. She was duly granted an extension after discussion with the client and is now top of my list for Russian.

Most of the translation agency staff I know would call someone who's turned work down before they would call someone who's let them down on a job in some way.

To be quite fair, the majority of translators are honest and will say if a deadline is difficult to meet - and if a job proves impossible to place because the client's deadlines are unreasonable, then the client has to rethink. Far better to say "no way" than to agree to do the impossible. Communication is the most important thing.

The 4 T's - Tips, Tactics, Tricks and Techniques to improve your translation business

By Alex Eames

Be Clear What You Offer - Writing a Brochure

Have a clear idea of what services you offer (translation/ interpreting/DTP/typesetting/) and what subjects you can and can't do.

A good way of forcing yourself to sit down and work out what you offer is to write your own brochure. It does not really matter whether or not you actually have it printed. The idea is that if you sit down and write something worthy of representing your image then you will at least think about things like:

• what sort of services/specialist subjects you want to concentrate on
• how much your standard rates are
• how negotiable are your prices

Then when a potential customer...

... calls you'll have all the information handy and you don't have to suffer the indignity of sounding stupid while you timidly pluck a number out of your head. Then the translation co-ordinator beats you down to a much lower price because you clearly are not wise in the ways of the translation world. If it's all there on paper by the phone you'll feel much more confident about your prices, you won't have the classic feeling we've all experienced:

• "I don't think what I'm doing is really worth this much money; how can I possibly charge this much for two hour's work?"

If you think this way then you'll have a real problem sticking to your set prices. If you've done your homework and researched the industry standard rates then both you and the co-ordinator will know pretty accurately (within 20-30%) how much you are worth. If the agency says it can't afford your rates then you have the choice of reducing them or turning down the work.

If you have a previously thought out policy, on a piece of paper, in front of you regarding the amount of flexibility in your prices then to a large extent this gives you something to cling to during negotiations. You can say:

• "I'm sorry it is my policy to not go below $xx per thousand words for this type of work. The best price I can offer you is $yy"

This is one of the hardest things to do when you are first starting out or going through a quiet period. It can be very tempting to take work at any price, but in my experience those customers who squeeze you the hardest on price are the ones who:

• cause the most problems because they are only in it for a quick buck, so they really don't care very much about you or their customers. This short-term attitude will not do you any good.



• are the most likely source of customer complaints (and therefore reductions in payment or damage to your confidence/ credibility/reputation) because these agencies accept the sort of awkward/problem work that other agencies will not touch.



• are the most difficult to deal with because they cannot be bothered to issue proper written instructions "I've got lots of balls in the air" "I'm too busy".



• are most likely to pay you late or not at all.

Also, once you are involved with a customer it is very hard to increase your rates to this customer. I did manage this recently as follows: A new agency called with a job and quoted my "old" prices to me. They had held my details on file for 18 months before they had any work for me and my charges had increased slightly during this period. Because they had already quoted for the job to their customer, I agreed to do it for the old price but made it clear that this was a one-off special and future work would be at the new rate. They accepted this and I've subsequently done quite a lot of work for them at the higher rate.

***End of issue 1***