quote:
"Dear Alex,Your article is fantastic and it's a subject that deserves to be developed as it can have seriously dangerous consequences. In fact it's like any business, as the french say "les bons payeurs font les bons amis" ("good payers make good friends").
This is not always (would even say EVER), the case when working with friends & family, it's great to have them, but not a good idea to trespass the fine line of "money matters".
I had a couple of bad experiences myself . Both of them did seriously damage my confidence as a translator, as it was in my early days as a translator, and after it happened I decided I wasn't a good translator and ought to chose another profession, which I did.
The first one was with my french methodology teacher, as I was the best student in the class (sorry a bit narcissist), he gave me a huge report to translate (realised years later that he gave it to me cause he wasn't good enough to do it himself).
I spent two whole days translating, and when I gave it to him, he just said it was absolutely dreadful and that I had to start all over again, even came to my home and said to my parents that I should change careers as I would never make money from this one.
The second one was a friend of my Dad, an Art teacher. The book I had to translate was fantastic. The psychology of colours. Not only I enjoyed reading it and learned a lot from it, but felt that the translation was rather good. He never paid me and accused me of making copies, which wasn't true.
In any case, years later I became a translation/interpreter, started my own agency in England and it works.
Now I've also got your How to Earn $80,000+ Per Year as a Freelance Translator so I know I can.
Thanks Alex for your great site and sorry if I've my e-mail is a bit too long, didn't really have the time to write a short one."
Isabelle Lewis
posted 13 June 2001 11:58
(with permission of the author Isabelle Lewis)...
