Sub-optimal rates: "better than nothing," or not?
“The rate isn’t ideal, but it’s better than nothing.” “It’s not what I’d like to be earning, but you have to start somewhere.” “I wasn’t thrilled about the rate, but working is better than not working.” Stop me if you’ve heard this before… But the real question is: is this a valid way of looking at your freelance rates?
Ideally, here’s the situation you want to be in: you don’t even deal with low-paying clients, because you don’t need to. You are busy all the time at your regular rates, and if clients won’t pay those rates, you simply don’t work with them. Or, when you take on lower-paying work (let’s say a book translation, or work for a non-profit that you find meaningful), it’s for a reason: just because you enjoy it, or because you want to contribute to the organization’s mission, or bring a certain author’s work to a different culture, or something like that.
But when you’re looking for more work, or for any work at all, it’s a different story. Then, an experienced translator’s advice to stick to your standard rates and never offer discounts can feel a bit condescending. When, if ever, is a sub-optimal rate better than nothing?
- Bottom line: rarely. You tell yourself “it’s better than nothing,” but low rates can become a treadmill that’s difficult to dismount. You’re making a few cents a word, so you have to translate 12 hours a day just to keep the lights on. That leaves approximately zero time to market yourself to better-paying clients, or do some networking, or attend conferences where you might meet better-paying clients, or upgrade your skills and marketing presence.
- When you’re working within a lot of constraints. In most ways, huge agencies are not ideal clients; but they do have some advantages. One of those is that you can generally turn them down many times without fear of losing them as a client, or you can give them windows of time within which you can work. So, if you’re trying to start a freelance business while going to school, or raising kids, or working another job, a huge agency that pays sub-optimal rates might allow you to do that.
- When you put some parameters on the low-rate work. Working at sub-optimal rates for decades will a) suck the life out of you and b) destroy any love you have for this job. Really, it will. But if you decide that the low-rate work fits your purposes while you… (finish school, sock away enough money to quit your day job, etc.), and if that time period is relatively short, like a couple of years or less, I think it’s more doable.
When is a sub-optimal rate absolutely not worth it?
- When you’re doing it out of desperation. Desperation is rarely a good precursor of good business decisions. If you’re in sketchy financial shape, you’re probably better off looking for a stable part-time job rather than taking low-rate freelance work. Take the part-time job and then translate pro bono for clients who work for causes you believe in: in the end, you’ll feel much better about yourself. Out-of-the-box tip: look for a job where you could do some translating while you work. For example, I once worked in a fancy office building that needed a receptionist, but there was actually very little work to do. The owner’s technique (because it was hard to keep people in that job long-term), was to deliberately recruit students from the writing program at the local university, with the stipulation that if they committed to staying for a full school year, they could work on their own writing while they sat at the desk.
- When you could cut fat from your spending budget and avoid the low-rate work. I’ve beaten the freelance frugality drum here and here. Blackbelt frugality isn’t for everyone (although I did get quite a few compliments on the haircuts that my husband gave me in the early 2000s!), but to me, it’s certainly preferable to doing soul-crushing work.
- When you have the skills to work for better-paying clients, but you never go out and look for them. As I’ve said before, but it bears repeating, there is *so much* interesting, well-paying translation work out there. But, it’s not going to flop into your inbox with a bow on it; you need to be out there (in person, online or both) being in the places where the good clients can find you, or going and knocking on the good clients’ doors and pitching your services. Otherwise, you’re running in neutral in the low-rate market.
- When you’re telling yourself that the low-paying clients will love you so much, they’ll agree to a big rate increase at some point. Harsh but true: most times, they won’t. Once a client knows that you’re willing to work at a certain rate, you can’t blame them for refusing to pay more. No matter how much a client likes you, most agencies, especially big agencies, have a fairly rigid rate ceiling above which they absolutely will not go, no matter how much they like you. When you want to make more money, you just have to move on.
Readers: any other thoughts on this? And if you’re thinking, “This sounds great, but how do I find work at decent rates?,” you might enjoy this post: To break out of the low-rate market, change these three things.
Written by corinnemckay
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Good post, Corinne. But let’s add this to the list:
“when the rate is below your break-even point.”
Everyone should know the rate at which they are barely breaking even (income equals expenses). It’s a secret number you keep in the back of your head when negotiating rates. Black-belt budgeting such as you describe can lower that secret number, but you absolutely have to say NO to any suggestion that you work below the break-even point. Doing so is paying the client out of your resources to do the work (i.e., losing money). If you do it long enough, the IRS (Inland Revenue, Agenzia delle Entrate, etc.) will suspect that you are running a money-losing hobby instead of a business. Then you will be broke AND in trouble.
Thanks, Jonathan
(www.scriptorservices.com)
That’s very true, Jonathan, but you also have to define your break-even point, and it is that which I find many new translators have problems with.
To take myself for an example, I am absolutely not frugal when it comes to my business, if I want it and it’s for the business I buy it, but even with attending a couple of conferences abroad per year I find it hard to get my business expenses up to 30% of my gross income – which is very low for most professions, even self-employed professions! So my accounting break-even point is less than one-third of the rate that I charge.
Of course, I also need to eat, and clothe myself, and buy a little gift for my partner from time to time, and this comes out of what the taxman calls my “profits”, over and above the accounting break-even point. So how much profit should I make? That’s the question that stumps pretty much every British translation student I talk to!
I make no secret that my profit, my income, is roughly equivalent to the income of other professionals in my country: I earn about the same as a mid-career lawyer, an experienced classroom teacher, a specialist nurse or a junior doctor. And I think that is perfectly normal: these are professions that require a similar investment in gaining skills, and where the relevant skills are also quite scarce (but not completely absent) on the market. Normal should be me, not worrying about how to justify accepting “sub-optimal” rates: “sub-optimal” rates should be the things seen as abnormal, IMO.
Thank you for the post!
The last moth is pretty hard for me and I have troubles (as a beginner) finding ANY project at ANY rate. At desperate times like this it’s good to read such post.
Because my family financial wellbeing does not depend on my translation income, I agree to work for a “review”. I know that sounds awful and not fair to the rest of translators out there. But here’s a reality check: translation agencies require experience and letters of recommendation (they won’t even reply if you don’t have both). So beginners like me have to pay any price to get any project, especially those who work in popular language pairs.
Just wanted to give you my perspective…
It’s somewhat true that in those discussions about keeping one’s rates decent vs not, or what exactly constitutes ‘decent’ etc., we often forget about the ‘so what to do to actually find that higher-paying work.’ (Or get clients to pay the rates I’d like to be paid.)
On the other hand, Corinne did mention ‘going out and looking for them’ — that’s precisely what you’re asking her about now, Daria. She did say that, it’s only that wiouth some prior knowledge it’s difficult to spot in the text and identify as the closest thing to a recipe for economic success as a translator as it gets.
It’s not easy to do, and it certainly is non-obvious, which is essentially the whole point. Big reward but big effort. And not just hard work of following some demanding instructions but the effort of actually coming up with things to do. Actually coming up with stuff is the single most painful thing in it. (And the reason some people don’t succeed in spectacular ways despite theoretically knowing how to or even theoretically being able to do it.)
If that’s not your cup of tea (it isn’t mine, either, to be honest), you can still sit down and do some planning on paper, in a more serious, more committed way, like a maths task. Nail down what investments you could make that would bring some return (look up SMART goals on Wiki for some ideas), prioritize, get some things done first, such as a professional website, a really nice CV, good copy (probably not DIY’ed), professional photo, some assistance from a marketing/advertising professional or a business counsellor/advisor, for your visibility and image. Or, on the more strictly professional level, get some formal qualifications, accreditations etc. to be able to justify a higher rate whenever the issue pops up. Or, something you can do with mostly just the dogged determination of a tireless foot(wo)man, send out a CV after a CV, application after application, offer after offer. Don’t presume a higher ‘conversion’ rate than 1 in 10, but hey, you can usually live off of 20 clients after you send out some 200 e-mails to prospects.
(Due to attrition, you will need to repeat the last mentioned process when you have enough clients for the time being. Don’t fear having too many clients — that will be the time to raise your rates to regulate demand until it falls down to a more manageable level. But you will still need to keeping sending those things out because you will lose clients over time as they stop needing your services, go out of business of prefer to work with someone else.)
In many cases the difficulty is of a subjective psychic nature, not an absolute ‘physical’ nature. We often just don’t want to step out of our translator shoes and put the manager’s hat on. It feels like we shouldn’t have to do it. And perhaps we shouldn’t — as translators. But that doesn’t mean we can’t as managers. Heck, one could even set apart some days or hours in a month for that kind of thing, just like people set days apart for different jobs or teaching duties or marketing. Just basically realize that you’re doing what you’re doing as the manager of your business, no longer as simply a translator (and a salaried translator wouldn’t have to do that, of course).
It’s the same with looking for, finding, chasing and landing clients, really. One needs to think more like a manager (or at the very least like a salesman) rather than translator. And again, perhaps some visible or tangible distinctions couild help switch from translator mode to manager mode. (If you can’t just accept that you do it — just like I can’t, for example).
And, for ‘just translating’, a salaried job will simply be better. It’s not like everybody has to be a freelancer. For example, I would probably leave freelancing in a hearbeat and with no regrets if I had a compatible salaried position in sight..
For the record, you can actually outsource some of this activities to someone else so that you don’t have to do them if you don’t want to. For example, getting your website made by someone else is comparable to outsourcing a part of your business (as opposed to just purchasing a service or product in the abstract), once you have some initial success out of your own work.
In other words, just like can use the extra money made thanks to your new, better website to pay for an even better website a couple of years down the line, you can also phase out things you normally do on your own, so that you have more time to actually translate, while the other stuff is all done by someone else for you (which includes hiring DTP people for DTP, office assistants for routine/low-priority/unpersonal e-mails plus invoicing according to your instructions etc. etc.).
Thank you! I really appreciate your reply. Your advices are valuable, I should really reconsider how much I should invest, because my web-site and professional photo can’t get me very far. I never thought about CV done by a professional, but because every client needs it, I should do some research on that.
I had a job that was bringing me stable income, but I didn’t love it. Translation is what I love, so I’ll just continue to “fight for my cup of tea” 🙂
Thank you again!
@lukegos – I’m sorry, but I have to disagree with you. As a freelance translator myself and former employer of freelance translators, I can tell you that I really don’t give a rat’s tush about “professionally done” resumes or photos. It’s not a beauty contest, I really don’t care if my translator is male or female, fat or thin, nice-looking professional or ugly as sin. What I care about is that they actually know their job. If you have to lower your rates, I assume you don’t have the kind of dough required to hire “DTP people for DTP” or “office assistants”. Yes, your resume has to look professional, as well as your website, but that doesn’t mean squat if you’re a poor translator. And with so many resources available online, you can actually have a professional-looking resume and website without paying an arm and a leg.
Corinne, I find your post depressing and condescending at the same time. You are addressing translators who self-identify as having “sub-optimal” rates: i.e. translators who have already identified a problem in their business, as they see it. And yet you don’t give them any pointers as to how to improve their situation! I know that you have a whole load of other posts that do address that issue, but still! What this profession really doesn’t need is the President-Elect of its largest professional body going around offering ready-made justifications for professionals as to why they should accept poverty.
Nigel, thanks for your comment and sorry that you didn’t enjoy the post. I’m not sure I see your “justifications for professionals as to why they should accept poverty” point. My first point says “A sub-optimal rate is rarely better than nothing,” and goes on to list various reasons why that’s true. As other commenters point out, sometimes there *are* reasons to work at a sub-optimal rate for a limited amount of time and in a limited situation. Otherwise, it’s a bad idea, and that’s the point I made (or that I intended to make) in the post. I did add a link to a previous post, “To break out of the low rate market, change these three things,” for readers who might be interested.
I suppose the point is that you should probably look for an alternative first, even if it means more effort, in order to avoid contributing to the continuing decline of rates in the broad market. A bit like the observations in my own comment: if you double your rates, you only need half as many words to translate. When I was a green translator, I sometimes had only a couple of days’ worth of work in a month and only made a meagre ‘salary’, but the other side of the coin is that I was able to make what passed for a meagre salary in just several business days of agency/client work. The rest was my CPD time and play time etc.
I am really surprised to read this, as the reason I especially enjoyed this post of Corinne’s is because I think that it is NOT condescending, whereas certain other translators who lecture about not lowering rates can be condescending. Corinne seemed more understanding and explained better why not to accept low rates and even seemed to understand the point of view of someone feeling like it is better than nothing (which, as she points out, it rarely is).
I’m very glad to hear that you read it that way 🙂 That’s certainly the message I would like people to take away from this post, and from the long discussion that it’s generated.
I used low-rate agencies to my advantage, to keep working in the difficult periods, and made sure to use them, through recommendation letters, to gain entrance into a professional translation association (mine required at least 2 years experience). From then on, I dont really have to say who I work for, or how much I charge, because being a member of a reputable professional association already serves to show that I am a qualified and experienced professional. I just have to find a way to let my prospective clients know it, and that is where marketing plays its part. Even if you accept a low-rate job, nobody has to know, but you should know that for your qualifications and experience, you can find better paying clients, and use these same low-rate clients to recommend you to move up the ladder. That is how I did it, that is how I advise anyone to do it, just dont take more than one year to do it.
Well said, Corinne!
As someone who worked for a very large agency for many years while I was in Law School (it’s a 5-year undergraduate program here in Argentina), I agree with the advantages that you pointed out. A large agency helped pay my tuition, apartment, books, etc. and I could turn down work during finals without having to worry about losing my client. It was a great gig for a “starving student” and newbie translator. But it was not sustainable in the long run because, like you said, it wears you out.
If we’re really serious about making a career in translation, then we need to broaden our perspective and aim high. This means making time to market our services and seek information that helps us make rational, informed business decisions that are sustainable in the long run.
Transitioning to a higher paying market is not easy, but it’s not impossible either. I’ve done it, as have many esteemed colleagues. What your post is highlighting, which I think is wonderful, is that ultimately which market you cater to is a choice. In short, the wonderful thing about freelancing is that the sky’s the limit!
Don’t presume you even need to cater either to that market or some other. You can make the market cater to you instead, at least to some extent.
Excellent point, Lukegos!
Unfortunately, for me at least, being as I am from a developing country that is not a given. Those of us in the developing world have a much harder time accessing high-end clients because we are physically further away and our economies are usually in the ruin or hanging from a thread, so it’s harder for us to reach clients, get noticed, and have access to essential tools that raise value at a high-end, international level. This is, of course, why so many low-end agencies look to the developing world to find cheap translators. It works both ways.
The thing about “getting the market to cater to you” is that it’s something you can only do when you have some leverage. And in the developing world, finding that leverage is the real challenge. Though difficult, it is not impossible, which is why I think realistic discussions, like the one Corinne is proposing, about the inevitable reality of translation are valuable. And the inevitable reality of translation is that while thousands of translators live in struggling economies, and large companies have power and leverage, people in need will work for them for peanuts.
If we want to do something to fight the poverty cult, then what we need to do is, among other things, make quality educational tools and certification programs available to translators in the developing world at a low cost, so they can be competitive, add value to their service, and find some leverage. And this is in no way leftist political propaganda or anything of the sort, far from it. But if we want to raise the bar in our industry, we need to actually empower translators to “make the market cater to them” (I love that phrase, by the way!).
In short, while I find your idea spot on, I think if we add just a little bit of geopolitical awareness to it, then we can also add substance and turn that wonderful phrase into a call to action.
Yes, Paula, the reality is that: ‘while thousands of translators live in struggling economies, and large companies have power and leverage, people in need will work for them for peanuts.’ However, I wouldn’t call it inevitable or rather impossible to change. Yes, this means getting outcompeted on the price all the time, but it’s still possible to create a value proposal that resonates with someone who pays more than bottomfeeders do — even though it’s difficult to get any more than a dozen-odd cents per word in, for example, Slavic languages.
Speaking of which — the languages of developing countries aren’t seen as prestigious, and first-world companies generally know what the prices are like where you live, so they may be reluctant to pay (much) more. If they don’t respect the country or its people, they might even try and offer less than the already low average in that country — for example while the average agency rate in Poland for semi-decent translators tends to be around €0.03 per word (our national average salary also is 4 times less than in the US or the UK), there are Western/American companies trying to pay even less. A suicidal desire to pay as little as possible for translation is probably common to agencies around the world no matter wherever they are located, but perhaps developing countries may be more exposed to it due to the lack of respect that I mentioned a while ago.
What’s important to realize is that we can still look for leverage and either find it or make it. There is no need to totally capitulate and just take whatever pittance is offered.
Word of caution here, though: agencies, of course, try to negate that leverage and generally put all translators in one big bracket where everybody’s rate is the same, where individual qualifications and other differences only matter in translator selection but not translator compensation. We need to oppose that — primarily by just saying ‘no’ more often and convincing others to.
Just to be extra clear: ‘making the market cater to us’ was a maximalistic proposal, an ideal that can’t be reached. In real life, it means actually using what leverage we already have and trying to obtain more leverage. This is not supposed to be unrealistic, but it’s supposed to be opposed to passive determinism or fatalism. Or the sort of misguided feeling that by yielding to alleged market realities we are supposedly showing maturity — which is not the case.
And I certainly agree that geopolitics need to be taken into consideration — as well as all the nitty gritty details that tend to be omitted from conversations about rates because they are too awful. This is also why I believe that a broader programme is necessary, not just an elite proposal that can only be implemented by people who are either significantly more gifted (not only intellectually but also in terms of personality and drive) than everybody else or operating in more favourable circumstances. We need ‘elites’ — individual outliers whose example influences many (and shows that some things which used to be thought impossible are actually possible) — but we also need a broad programme for the ‘masses’, a programme sufficiently modest and realistic so that just about any translator could follow it, and a programme for those contending against particularly bad odds (which is often going to be the same thing).
First off, translators would do well to remember that you make more when you increase your ROI/profitability or when you maximize the sum total of your income. You don’t make more by simply setting high rates, not when you aren’t getting enough work to make a nice salary. Hence I agree it’s not particularly smart to just tell translators to keep their rates high — and starve.
(Translators who hear that advice probably begin to doubt that their senior or more successful colleagues keep in touch with reality or have their best interests in mind when giving them advice. It’s not like we can tell people to starve through lack of work just so we could keep our own rates higher due to less pressure, that would be abuse and not proper advice.)
On the other hand, translators also often forget that you don’t make more money by working more jobs/hours, either. You can’t physically work much more than 300 houors a month no matter what, so are you going to somehow become a millionaire if you drop your rates to the equivalent of $5 per hour and just load up on jobs? Of course not! It’s always a *balance*.
What every translator needs is to get the right balance. And that balance will always be subjective. That it must be subjective, however, doesn’t mean it can’t be *smart*. In this context, being smart means being frugal… but with your time and the money you earn as opposed to the money you spend. Different end of the pipe.
If you know you’ll be making, say, $30K p.a. anyway, and you absolutely can’t change that, than you can at least see if it’s possible to still make only $30K but work less and have more time you can use for rest, CPD or other work.
You want to see if you can make that $30K translating 300K words at 0.10 per rather than 600K at 0.05 per. Or perhaps it might be possible to grab only 150K words but at the nicer 0.20 per. It will come out *even*.
Yes, you won’t be making more money per annum, but time is money also. Like you said, and like I said just a moment ago, that time can be spent in a frugal, fruitful way: CPD, rest, more quality time for whatever work you have, pro bono, looking for clients, even a non-translation job. Or a non-freelance translation job.
If more translators used the above approach, we wouldn’t have rates as low as they are now.
***
Word of caution though: anyone who does follow it needs to learn to not spend the pay immediately.
Learn to spend it like it’s your monthly income, even if you spent half a month’s time, just as if you were working a part-time job.
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Similarly, people get so focused on gaining experience that they forget they don’t have to slave away doing corporate jobs for a pittance.
NGOs (and even GOs) can be nicer clients to work with and more prestigious as referrals than cheap business clients.
If you really, really feel you absolutely must be translating 8-10 hours a day, every day, or else you’re gonna die, then maximize the profitability of your paid jobs and just spend all the remaining work time on unpaid jobs.
Pro bono does not mean the experience is less valuable. In fact, it has every chance of being several times more prestigous than cheap jobs from the business sector. And it doesn’t cut into your rates, simply because you aren’t charging any rates. Your rate is whatever you charge for commercial jobs, only commercial jobs are not all jobs you do.
Recap: Sign up with an NGO. Charge your normal clients the maximum an honest person can get away with charging. Use NGO jobs to gain the experience you need.
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Next thing. Like you pointed out, there some circumstances in which a higher rate does not mean more money.
For example, your rates aren’t likely to grow proportionally to the difficulty of the texts you translate. Rather, you will probably be putting in 80% more time to make 20% more money. Which is not optimal financially; it makes you take a huge loss.
In fact, you could sometimes take a 20% *cut* to year rates but still make *more* due to loading up on simple texts that take 80% less time to do.
In this scenario it is the translator with lower rates who is making more money.
There are more such factors than just difficulty:
– CAT discounts, especially internal fuzzies vs no internal fuzzies on a somewhat repetitive text
– admin time
– special requests
– questions to answer
– tech problems to solve
Recap: Out of any handful of jobs you may be comparing at any time you have to make a choice, the job that pays the best nominal rate won’t always be the one that pays the best money. I even think it usually won’t be.
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Your example with that reception job at a less than crowdy place was great. There are jobs that require constant presence but not constant focus. Those jobs can be done concurrently with your translation job as a student — as I don’t believe mature translators should be taking reception jobs or any other low-rank low-skill office jobs (just like doctors, lawyers, accountants etc.).
Next, any job outside translation will ease the pressure on your translation rates. And vice versa. Your ability to picky will increase in both jobs.
Ideally, however, you should prioritize translation experience above minor short-term financial gain.
This is because your greater experience will be an advantage in future negotiations when circumstances change or when there’s an opening of opportunity. It’s good to be prepared for this. Hence, people who prioritize experience so desperately that they work for a pittance don’t have it all wrong; they only forget proportion.
Bottom line: Essentially, translators, like anybody else, should know what they’re doing with their lives. It’s a subject matter whether sacrificing 10%, 20% or 30% of your current earning potential is worth investing in your future earning potential by gaining experience at a faster rate — but 70% is a different cup of tea.
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In fact, not everybody has to be a translator, and not every translator has to be a freelance translator. If freelancing doesn’t pay, and there’s no subjectively viable way of making it pay, then it’s time to look for a job that can pay.
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You probably shouldn’t accept low-pay translation jobs just because you can afford to live frugally for the time being. Instead, it might very well be a better idea to make some money doing something else in order to have a kickstart as a freelance translator (which could be anything, from a Trados licence and a bunch of dictionaries to a physical office and hired assistant, depending on what kind of money we’re talking about).
Even students should be more picky than that — it’s only so long one can be young and slim, only seventeen. Hey, wait, as a student you’re no longer 17! Right, that’s just my point. Use the time you have to learn while you still can. Or do something else that’ll bear you fruit to reap for the entire rest of your life. Dead-end low-rate translation jobs aren’t that.
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Regarding: ‘When you have the skills to work for better-paying clients, but you never go out and look for them,’ that’s what we need real agents for.
Real agents still take a cut and make you sign contracts with confidentiality and non-competition and all that jazz, but your name is still on top. They make their name being your agent, not pretending that they are doing your job on their own and you yourself don’t exist. Show me an agent in sport, literature or music who can do that.
Unfortunately, there are no such agents, or agencies, right now. There are platforms that might assist disintermediation and in turn be the kind of intermediaries that are working in the translator’s interest, but they tend to degenerate into low rates and even more agency work.
Translators’ associations could step in and fill the gap, actually hiring professional managers to fix translators with clients.
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‘When you’re telling yourself that the low-paying clients will love you so much, they’ll agree to a big rate increase at some point. Harsh but true: most times, they won’t,’ — spot on.
What a great analysis, Lukegos! I enjoyed reading it.
I agree with many parts and only fully disagree with one part in particular. As a human rights lawyer-linguist, knowing what is at stake with certain NGOs and NSAs, I can’t condone this idea of “using” NGOs to get experience as a translator as if they (NGOs) deserved second-best quality just because they are taking on causes and, sometimes, have less money than corporations. (Contrary to what people believe, not all NGOs are poor.)
What you seem to be saying, and perhaps I misunderstood, is that if you have no money you deserve to be stuck with inexperienced translators who are using your cause, your advocacy efforts, your contents, to “learn” how to translate and build skills before moving on to more serious stuff. But here’s the thing with NGOs, sometimes what is at stake is a person’s freedom, or a person’s life, or access to justice, or systematic human rights violations at the hands of States and that’s as serious as it gets! These things matter far too much to stiff them with the bottom of the translation barrel just because they are non-profit. Quite the contrary, the best of the best should be the ones providing service to NGOs, at least the ones with serious causes.
Never said second-best quality, Paula! 🙂 Yes, in a certain sense they are second-best clients, as in your second choice only, but no, that doesn’t mean second-best quality, it’s up to you to make sure it’s the same quality your commercial clients get.
Regarding rookies who learn how to translate — NGOs have proofreaders and other people who can help with the QA/QC and give you feedback, often more so than translation agencies. And, as you noted, there are more serious causes and there are less serious causes. There are also more difficult texts and less difficult texts. Just like with commercial clients, beginners need to know their limits. The crucial point is that beginners who need experience should consider meeting their ‘experience quotas’ (so to say) for example with 100K words translated at €0.10 per and 100K words translate free of charge for someone who really needs it, as opposed to 200K at €0.05 per. (Where the volume that needst o be translated and the money you can make are more or less constant but as your rates increase your demand decreases among commercial clients. So you fill up the quota doing non-commercial jobs and you come out even without actually lowering your rates. NGOs were just an example of possible recipients of pro bono translation.)
If anybody deserves to be stuck with inexperienced translators, it’s corporate clients who could pay decent rates but won’t. They are often recipients of misguided compassion and charity on the part of translators who cave in to their demands and their constant failure to amend their budgeting habits.
And thank you. 🙂
I’m completely with you Paula on the need to protect the fundamental rights of individuals, and I think it is essential as a profession that we shout about this (I feel a blog post coming on!) I can only think of the current state of public-service interpreters in my country (UK), who are often paid less than unqualified classroom assistants (I know one who has recently made the career move). I know Lukasz (Lukegos) quite well, and I’m sure he’ll also agree, and far more eloquently as well!
My slight objection to giving my services to NGOs free of charge is that these organisations often have quite a lot of money to give to the right people… my rule of thumb for UK based NGOs is that if the CEO earns less than me from the organisation, I’ll think about it; otherwise, they pay full rate!
With these provisos, I still feel the advice to do *appropriate* pro bono translation (or interpreting) is valid. I know one young translator who translates his local church’s newsletter into Polish, for example: he’s not going to hurt anyone doing that, and I’m sure it’s appreciated.
Crossed replies with Lukasz!
That’s true, Nigel! It’s not always the case that NGOs are poor. In fact, some NGOs have a lot of money for translation and can afford to pay as well as corporations, especially the ones that advocate internationally before the UN or other international organizations and pick causes that are easier to “sell” to the public. For instance, an NGO trying to save the Pandas is more likely to get generous funding than an NGO trying to save the Titan Beetle. Because, let’s face, empathy can be a bit selective and financial resources are allotted rationally to causes that are more likely to gain public support.
Of course, volunteering to translate your church’s newsletter or whatnot isn’t going to hurt anyone and like Lukasz said, translators should know their limitations.
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On another note, sorry about the name thing, Lukasz! Luke Gos… seriously, how did I not pick up on that?!?!?!
Yes, you too were right about ‘appropriate organization’, Nigel. I mostly had charitable NGOs in mind, not something that’s technically a non-profit but is sponsored by for-profit enterprises and works for their benefit. Basically an appropriate pro bono recipient.
When I started out I was so naive I had no idea there were standard rates, so I worked out my rate from first principles (how much I wanted an hour / the number of words I could do in an hour). I ended up with a rate 2 cents higher than the going rate at the time. And found work! It took about six months for me to find out I was charging more than most of my more experienced colleagues… Never looked back.
The first rate I ever quoted was the highest I ever got, excluding international rates (price differences).
My last rate increase was directly influenced by a lawyer client who mentioned a 25% higher rate and said it would have been okay as well. I thanked him, charged him the old rate, but raised my rates for other clients. I might keep him on that old rate for a while longer. 😉
For the record, it’s still not as high as that first rate I ever quoted when I hadn’t known the dark realities yet. 😉
I did that sort of calculation when I started out back in the UK, and got a rate that was a bit too low compared to what the market would bear (as I later discovered) – it turns out that I’m slightly faster than average at translating!
The very idea that “half a sixpence is better than none” is insidious. It has reached what I can only describe as epidemic proportions in the Portuguese market, particularly for into Portuguese translation. It disempowers the freelance translators to the point where translation agencies seem to declare with increasing frequency and ever greater impunity that half a peanut per word is “normal”, irrespective of the competence or degree of specialisation of the translator.
As an English native, I work from Portuguese into English (a pair which attracts a premium here) and a couple of agencies who ask me for quotes have this year been quite blunt in their response to my quite reasonable per job prices, going as far as to say “these rates are not accepted in Portugal”, which is utter rubbish, since I can and do consistently prove them wrong.
Most agencies in Portugal do nothing to raise the profile of the translation among the general public; quite the contrary. Their business model is morally and ethically questionable, for any profit they gain seems to me to be derived solely from depriving translators of a living wage. I use the word “wage” advisedly, since the so-called normal rates bandied about, when multiplied by the volume of words that a single translator can reasonably be expected to translate in a month, equate to less than the legislated minimum wage for unskilled labour!
No young translator is likely to have developed their negotiation skills sufficiently well to be able to deal with direct clients immediately after completing the university degree (most often a Masters degree) and therefore find themselves plunged into a depressing scenario of exploitation where any income derived from translation activity has to be supplemented with other work. While there are exceptions to this rule, they are few. Among established translators into Portuguese in Portugal, I personally know of none who could survive, let alone thrive, without the clients they have secured outside of Portugal’s borders, and without a very high degree of specialisation.
My advice to young translators: get the highest rate you can as quickly as you can, and if the rate offered by these despicable agencies equates to anywhere near the going hourly rate for sweeping the street, or similar, refuse the work.
One more word on the subject of NGOs – and this is the very first time I have publicly voiced this opinion I have held for decades, but now feel that I must:
In development cooperation, in my experience, many NGOs are the result of bilateral and multi-lateral agreements between first-world and third-world countries. By suggesting that inexperienced first-world translators work for a pittance for such NGOs you are merely contributing to two existing problems. The first is that work for NGOs frequently requires a high degree of discernment and translation and cultural competence – as I am sure you would agree with your own experience in the field, Corinne. Poor translation of material for NGO projects in third-world countries can have not only disastrous consequences for the populations there, but can also have negative political consequences for the countries participating in such bilateral agreements. Non-governmental organisations are not as “non-governmental” as many people think; in fact, without the backing of governments, many NGOs would not exist! The distinction between a charity and an NGO seems to have become blurred in the last 15 years or so, possibly because both often work on projects of a similar nature. If a translator is truly interested in non-governmental work, offering to translate (without experience and possibly poorly) for “sub-optimal” rates is one way for such translators not only to shoot themselves in the foot but also to deprive those translators living in the country in which the NGO operates of translation income which should more legitimately flow to such locally contracted (freelance) personnel. I should know. I lost several of my large NGO clients by leaving Africa and settling in Europe, since I was no longer either “local” or “regional”.
The only thing accepting a “sub-optimal” rate does – apart from devaluing the translation profession as a whole – is hinder the individual translator’s own development, since it reduces the time available to the translator to pursue the many other activities required to build their own freelance translation business. It is counterproductive, and if done for long enough, counterproductive in the extreme.
Allison, I think the crux of the problem described in your first paragraph are agencies. There are two things agencies do, as you mentioned:
1. They declare what’s normal. This means that not only are they setting the rates, they are also acting like experts on the subject at the same time.
2. They promote the idea of rates being the same: ‘irrespective of the competence or degree of specialisation of the translator.’
Now, before we move on, #2 is connected with their business model, which is based on pretending that the individual translators don’t exist, there’s only a cloud working for the agency or the agency somehow, itself, translates. Admitting that differences exist among translators would run against that idea — though it could also be wrapped in the trappings of some kind of egalitarianism.
The most important things for translators here is to realize that agencies talk:
1. from their own perspective; and
2. with their own interest in mind.
They don’t need to be obeyed in that, simply put. It’s okay to disagree with them, dispute their arguments and make counteroffers.
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‘Most agencies in Portugal do nothing to raise the profile of the translation among the general public; quite the contrary,’ — of course. The business model is predicated on translation being made cheap and fast. And that is a direct conflict with our interests as translators — we may be sympathetic toward the cause of translation prices not being unreasonably inflated by inreasonable agency markup, but our goal is certainly not to work for less and less and embrace increasing poverty so that translation can be cheaper and continue to become cheaper and cheaper.
And this is where we need to contradict agencies, put a stop to their demands and just start refusing.
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I would be inclined to question that you can’t deal with direct clients just after graduating — or that you can deal with agencies effectively as opposed to direct clients. Direct clients aren’t perhaps inclined to be lavish with money, but agencies certainly are not. Remember the part we covered about agencies dictating the new normal and acting like subject-matter experts on rates? Many translators work for a pittance because that’s what agencies tell them is normal rates.
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(…) ‘find themselves plunged into a depressing scenario of exploitation where any income derived from translation activity has to be supplemented with other work. While there are exceptions to this rule, they are few. Among established translators into Portuguese in Portugal, I personally know of none who could survive, let alone thrive, without the clients they have secured outside of Portugal’s borders, and without a very high degree of specialisation,’ — yes, that’s a sick system we need to change, not embrace. Sometimes we have no choice but to pick the best job of the bad jobs that are available, but we shouldn’t accept the current rotten state of things as a given.
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‘My advice to young translators: get the highest rate you can as quickly as you can, and if the rate offered by these despicable agencies equates to anywhere near the going hourly rate for sweeping the street, or similar, refuse the work.’ — I’d say even more: you can always get better-paying work to pay the bills and do translation work pro bono if you want to translate, you will come out even.
I can understand that there are translators out there who for various reasons don’t feel ready to go premium, because they haven’t decided on a specialization and target market yet, feel they need more experience/training first, etc., but I don’t think that means you have to start at the bottom. If you don’t feel ready to go after direct clients yet or prefer to work for agencies, I don’t think that means your only other option is to work at sub-optimal rates. I think with the right strategy it is not too difficult to start at the middle and then quickly work your way up as soon as you have made up your mind and acquired the right skills for a strong specialization.
Having a clear specialization is not only a prerequisite for direct client work but can also get you work from boutique agencies and even higher-paying, higher priority work from some more average agencies. If you don’t feel confident enough, get an experienced colleague to mentor you and review your work. Then you know you are good and have the confidence you need to quote the rates you want.
As Lukasz said, your business will grow much faster if you have fewer billable hours at a higher rate than long hours at a low rate. That’s a crucial point. If you really want to be successful, you have to have a long-term perspective.
A couple of years sounds like a very long time to be working at sub-optimal rates. I assume that people who are members of professional translator associations should have access to the resources, contacts and knowledge to avoid ever having to work at sub-optimal rates. I would only expect it from people who are completely isolated from other translators and are told this is the norm by certain agencies (which I was in the beginning of my career admittedly, but as soon as I joined my local association and met other translators who were helpful, things turned around very quickly).
I also have seen several new translators completely sidestep sub-optimal rates at the beginning of their careers recently and start out on pretty good footing.
But it will of course require a certain amount of patience, positioning and effort. As you said yourself Corinne, well-paying clients don’t appear out of thin air.
Concerning agencies, Corinne makes the point that you can’t expect any big rate rises down the line if you pitch your initial rate too low at an agency client, and I think we’d all agree with that. But I don’t think it’s even a question of “boutique agencies” vs the rest: there is a whole range of agency clients out there. BUT each individual agency, especially at the lower end of the market, tends to operate within a narrow range of rates, and this is why translators don’t get much luck by asking for large rate rises. To improve your rate in the “mass-market” segment of the profession, you need to find new clients, and you also need to be able to justify that your translation service is decent, or even really good. There are lots of ways of addressing that second point, but I think they’d need several blog posts to go into!
Yes, agree that agencies tend to have a certain usually low range of rates, especially in the mass market. A mass market agency won’t pay you much more for being specialized, maybe will just be willing to bump you up to the higher end of their low range. I guess the point I was trying to make is that not all agencies are mass market agencies that offer sub-optimal rates, so yeah, you would need to be able to find ones that have higher expectations and pay more accordingly, and usually they aren’t the ones who aggressively recruit.
Good point about boutique agencies, David Friedman.
Hi Corinne et al.,
I can see I’m coming rather late to the party, and much of what I would want to say in response has already been said.
My first impression was similar to Nigel’s. I really don’t think it’s very appropriate for the head of the world’s largest translation association to post excuses for accepting sub-optimal rates. I get that you want to be inclusive, and that as a trainer, you actually market yourself to people trying to get out of that hole. At the same time, though, in soothing some sensitive egos, you’re actually justifying the continuation of a destructive cycle.
It is very easy to tell everyone they are doing everything just right. They will love you for it (especially if they perceive you as some sort of authority). It’s much harder to tell someone they need to buck up their ideas or they’ll be out of a job and out of money in a few years. Frugality won’t stop a downward spiral.
I have four key objections, outlined below:
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*Key objection 1*
The suggestion that big agencies and low rates are good for people with constraints. The reverse is true due to the time it takes to earn a good income and a misrepresentation of the flexibility of better agency clients and direct clients.
Under “When you’re working within a lot of constraints”, you suggest that having agency clients who offer sub-optimal rates is an advantage for people who are “going to school”, “raising kids”, “working another job”. I believe the opposite is true.
On the one hand, boutique agencies and direct clients can be quite understanding of your constraints, too. If you have a colleague you can reliably share the workload with (with the clients’ knowledge, of course), then this is even more doable. Generally, the further you stray from the bulk market, the more pleasant the conditions become. They pay more and deadlines are often less strict. There are of course exceptions in some industries and with some sorts of clients, but there is always enough non-urgent premium work aside from that time-sensitive stuff.
As illustrated in Lukasz’s comments, it’s just not logical to work for 20 hours a week at 8 cents per word when you can work for 10 at 16, or 5 at 32. The less time you need to earn the minimum income you need to pay the bills, the better. Low-paying work to fit around your studies may seem convenient, but if you’re still spending 20 hours a week working to earn what you might otherwise earn in ten or even five, then you’re still losing out – chores and other aspects of that thing we call “living” have to come in somewhere.
*Key objection 2*
The suggestion that it is okay in the short term to help you “finish school” or “sock away enough money to quit your day job”. The reality of this is going to be shaped by the low income and high time commitment associated with working for low rates.
Under “When you put some parameters on the low-rate work”, you suggest that you can fix a time period during which this is acceptable, and then people can work on changing things after, presumably. Just how is that productive? All of that time is effectively wasted when it comes to advancement. The translator could spend that time improving their skills with clients who provide good feedback, like better agencies, cooperating with colleagues to satisfy the needs of direct clients, and generally climbing the ladder. There is no law of nature that says just because we suddenly decide we finally do want to pull ourselves out of the gutter, we can. In fact, government studies frequently show that underemployment and unemployment are strong indicators of where a person will be in the future. In other words, don’t put off to tomorrow what one can do today.
*Key objection 3*
The suggestion that outgoings are the problem, rather than income.
Under “When you could cut fat from your spending budget and avoid the low-rare work”, you suggest frugality as a realistic alternative. I get what you are trying to say – that it’s better not to be desperate and accept low rates just to top up our meagre income. I don’t object to that part. What I do object to is the idea of encouraging extreme frugality as being part of a freelancer’s or translator’s lifestyle. It’s not really something you see lawyers doing, is it?
I just don’t think it is good or healthy for the head of the ATA – an association made up of professional, trained and skilled independent business people – to be encouraging frugality as a way of life. As if our choice of careers should automatically doom us to poverty – sorry, “frugality”. This is not the image we want to project to clients if we want to be treated with any respect whatsoever. I apologise for the harsh words in advance, but I really do find your beating of the frugality drum horrific. You are training the next generation of translators. What on Earth can they aspire to?
*Key objection 4*
The fact you never mentioned turning down work so you are able to improve your skills.
The best way to get out of the pits of sub-optimal rates is to improve one’s skills. I started off charging something like six or seven cents per word nine years ago. I used to think 30 euros per hour was an impressive sum, because I was stupidly comparing it to the nine-to-five wages in unskilled jobs. I earn an multiple of that today, because I invested time in improving my skills. That is the strongest reason there is for turning down sub-optimal rates. It’s not just about having the time to get better clients, it is also about having the time to invest in improving your skills so you can attract and actually hold onto better clients.
It is also about changing your mentality – switching away from the robot-like churning out of words for anonymous agencies, and moving towards full mental engagement with the text and – ideally – its author(s), too. Put any translator in an agency setting, unable to ask questions directly to the author(s) or users of the text, and unable to really clarify points of ambiguity, or turn down work that is not really for them… and you cripple them. Not even the best of translators will be able to produce anything that is even half the quality of their best work.
So essentially, I am saying that one of the strongest reasons to turn down work for sub-optimal rates has nothing to do with the sub-optimal rates, but the sub-optimal processes associated with them. If you never break out of that cycle, you will always be a sub-optimal translator, with the sub-optimal rates to fit your sub-optimal skills.
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Sorry to come down so harsh, Corinne, but it really needed saying. You’ve gathered by now that the post has been controversial. I understand that you mean well, and as a caring sort of person, a large part of your intent will have probably just been to make people feel better. Sometimes people need to hear harsh truths to actually succeed, though. I will be eternally grateful to the people who poured cold water over me in my earlier days… People in that position need a wake-up call, not a lullaby to sooth them in their slumber.
Thanks Rose! Just to chime in on the frugality thing: you might find it (or the haircuts that my husband gave me in the early 2000s) “horrific,” but to me it, like lots of other things, is a question of priorities. After 13 years of freelancing, I earn enough that we could…(buy a bigger house, stop shopping at thrift stores, etc.), but I’d rather live debt-free, with the knowledge that I work because I love it and find it meaningful, not because I have debts to pay. We don’t *need* to live frugally anymore; honestly it’s more of a habit than anything else, but it also means that we’re not beholden (literally or figuratively) to anyone/anything.
I totally agree with you on living within one’s means – escalating personal debt is a massive problem in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and beyond.
That said, I don’t think one (living within one’s means) necessitates the other (living frugally).
I don’t waste money, and am saving up to buy a house on my own (my partner isn’t in a position to contribute to that). All the while, I’m also building up my business to be totally sorted financially for years to come.
I would never, ever advocate loans and getting in debt, and like you, I’m not particularly keen on the idea of mortgages. Just extreme frugality can be counter-productive in terms of the time spent hunting for bargains (and being burned by a false economy) and the impression it leaves on others.
We all need to invest in our future success and happiness. Living debt-free is one part. On the other hand, it’s important to invest time in improving our skills and client base (which come hand in hand), as well as the equipment we need to do our jobs well.
I spent a lot of money on office equipment, technology and events this year – but all of those are long-term investments that will continue to pay off for decades.
Thanks everyone for this very energetic (!!) discussion; it’s really enjoyable to read your comments on both ends of the spectrum. I just wanted to lay to rest any idea that I’m “using my position in ATA to encourage people to work for low rates.” The point of this post is that low rates are *rarely* better than nothing; they are nearly always worse than nothing, for the reasons I’ve enumerated in the post.
However, I do think, that for the reasons various commenters have mentioned, working for sub-optimal rates *when you are under constraints* can be better than nothing, *for a limited amount of time*. Otherwise, they are not. Thanks for the great discussion!
“using my position in ATA to encourage people to work for low rates.”
Why is that in quotation marks? Did anyone say that? I know I didn’t, because I don’t even think it. 🙂 I do think some remarks might be misguided for someone in your position, but there is a difference between misguided remarks and actively encouraging people to work for low rates.
I respectfully disagree that working for sub-optimal rates can be better than nothing, for the reasons I outlined in my longer comment above. But then, I’m a long-term player.
First, I want to point out that I like this blog post a lot and I like your approach to the topic, how you view all sides! You also offer a lot of practical advise/discussion on topics where others just simple provide vague, unhelpful statements.
But to answer your question, i do very much find the numerous forums about not accepting lower than average rates to be condescending (in my opinion, probably the most annoying during my research in starting out). As in any field, you need to start somewhere. To gain experience while working full time at a real job, id rather be making a few cents than nothing at all and get myself a few extra bucks while trying to get references! I find that most people who comment on this topic are very seasoned translators that started out in this field in a different time: without all the technology that is available now for translating, recruitment, etc. my point is that it’s a different ballgame than in the 80s or 90s, the industry is more connected and more competitive than ever it seems. Also just starting out in the workforce in general with the way the economy is: When I graduated in 2009 in the heat of the recession, I couldn’t find a job that paid what I “should’ve gotten” for having a bachelors degree from a good university. Was I supposed to sit around and wait for a job that was good enough for me? No! I worked a lot for low paying jobs and as a waitress, I didn’t think that was below me because I had bills to pay and things I wanted to do and no one else was supporting me. It was frustrating at times, but I just kept doing my best and tried not to complain. My parents starting out in the 80s were making more (relatively speaking) without a degree. The same goes for translating. At entry level in any field, you may not make what you think you “deserve.” But you keep doing it, work two jobs, or work extra hours to do what you have to do to be financially stable. To me, it’s a privilege to be able to work regular hours for a decent wage, not a right and I don’t take it for granted. Especially if you’re single.
My advice to new translators is find a job that’s easy and flexible, like restaurants, that you can still focus on and have the time for your real passion, translating. Take whatever jobs you find that you have time for, you’ll learn from a lot of mistakes and hopefully get some experience to put on a resume. Always keep reaching out to new clients, with the experience you gain you start increasing your rate each time you reach out to someone new. Eventually, you get enough clients at a decent rate that allow you to quit the other job or just go down to part time.
I just don’t think we “deserve” anything in this world, no matter how experienced or educated we are. We need to work our butts off continuously to achieve what we want, sometimes that work is working your way up from below. It took me a long time to do on my own, but I’m so proud to say to everyone “hey look I’m actually using that French degree now!”
I feel the amount of opinion on this topic by folks who have started since the recession are non existent, so therefore others’ experiences and advice may not apply to this day and age.