This page is meant to serve as a database for any relevant freelance translation questions that I come up with in the process of building the Freelance Translators from Scratch blog, or for those questions which have been posed by others who visit this blog and add their comments.
All questions will be considered for this page, so please feel free to present me with your own.
Are you an established freelance translator? If so, what were the questions for which you desperately hoped to quickly find answers when you were first starting out on your own?
Are you a ‘newbie’ to the profession, like me? For which questions do you hope to find answers? I will continue to add to the list of questions as long as new ones present themselves.
*NOTE* If the questions below already have answers provided, don’t take that to mean your input is no longer necessary. On the contrary: the greater the variety of perspectives on any of the topics discussed, the better! So please take a couple minutes, when you have time of course, to give me YOUR answers.
Here they are:
- What is the first step?
- Where can I find practical information to get me going and how do I not waste time ‘reinventing the wheel’, so to speak?
- Which books have proven useful for freelance translators and/or for those who are considering entering the freelance translation profession?
- Which fields in the translation world have the most demand for qualified translators?
- Do I need to be certified?
- How do people from different countries, with different language fluencies, get certified? Are there international bodies that certify for multiple languages?
- How could a person operate in a language pair that isn’t connected to the country in which he/she lives? How would such a translator find clients?
- How many people out there have started out as freelancers and ended up (or hope to end up) working for an in-house company? Is this really the ideal?
- Do US-based translation companies have less of a demand for in-house translators than their European counterparts (or those in any other countries, for that matter)?
- The average self-employed freelance translator pulls in about US $52,000. Anyone care to vouch for this, personally?
- I’ve been thinking of taking some time away from teaching to try to launch a business as a freelancer. Would I make it within a year?
- Where does one find the work?
- How many people out there rely more on agencies and how many have a solid direct client base?
- How do you set translation rates? Is the word count in the source or target? Or is the rate calculated by line, by every thousand words, by how many characters are involved in the translation?
- As a beginner translator, how does one come up with a rate to start off with? Do you just pick one based on what you see others quoting and then keep lowering it until you land a contract? And then once you build up a bit of a reputation you can subsequently increase your rate bit by bit?
- Why join a professional association?
- Which associations exist in Canada, Germany, Japan, and France?
- Aside from ProZ, where else could I get a good look at some translators’ resumes, to see what really works for people?
- As far as practice translations/samples go, what is the best way to ensure that I’m not wasting my time? What I mean is, what kinds of samples would be attractive to potential clients?
- Does anybody do translations of Wiki pages as part of building their portfolio?
- Can anyone recommend some sites for volunteer translation projects (in my case, specifically for German>English translation)?
- Can anyone send me some examples/templates that are succinct and seem to work well when fishing for clients? Or, when filling in online applications for agencies, a useful blurb/spiel to enter into “Comments” or “Additional info” sections?
- What would you say the best computer system for a freelance translator is? How many computers? How many monitors? Which OS? Which brand of computer?
- Which operating systems can be localized in your source language? Which are multilingual?
- What are the best Open Source tools/resources available for a freelance translator?
- If you had to stare at one or two computer monitors all day long, which monitor(s) would you want to be staring at? Any other monitor-related gadgets you can recommend for ergonomics?
- Which email client is your favorite? Which is the most reliable?
- Can you recommend good accounting software for a freelance translator (or any home business person, for that matter)? On a similar note, what about invoicing software?
- Webhosting services: What’s good in Japan? Which international companies have something to offer?
- In your opinion, which is the best quality TM software/CAT Tool available? And can some software just cost too much to be worth it?
- For those who are working on website or software localization, are there any useful programs around to make that job a little easier?
2 responses so far ↓
céline // February 29, 2008 at 9:40 pm
This page is a great idea. I’ll try to take a few minutes here and there to contribute to it. One request: can you number the questions so people answering don’t have to retype them - lazy, I know, but it might also make it clearer which ones have been addressed and which ones remain “open”.
There are two easy questions I can answer right now: I give a number of volunteer translation sites on my links page (http://www.nakedtranslations.com/en/links.php). It should be a good starting point.
The other is about earnings: yes, $52,000 seems to me a realistic average.
More later!
Corinne McKay // March 5, 2008 at 12:29 am
Hello: I’ll take a stab at a couple of these. I think that 52K is very realistic for someone who has excellent language skills and markets assertively. The latest ATA average is actually up to 60K for full time freelancers.
Here in the US, very few translators ever go in-house, I would say that the vast majority remain freelancers for the duration of their careers. It may be just the industry model here, or the fact that US-based companies have less demand for in-house translators as compared with their EU counterparts?
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