Freelance translator and translation company
Some translators contact clients directly, but more translators need to turn to the translation company at least for part of their jobs, which means they have to, more or less, make contacts with translation companies. There’re also some translations who mainly get their jobs from translation companies, and some others who have their own fixed clients while receiving jobs from translation companies. Whatever, it’s clear that no translator can afford to wholly bypass the translation company. To learn more about them will be beneficial to a translator.
Why do you need a translation company? Because:
1. Many translation projects consist of hundreds of pages (such as legal documents, books, software instruction manuals and technical materials)
2. Many enterprises of public ownership can keep accounts only with formal receipts;
3. Materials to be translated may include tables and pictures that require desktop publishing or handling of graphic experts;
4. The finished products of translation may be books and booklets with colored texts, photos and artistic pictures;
5. To entrust a job to one organization will reduce management cost.
6. Translation companies feature advantages in talent reserve and project management, thus they have higher ability in guaranteeing smooth progress and quality of translation.
How to cooperate with a translation company as a freelance translator?
Firstly, you need to get your resume ready, which includes your name, address, phone number, fax number, email and ways of going online. All these must be placed at the beginning so that they can be eye-catching enough. Secondly, you need to write down your mother tongue and working language; most translation companies would put your resume aside without them. Also, consider carefully whether to note that the target language in your translation is not your mother tongue, as some translation companies would not consider accepting a translator whose target language is not native language.
Now we shall talk about the main body of the resume.
Firstly, you should mention your working experience as a translator, including what kind of jobs you have done for what organization in which country. If you have really rich experiences, try to focus on the most important and striking ones. Surely, do present some influential clients and the specific jobs you’ve done for them. For instance, do not just write “I translated for Berlitz Translation Company”, but put down “I used to translate the user’s manual of Blah-blah management software for Berlitz Translation Company in 1992.”
Secondly, do mention experience relevant to translation, for example, how long have you spent abroad, how many non-native languages you were trained about, and your knowledge and experience in the special field of your translation. My resume defined that I used to work in Japan for 3 years, 1 year for study in the university and 2 years for teaching and translation. I also mentioned that I have professional backgrounds in computer consultation and software programming.
Last but not the least, you need to show the awards, certificates and professional qualifications you obtained, for instance, fellowship in your major language and passing ATA qualification test in the US.
Till now, your resume will be roughly completed, but still you need a covering letter to explain the purpose of your resume. The covering letter should firstly mention the jobs you can do and you want to do, not simply stating “I’m a translator” but clarifying “I’m a Japanese-English freelance translation in the fields of biochemistry and computer” instead; secondly, you should indicate that you want a job as an independent contractor; lastly, reiterate your experience and qualifications in translation.
There’re some basic problems that must be discussed.
Those who have been engaged in the service would know that resume is not reliable enough for finding the truly qualified translator, as anyone can claim that he’s a translator and some would actually do that. The most distinct feature is that a translator must get command of at least 2 languages. Therefore, a translation company has only two ways of selecting qualified translators from resumes: firstly, to get clues from personal background information; secondly, to offer a test.
Background information is a very important part in the resume, which is generally about whether you once lived or worked abroad, whether you’ve received language education at higher-education level, whether you have experience in translation and so on. However, the problem is: what about those that are only engaged recently? Generally speaking, translation companies want experienced translators, but still some others would take a risk. If you’re lucky enough to come across the latter, you must enhance your own ability. Perhaps you can choose to take some tests for translator’s qualification, or go to another less critical country for translations jobs in order to acquire relevant experience.
Surely, you may also take the tests required by some translation companies, as they don’t trust things on the paper. Unless you graduate from a top translator training school or you’ll need to take such tests anyway.
If a translation company wants you to take a test or asks you to show them your previous translations, just do it with pleasure, even though it’s not because that’s real “pleasure” but because you have no other choice.
Most translation companies don’t expect their translators to be talents in literature or language, but they need translators to ensure high quality of their translations, without errors or omissions and with timely submission. But as far as I know, many translators are unable to achieve these. So I would like to strongly stress that if you want to be a translator, you’ll need to guarantee the quality and timely delivery. By doing these you’ll get more jobs, or you may just quit for the benefits of other translators and your clients.
Some translation companies may send a contract for independent contractor to you, defining that: you’re hired by them and work for them independently; your translation belongs to them and you need to be responsible for the errors, redundancy, delay and other problems arising from translation; the translator must conduct translation and retranslation until it’s accepted by the client and must do the job based on the need of the translation company and clients. You must read through each article and only sign it after you’re fully certain of the contents.
Before negotiating about relevant matters, you need to know about what you’re going to translate. Sometimes negotiations are unnecessary. A translation company used to ask me to translate a very specific corporate financial statement, but I refused, as it’s not within the scope of my translation competence. Never do the jobs beyond your ability. And when you don’t take such jobs, you’re actually helping everyone. If you know any translator who can do them, just recommend him. Everyone will be grateful to your help.
A translation company will usually set a deadline for translation submission and ask if you can handle the time. Some projects are flexible but some others have very strict requirement of timeliness, so you have to ask about this in advance and estimate the time you need to spend on a job.
You should also pay attention to the format of translation submission. A translator must submit translations pursuant to the requirements of translation companies, which may provide specific instructions in this respect. When the original material contains a large number of charts and pictures, or the translations are to be combined with other translations for publishing, instructions about format will be important. You should follow these and turn to translation companies for help if you have any questions.
Before you start translation, you should learn about the purpose of the translations and their target, find out whether the final client needs a term list, and capture details about translation style and format. If the original material includes charts or pictures, you should be clear about the way of handling them. You should clearly know whether the translation is in a special form or just an average text file, as translation in a special form generally deserves higher pay.
So the last point will be about pay. Most of the time, a translation company will directly tell you how much they’ll pay for a certain project and see if you will accept the price; some translation companies may ask about your pay requirement. You should consider these in advance, or you’ll be looking unprofessional during negotiations.
As far as I’m concerned, the charging standard for translation is mainly based on 3 factors: firstly, the average charging standard; secondly, the nature and difficulty of the materials to be translated; thirdly, the workload.
The average charging standard varies depending on different languages, regions and levels of demand, hence without a uniform standard. The nature of the materials to be translated is the key factor, and the workload is an important factor. The larger the workload is, the lower the charge rate is. For a freelance translator, steady workloads, or rather, a steady job for weeks or months, would be worth the slight price discount he offers. If someone offers me a job of translating 300 pages of software instructions, I would be more than pleased to reduce my charge rate to return for the provision of a steady job for nearly 2 months.
