How to set Freelance translation rates?

How to set Freelance translation rates? How to set Freelance translation rates? I am often asked by beginners either fresh from college or from those who have just entered the translation world. It does not matter who you are. But the fact is that you are a beginner. And as a beginner, you need to decide very soon how much you should be charging. The question could be formulated in a different fashion and that is how low can your rate go before it’s not worth doing a translation? You should do some thing else which is more remunerative rather than translation. Here are few suggestions on setting Freelance translation rates 1. Start at just about the minimum for your language pair and economic circumstances (where you live in the world, standard of living etc), then increase gradually as you get more experience and clients. 2. In some countries there are translators associations where they try to establish a minimum rate for translators. You can visit their website or go to their office to enquire about the minimum rate if at all they something like that established. It seems that in Brazil, the translators association has established a minimum rate. It is another thing how many beginner translators can successfully charge that rate to their clients or agencies. But then, it gives a fairly good idea about a starting rate in that country. 3. Another way is use Rate Calculator in ProZ.com site. You can play around with it. Though is quite simple but it does provide a preliminary idea about rates. 4. As a beginner you do not get many chances to receive an assignment, because there are established colleagues, with years of experience and translation degrees. You are pretty much in a difficult situation. And then there are those colleagues who charge so little per word, that your rate seems very high. But as a safe bet, a straight forward suggestion could be –“charge less in the beginning”. Start getting jobs then start increasing your rates for new customers. Keep your old customers happy with old rates. After some period when you have sufficient jobs explain the situation to your old clients and ask for a rise. But a word of caution, you certainly shouldn't charge less than what would constitute a living wage for your efforts. 5. If you can deliver high quality work on time and you have specialist expertise you may charge more even though you may be just a beginner in this market.

How to Achieve Success as a Freelance Translator?

How to Achieve Success as a Freelance Translator? Almost all the translation agencies are a bit apprehensive about recruiting a new freelancer into their circle. The reason is, they are not sure whether the person can live up to their expectations, work effectively with specialization in IT, financial, medical, technical, and commercial fields, meet the agreed deadlines and provide consistent quality level. Thus, to cut anxiety, translation agencies accept applications from freelancers who are well experienced in freelance translation services. In order to achieve success as a freelance translator, the first step you need to take after graduation is to groom yourself as a professional freelance translator. After completing studies, lookout for an employment with an all-round translation agency instead of stepping in the market as a freelance translator. It is true that as a salaried employee you will be paid less as compared to that of an independent freelance translator. But without necessary experience, it will not be an easy path to climb up the ladder in freelance translation jobs. There are translation agencies that do not take a new paid member; however, they might offer you the post of a trainee. This will provide the perfect background for a career in freelance translation service as you gain more and more practical experience and expertise. Once you have gained the necessary experience, it is time for you to locate your own clients. Try your hand as a part-time freelance translator so that you have time enough to search for new clients and manage financial issues. Place your CV to professional groups of translation firms and focus your willingness to sit for necessary tests. Register yourself as a self-employed person with suitable tax papers. Once you get enough work to fill up almost 20 hours a week, you can consider terminating your contract and become a full-time freelance translator. At the end, it is always your business acumen and experience that determines how successful you will become in freelance translation services.

How important is a Translation Degree?

How important is a Translation Degree? As an aspiring or a successful translator, you might have always wondered how necessary it is to get a formal degree in translation. As an aspirant a degree might sound awfully vital for you to come forward. If you are already successful at translation you might still think whether you would have been even better with a formal degree. So, how important is a Degree in Translation? First of all you should consider the benefit of having a formal degree. Having had formal education will definitely help you learn more about the language you are studying. You will be more aware of the patterns in language that will surely help you when you are pursuing a career in the field. There are even some jobs that will accept people only if they have a formal degree but such jobs are not in plenty and are mostly restricted to Government work for which opportunities may be limited. There are even some agencies that may not take you in if you do not have a formal degree but again the numbers are limited. If you are a fresher, having a formal degree might work in favor if you are being weighed against others who are also new to the field. So, in such instances having a formal degree may work for you although it is not an absolute must. It is also of a general opinion that rather than having a formal degree it is much better to obtain a specialization in some particular field of your interest such as finance, IT, medical, pharmaceutical, etc that will help you get better at jobs in that particular field and aid in getting more job opportunities. This also helps in better marketing for yourself if you are a fresher looking out for jobs. Having said this, a formal degree is not always a gateway to getting jobs. Although experts feel that there is some added benefit to having a degree, it is experience and your skills that are important. They feel that you need to be able to adapt well and learn to execute your work efficiently. Finally, it is the way that you execute your work that is more important than having a degree.

Are Translation Tests Helpful?

Photo Credit Swami Stream Are Translation Tests Helpful? Like any other industry, being a rookie at freelancing is a tough time and you are made to put up with many uphill tasks. Once such task that every freelancer, searching for jobs, faces is the ordeal of taking up tests for translation. But, does taking up such tests really result in getting you jobs is the golden question. Different agencies handle the proposition of hiring people to do their jobs in different manner. Some just go by the CV you have provided while others resort to screening using samples that you have provided or by checking with some references that you have given. Yet there are others that ask you to take up a test free of charge for evaluating you. From the agency’s point of view, such tests are justified saying that samples provided may not necessarily be yours while reference response can many a times be questionable. For this reason, they have to take up a test for evaluation. They say that they cannot provide a response to every person who takes up a test. While there are agencies that do provide a feedback to tests that are taken, there is an equal or a higher number of agencies that do not do this. For this reason, many freelancers get dejected by not receiving proper responses and in several cases receiving devious replies. This brings us back to the question- Do such tests result in providing you jobs? While it is a general opinion that such tests are nothing but a waste of time, there definitely is a small percentage of people who claim that they have landed up jobs by taking up tests before starting out. So, the proposition of taking up a test or not is a decision that has to be made by you. The only kind of safeguarding that you can do from your side is to try and check the credentials of the agency to see if you are not being taken for a ride by taking the prescribed test.

Practical Tips for Document Word Count

Practical Tips for Document Word Count As a freelancer, you will be receiving files in different file formats for translation. Since you are generally paid according to the number of words in the source text you would generally be expected to produce an invoice which states the number of words that are present in the original text and calculate the exact amount that needs to be paid multiplying the number of words with the amount paid per word. The problem arises if the file sent to you is a PDF document. If the PDF file has not been sourced from a scan, it is possible to convert this into text file and calculate the number of words. Since most PDF documents are scanned, it is not possible to calculate the exact number of words as it can be done in a .DOC file or a text file. Here are few practical tips that will help you if you are faced up with such a situation. 1. The easiest method is to request your client to send in a copy of the file that is in an editable version. But, in many cases this is not possible as it may not be available in this form. 2. Another simple alternative to use is to inform the client prior to taking up the project that you will be charging by the hour as it is not possible to get an exact word count. 3. Another practical method to get an approximate of the number of words is to randomly count the number of words in few particular lines and arrive at an average word count per line and then multiply it with the number of lines in the document to arrive at a final figure. 4. Another simple method is to inform the client that you would be taking the word count of the finished translation as it cannot be found out from source. However, this may not be accepted by many clients. 5. If you do not want to rely on any of the methods enlisted above, then you will need to invest in special software (Optical Character Recognition- OCR) to help you out. E.g.: Omnipage Pro, ReadIris Pro, Abbyy, Practicount, Anycount, etc. These simple and practical methods will definitely solve the problems of getting a word count on any PDF file formats that you might receive in the future.