My Job As A: Freelance Translator

The Cool

Occupation:
Translator, Freelancer

Qualifications held:
- BA Arts (International)
- MA Translation Studies
I loved French in school and wanted to pursue languages in my career. I went to NUIG and studied their Arts course; I kept on French and took up Spanish. Studying languages through Arts put me onto the Arts International course which meant doing the Erasmus year - an extra year between second and final year, spent at a university abroad. So after my second year exams I spent a summer in the south of France and then in September went to uni in Spain.
I had intended on doing the Dip and going on for secondary teaching but the more I looked into it, the less I liked the idea. So I went into the Masters in Translation Studies instead, at NUIG as well. That advanced my language skills and trained me for this particular field of work.

Previous Jobs:
After my Masters I took up an internship with a translation company for a few months, did well at it and was one of very few interns offered a job outright from it. I worked as a Project Manager, coordinating translation projects between clients and translators, and doing some translation myself in between. It was always my aim to go freelance and be self-employed so I eventually cut the strings and am now self-employed, working from home and my own boss.

Daily/weekly/yearly routine:
The thing about my job is that there's not much routine to it at all. All my work is online, clients email me work and as I have clients from California to Europe to Egypt, I can get emails at any time of day. One week I might have 5 days of steady paced work, the next week I can have two long, busy days and then nothing for the other days, but it all averages out. I can accept or reject work as it suits me - I never have to worry about asking for days off work!
In general, I try to keep my working day as close to 9-5 as possible, and if I leave the house during working hours I make sure to have my phone to hand to receive emails. At the end of every month I send out invoices for the work I've done that month and it generally gets paid a month afterwards.

Age bracket:
mid 20s.

Day In The Life:
Today: I had an 11am deadline for a French legal document that I worked on yesterday, so I sat down to work around 9.30 to proofread my work and get it sent off in time. Then, I had a short medical report in Spanish due at 2pm today so I got that done and sent off. In the mean time I've been sent a large French manual to translate for next week; time management is very important, so I'll get as much of it done before the weekend as possible.
All the while, I've been sitting on my couch, on my laptop cuddled up with the dog. Not too shabby!

General comments:
PROS
- Being my own boss - I can work when I want to, or have the day off if I want.
- Working from home is cheap as chips! No transport costs, no having to buy office clothes...
- I've always loved working with languages and while it's now only a hobby to many of my friends and old classmates, my passion is what pays the bills.
- The diverse range of stuff I translate. One day it's food labels, the next it's a warrant for a pimp trafficking women into Europe, the next it's a veterinarian report on lion eating and pooping habits. It never gets dull.
CONS
- Being my own boss! While it's lovely not to have to answer to anyone, I are totally responsible for my success and failure. It takes a lot of motivation to push yourself.
- The one thing I really miss about working an ordinary job is pay day! I send invoices to get paid for my work, but clients aren't always prompt in paying them, so there's no such thing as marking off the days in your calendar til payday.

Sam the Sham

What/how do you generally charge for a translation? Is it a word rate? Or do you just agree on a job rate?

The Cool

You'd generally charge by the word. A standard work day would mean translating 2000 words and depending on the field you're working on, the language pair and how experienced you are, the usual rates would usually vary between 0.05 and 0.10 EUR per word, for common languages like European ones. But then, languages like Russian might be lower, and languages like Irish might be higher (I've heard of Ulster Scots Gaelic being done at a rate of 0.25).
So if you have an easy enough text, you might get 2500-3000 words done in a day, but you'll only charge about 5c per word; for a technical piece with very specific language, you might get 10c or more but maybe only get 1200 words done in a day.

If you're big into your Irish then translation is definitely worth considering - we are crying out for Irish translators in this country, as there's so few but a lot of official stuff like annual reports and county council documents legally need to be translated into Irish. When I worked as a project manager we had an excellent Irish translator who was always lined up with lots of work, would get through about 3,000 words or more a day and charged about 0.08 per word - so you're talking 250 quid per working day. His monthly invoices for our company alone were huge.

You'll always have all the details agreed with the client before starting on a job - word count, deadline and rate per word.

Sam the Sham

Interesting. How do you find clients? Or how do they find you? Website, I guess?

playedalive

Thank you so much for your input. A self confessed language nerd myself, who's working in TEFL in France. Studied French and Spanish for my undergrad.

Out of interest, do you ever find the job a bit lonely? I love working with people so TEFL is a better fit.

The Cool

playedalive wrote: »

Thank you so much for your input. A self confessed language nerd myself, who's working in TEFL in France. Studied French and Spanish for my undergrad.

Out of interest, do you ever find the job a bit lonely? I love working with people so TEFL is a better fit.

Have we met?! Ha!

To be honest, yes if you're going to be working from home, you need to put effort into your social life, join a club or go to a class or something. I also teach grinds which I enjoy. Other than that, I think having my dog for company is a big help!

The Cool

Sam the Sham wrote: »

Interesting. How do you find clients? Or how do they find you? Website, I guess?

There are sites like Proz and Translators Cafe which are a bit like Facebook meets classifieds, for translators; I also spend days googling translation companies and sending off applications when I have quiet periods. I do also have a website, but yes it's all about your networking!

Cr4pSnip3r

Someday I'd love a job with an international feel to it. Do you experience this in your day to day life?