Setting a Low Rate and Sticking To It Is Not Exactly a Business Plan

 

Depending on how long they have been translating and how good their translations are, all translators could be divided into three main categories: “novice”, “intermediate”, and “pro”.

Regardless of our education and how talented and incredibly clever we may think we are, we all start as novices. Although a novice typically believes that his translations are just as good as those of an old timer who has been honing and perfecting his translating skills for decades, this is usually just a self-delusion.

However, one does not automatically become a pro just because many years have passed since payment has been received for the first, rather shoddy translation. And one can generally become a pro only in a certain relatively narrow field, or perhaps a few relatively narrow fields.

I consider myself a pro in the field in which I have been working for close to three decades now, which would be translation of patents, but even then, mostly or only when it comes to translation of patents in a few technical fields, such as electronics. In other translation fields I am probably performing only on an intermediate level, although I would hope that the novice level is behind me for good now.

In a world ruled by logic and fairness, pros who have decades of experience should be able to command a premium price for their work. But we do not live in a world that is ruled by logic and fairness. Our world is ruled mostly by greed.

One result of the transformation of our already mad world through the continuous application of the madness of greed, which has been shaping this world for millennia, is that the price that translators can demand from their clients does not really depend as much on their skills and expertise as it does on who their clients are. That is why a pro is often be paid a lower rate than a novice.

As I was looking for a couple of Japanese patent translators the other day because I needed to put together a small team of experienced patent translators (myself and 2 other translators) for a project that would keep busy at least 3 translators translating at least 3 thousand words a day for at least 10 days, I called a couple of translators who I would definitely place in the pro category when it comes to translation of Japanese patents.

When I called one of these pro translators to ask him to help me with the project, he told me that he would unfortunately have no time for me. He said that he was now working almost exclusively only for one big patent law firm. He told me that it is a large law firm that keeps him working as much as he wants to and then some because there are many lawyers there who need to have Japanese patents translated and his rate is very reasonable. He told me how much he was charging, and yes, it was a reasonable rate, the same rate that I would have paid him as an agent if he were working for me on the project that I was trying to organize.

So basically, he is working for a direct client at a rate that most translation agencies would be happy to pay as well.

I asked him whether he was not concerned what would happen if the client suddenly dropped him. No matter how busy you are, and no matter how reasonable your rates are, it is very dangerous to be in a situation when your income depends only on one client. “I know it’s dangerous”, he said, “but my situation is very good right now, and anyway, what else can I do”?

I used to work occasionally for a German translator who had a similar arrangement with a patent law firm that was sending work to her for many years. She was charging exactly the same reasonable rate that the Japanese translator mentioned to me. When she needed translations from Japanese, she would send them to me. But last year she told me that after all those years, the work slowed down to a trickle and then stopped completely.

Fortunately for her, she does not need to work anymore. She is retired now, she can live off her investments, and she also has some rental property, I think. But although she does not really need the money, she is missing the action.

To say that most translators, whether they are novices or whether they have been translating for several decades, are not very good at business planning, would be putting it mildly. In fact, we are quite ignorant when it comes to the business world surrounding us, although it is the same world for which we are working long hours, day after day, year after year.

We simply don’t want to bother with things like that, things that – in our minds – have nothing to do with translation.

Because of that, we can be very easily taken advantage of by ruthless agents, and God knows there are many ruthless agents in the so-called translation business.

So if the rate at which a translator is remunerated does not depend very much on whether our skills are on the level of a novice, or that of a pro, what does it depend on?

I think that it depends mostly on which market segment in the incredibly segmented translation market a novice translator initially picks as the area of specialization. Large translation agencies are providing large quantities of translations which are generally of poor quality because they generally pay very low rates. If this is the market segment that we pick initially, for example because it is relatively easy to find work in this market segment as long as our rate is quite low, this is where we will be probably working for a long time, possibly forever, for the same low rate.

Unfortunately, even when our rate is low, that is not a guarantee that our client, whether a translation agency or a law firm, will not pull the plug and turn off our life-supporting cash flow system, because somebody, somewhere, is eventually going to offer to “provide the same service” for even less less than the pittance we may be charging to make sure that we will be bombarded with work forever and ever.

Or a not-too-bright-mid-level manager will decide that the firm is spending too much money on translation and something must be done about it.

It is only a matter of time before the plug is pulled. It may take a few years, but if we work only or mostly just for one client, it is going to happen eventually.

Setting a low rate and sticking to it is not really a business plan. It is just something that translators who don’t want to bother with long-term planning often do.

In my opinion, it is a foolish thing to do and translators who do so, which would be a good percentage of us, are living in a fool’s paradise, a fool’s paradise that will at some point come to a sudden, crashing and crushing end.

Although translators who start as novices may eventually become pros, it would be probably fair to say that most translators are eternal novices when it comes to the art of business planning.