A Normal Day of a Freelance Translator Why do we do what we do?




Greater than 1 minutes

When a new day shows its face, I slowly crawl out of my bed, hoping for that big assignment. Like a Zombie, I steer to the bathroom for a refreshing (we think) shower. Minutes later I search for the Iphone to see if there are any new messages. In fact, there is a total of 324 messages, of which only two are worth reading. The rest is spam, SPAM. –
I start going through one of the real e-mails. It is – wow – by a translation agency. They have a proposal for a translation job.
At first, I nearly jump for joy. Then I see that they offer only 0,04 per source word, and the deadline is tomorrow morning at 09:00 CET. For 4500 words. What??! How on earth do they suppose that I could get the work done properly with such a velocity. And to a rate that even a street artist would not accept for a living.

I have to admit; not all the translation agencies are that bad. There are in fact several of them, and they take good care of their linguists.
A day without a proposal for a translation job or a proofreading/editing is a day lost. There is something strange about the fact that some days I can get several quite agreeable proposals, but other days it is quite hollow in my incoming mail basket. And that makes me uneasy. Why didn’t I accept that work for 0,04 per source word and 4500 words until tomorrow at 9:00 CET. Because I rather have nothing to do than that I do a shoddy job.

Carl Tengstrom

About Carl Tengstrom

Born in Turku, Finland. Native language is Swedish. Retired. Working as a freelance translator. Source languages: Swedish, Finnish, English and German.

2 thoughts on “A Normal Day of a Freelance Translator Why do we do what we do?

  1. A famous comedienne who died a couple of years ago used to have a punch line she sometimes used at the end of a joke. She’d say something funny but also mean and rude about a person and then she’d say: “Too soon?”

    When I read this essay I thought “Too real?” It is true for so many, and not just translators.

    The endless spam in your inbox, the updraft of hope, the disappointment that follows.

    I have heard or read that hundreds of years ago … or was it only 50? a cobbler had a well-paid position crafting something that everyone needed, shoes. Where are the cobblers today?

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