No doubt about this: You are the hero of freelancing world. The amount of marketing work you do and all the assignments that come and find you every week as a result is truly amazing… well, for some of you at least. You are able to afford nice dinners out or that 55 inch TV you rarely watch since you work your backside off most of the time. But why be the stand up comedian (pardon the pun) in a small bar when you can be a part of a Shakespearean company of actors on this stage and reach a wider audience? Don’t be the Superman and carry the whole weight of human translations of the world. Batman needs Robin. So do you!

This post is only food for thought and another way to fend off your professional solitude while bringing in that much needed workflow and creating the image of a great colleague in your fellow freelancers’ minds. Your clients might end up falling for you too. Although they are all interlinked, here are a few individual ideas as to how having sidekick(s) might be of help to you.

Be the one-stop shop for your clients

Considering that your networking efforts pay off, you end up having a crowded group of translators/interpreters as your Facebook and Twitter friends. You might even meet them in real life for powwows (translated: beer o’clocks!). This means you might have a go-to person if one of your clients asks for a referral to another colleague for, say, Danish to English translations. Perhaps the marketing company you are translating for is working on a multilingual website project for their client. That website shall be in 6 different languages so that they can market their business to a wider locale. If you are informed that the work you are doing for that marketing firm requires other language pairs, be their one-stop shop. Provide all language pairs for your clients’ multilingual projects. This will also create the notion that you are the go-getter, all-round translation solution for some of your clients resulting in more emails and phone calls from them the next time they need such services.

Relieve stress through sharing workload

Have an 80k word project? And you already have other jobs lined up for next month. Perhaps you currently have another assignment to fiddle with. Give half of it to your sidekick working in the same language pair. This way you will not be losing your valued client. Your colleague will love you more. Your workload will be lighter to make your other clients happy as well. Yes, there is the fact that it may not be desirable to divide work into two and assign them to different translators due to stylistics concerns. However, there comes a time when you may need help yourself. We are no supermen and superwomen in this business. This is also a way of outsourcing and it has another benefit, which leads to the opportunity below.

Outsource or be outsourced!

I am not going to list all the benefits of communicating with colleagues. If you can use your brain or are not a newbie in business, you already know that. However, it is worth noting one great use networking has and that is passing jobs to one another. Part of your workload might come from a fellow freelancer. It happened to me in the past in a plethora of cases. It feels so good to have friends in the same business. In addition to generating a feel of belonging in a wider group of colleagues, it gives you more jobs. And more jobs means a thicker wallet. As if I need to tell you that! And If you help your fellow freelancers thicken their wallet, you will (a) grow a pair of wings of an angel, (b) your clients will know you are more than an asset for them since you go beyond in helping them.

So the next time your client asks your help to find them a DE-EN translator, something that you don’t do, think twice before being a naysayer. I bet you have a translator friend working in that language pair and would love a referral from you.

Earn while doing nothing… well not exactly

0.16 cent per word you asked from your direct client and they were okay with the quote for that hefty document? Great! However, you don’t have time but you still don’t want to say no to your client. Solution? Easy. Reach that fellow freelancer. Act as a project manager and assign them the work for 0.13 cents per word. That 0.03 cent per word you spare for yourself might sound naughty for most but you are the go-between and you deserve it for the time you spend emailing back and forth between clients and your colleagues. PMs of agencies don’t work for nothing either. So spare yourself the moral dilemma. Haven’t you heard the term “secondary income” already?!

One risk of ‘sidekicking’ is whether the colleague you assign work to is good or not in what they do. I suggest you do this only if you are 100% sure of the work the person produces. There is no harm in asking other colleagues he or she worked with previously as to their success rate for previous assignments. If you can reach their previous clients to see if they recommend him, that would also give you an idea as to how good or bad they are in the work they do.

All in all, the term sidekick is by no means derogatory. It does not underestimate your colleagues or you if you act as a sidekick. There is no such thing as the one and the only hero in freelance world either. The keyword here is to collaborate to enrich your journey as a freelancer. Not to mention, your bank account as well! I value your opinions about collaborating with colleagues. Please post a comment about your experiences, perhaps risks that I might have forgotten to mention. Here’s to all the Robins that save Batman… and eventually the day.

Deniz Aker

@LinguALaTurca, English-Turkish Medical Translator, publancer, cake lover, word fetishist.