Greater than 2 minutes
Professionality, how much does it cost? We are all single member companies, let's act consequently
What is a freelancer? At the Open Mic we are all freelancers and, from my point of view, we are a single-member company providing a value added service: translation. Is there any difference between us and other professionals freelancers? I think no, others do the same as we do but in different fields, the only difference could arise about the expenses we face in comparison to others. A professional advertising photographer has a lot of expenses, starting from the equipment and the shot that is going to advertise a brand, a car, or a needle costs thousands of euros. Same thing happens if unfortunately you need the help of a lawyer, just to expose your case and to start moving is 200 euros or even if you need a technician to repair the washing machine or the oven, just to move to your house there is a 50 euros fee plus spare parts and working time. And we pay, because we need the services they provide.
All this preamble has a meaning, is the way we see ourselves as the last gear of a money making machinery. We contact translation agencies, then they send a text to test your skills and if there is a project possibly they are going to call you and pay you a miserable rate if you have not the guts to say: no thanks.
Let’s change our mind and see ourselves as the indispensable professional to give a value added service to a client who is requesting us to solve its linguistic problem. Therefore we must charge our service accordingly without forgetting that the skills we have in the specific field of our client were not free of charge for us, some of you earned a master’s degree, other like me, earned the skills working in technical oriented companies. Meaning: time – and time is money. I think we need to recover those expenses and no better way than to charge a fee that could cover all expenses. For instance, if your are charging 0,04 euro per word and you have a 1000 word document, how long it will take you to translate it? Check the time and compare it with how much other people you need charge you, for instance the plumber, the mechanic, the vet. Consider that we do not have big equipment expenses, but put into account that we need to pay monthly our national insurance contributions, phone and internet connection, electricity and to keep our bad habits, first of all eating at least once a day. Just make a few calculations and it will appear how much you need just to cover your expenses. Then or you charge more than 0,04 or you translate it in the shortest time without giving the attention it deserves as proof reading, typos, comprehensibility.
The moral of this story is to be proud of our profession, not letting others to price our work as we do not price theirs or the tomatoes that we buy at the market 🙂
Anastasia Giagopoulou 
Mark Hemming 
Maeva Cifuentes 
This story shakes my feelings gently, and gives me so much pride. As translators and interpreters, we should pride ourselves on our paramount role in bringing cultures together, bridging differences and building comprehension and understanding at all levels. Having said this, we should not overlook the big challenge led by some colleagues when they underestimate their abilities and thus accept very low prices to provide translation or interpreting services. I think it’s time to correct this 🙂 Cheers 🙂
Thank you for the post! I agree with it except one thing. You offer to compare translator’s rates with those of plumbers and so on, and this really may help to understand how much you should charge. However don’t forget that many translators live in countries with a low level of life: services are much cheaper than in Europe or the USA, food and clothes don’t take much from a family budget too. So for translators from these countries 0.04 and even less looks great! That is why we have so many translators online working for peanuts (as we think). So if you want to appeal to dumping translators, use different points and arguments))
Maurizio, so true!
I agree with Natalia on her point: translators compete “by design” with people living abroad, sometimes in countries where salaries and the cost of living are lower. I think it is important, no matter where you live, that you try to calculate a Fair Price for your work. That price will be higher for someone living in Belgium like me; It will be lower for a competitor living in China.
What I learned in the last 10 years is this: If the translators living in high-cost countries start dropping their rate, the translators can’t but drop their rates as well. The two will lose. I also urge translators living in low salary countries to raise their price. It is better to work 30 hours a week using a higher word rate, then having to work 60 hours a week using a too low rate. A higher rate can also improve their quality of life!
Absolutely, Gert! The problem is that translators working in a low-rate segment are often afraid of raising their rates. They are assured that low rates are the only guarantee of getting projects. It is much harder for them to start changing the situation and looking for different type of clients who pay more. That is why they choose the easiest way – to stay in this segment, work a lot and have average (but guaranteed) income.
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Great blog from Shaun Quarton indeed.
I just wish there was some way to educate especially authors about this. I offered to translate someone’s book the other day and gave him a quote. He answered that he is willing to share royalties with me if I do the translation, find a publisher, pay the costs, and do the marketing for the book!