Comments on: Vetting prospective clients and job offers

By: yndigo

yndigo — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:54:50 +0000

I completely agree that good and bad translators are preceded by their reputations. Then there are very many acceptable translators you’ve never heard of and you wonder if they’ll miss the deadline or deliver a really sloppy job or both. I find most translators are very dedicated but once in a while they take on too much and are late or don’t give the job enough attention — inevitible sometimes in the freelance world.

Agencies I know gain good and bad reputations too, but in agencies we mostly talk about good and bad translators and don’t really know how we or other agencies are perceived.

By: Corinne McKay

Corinne McKay — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:21:28 +0000

Glenn, thanks for your comment; it’s always great to be reminded of the agency perspective as well. I completely agree with you about the “hassle” element; translators should definitely keep in mind that just as we get irritated with clients who want a million pieces of information from us before formally offering a job, it’s also annoying for clients who are established as reliable payers to be asked for references, advance payment, etc. Personally, I check Payment Practices while I’m on the phone with a prospective client, and if they have several good reviews and no atrocious ones, I assume that they are probably trustworthy.

I find, and I’d be interested to know if you agree, that the best and the worst agencies are easy to find, it’s the ones in the middle that are the issue. The same is probably true of working with freelancers; I would assume that the people who everyone wants to work with and the people who no one wants to work with are preceded by their reputations, while the in-betweens are the unknown quantity.

Thanks for reading!

By: Glenn Cain

Glenn Cain — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:09:39 +0000

Excellent tips Corinne! Agencies are not always sensitive to the payment fears of freelancers even though we experience the same anxiety with our clients: both non-payment and slooooow payment. Handling these things upfront and professionally is a good idea as you mention.

However, some agencies that are in fact very good payers may not want the hassle of offering recommendations or payment-up-front so they’ll go with someone who doesn’t take as much time. Thus getting recommendations from fellow translators and Payment Practices first is ideal.

Great post!