First, bulletproof the financial arrangements from the start. Never, never, ever (did I mention never??) work for an agency without checking their history on Payment Practices or a similar translation client rating service. Never, never, ever (did I mention really never??) work for a direct client without following Judy Jenner’s advice that the best protection against non-payment is preparing a very detailed quote and having the client sign it before you start work. I also require anyone who is not an established business to pay in full in advance; for example when I translate official documents for individuals. These three steps can go a long way toward preventing non-payment situations to start out with. In my experience, if the non-paying client is an individual, there is simply not much you can do. Legally you might be able to take the individual to small claims court, but again, if he or she simply doesn’t show up, it’s unlikely that the judge will issue a bench warrant for someone who owes you $50.

But let’s assume that it’s too late for that…you’re already in the non-payment trenches and you need to decide on a course of action. First, assess the amount in question. Although it’s always painful to have worked for free, I would not sink a great deal of time into chasing after a small amount of money. Define “small amount”? Well, I’d say $100 or less. At that level, you’re almost certainly better off putting that client on your “never again” list and just chalking it up to experience rather than devoting hours of your time to the collections process. If you’re talking about a significant amount, keep reading.

“Playing dead” is one of the most maddening things that a non-paying client can do; I once dealt with a client who not only ignored my e-mails and phone calls, but refused to sign for a certified letter (“No one here by that name”). So, you have to get a little creative, with steps that might include:

• Threatening some sort of public recourse. For example, “If this invoice is not paid by xxx, I will be forced to post a report of this transaction on translation industry payment rating services” or “I will be forced to refer this invoice to the American Translators Association’s partner collections agency for further action.”
• Having a colleague act as your collections representative. I think that this can be very effective; all you need is a colleague with an assertive manner who calls the client and either speaks to them or leaves a message to the effect of “This is Corinne McKay’s collections representative, calling in reference to invoice xxx which is now seriously overdue. To avoid further action on our part, please contact me to arrange payment as soon as possible.”
• Try to make a deal. Again, this isn’t going to suit everyone, but my hope is just to put some ideas out there for you to choose from. You could potentially contact the client and say that they clearly don’t intend to pay the amount that they owe you, and while that is extremely disappointing, you would like to arrange a payment plan or partial payment plan so that you can be compensated for some of what they owe you. Likewise, in my experience it can help to offer a non-paying client as many payment options as possible. I once worked for a startup agency in Europe who left me on the hook for 2,000 euros…not an amount I was going to give up on without a fight. They finally paid by credit card via PayPal which resulted in a hefty fee for me, but it was much better than not being paid at all.
• If you’re positive that the client is not dangerous or unstable, you could go to their office in person or send someone else. Again, this could be your “collections representative,” popping by to check on the invoice status and ready to accept a check right then.

Other thoughts?

The Case Against Blogging
I don’t blog. I don’t aspire to, and I don’t think most of you reading should either. I hear all the time that we should be blogging to build our brand. I disagree. We should only be blogging if it will actually build our brand. Please don’t start yet another mediocre blog with infrequent postings on topics covered by many other people. I speak from the point of view of a freelance translator, but most of these points are equally applicable to interpreters, translation companies and those who provide services to our industry.

My complaint
Not being first to your niche is a problem. If you would love to have a blog, but your ideal blog would imitate one of the successful T&I blogs, then I suggest you don’t bother. Let’s assume I think the ‘business practices for freelance translators’ market for blogs written in English is saturated (I do). Therefore your new successful blog needs to be narrower.

If you blog just because you find it personally satisfying and you don’t care whether anyone reads it, then fair enough. Someone may discover you one day, like other great artists, and laud you in the future. You may bring our profession glory. I salute you. But the goal of most of the translators and interpreters I know when they start blogs is to bring in business through networking. Many even start blogs hoping that it will bring in customers. Personally, my customers are not reading about translation. They read about their subject and want me to handle the translation so that they don’t have to think about it.

In defense
I should answer some of the arguments people give for blogging. First the strongest one for translators: the argument that translators are writers and should show off their writing skills. I say write anyway. Write for the numerous chapter, affiliate and division newsletters and blogs. Offer guest posts to bloggers you admire. Write for The Chronicle or T&I association publications in other countries. Editors usually need good content and often actively seek new authors. Some publications even pay for articles.

Another factor arises for the content of a blog showing off how good a translator you may be. I am a technical translator. The technical writing I use for almost all of my translation work is very different than the style required for a blog. There is no persuasive writing, wit or gentle humor in technical translation. That’s all dry, clear instructions and analysis. So in my case, producing well-written blog articles would be practicing a style of writing that differs from the one I need every day, the one I take pride in as I work.

One substantial advantage to writing ad hoc for many newsletters or online outlets is that you don’t have to stick to one topic. Taking detours into fascinating ideas that crop up occasionally may not be in the best interest of your blog’s niche. However, it may well be ideal content for a regional association newsletter or someone else’s blog. Think broadly and opportunities open up. However, if you prefer to think narrowly, then maybe a highly specialized blog is for you and you will be the first in your field. If you’re the first, and you can have twenty posts drafted, then I wish you well. If you are not first, and you would essentially be trying to creep into a market that is already well served, then I think there are more effective ways to improve your visibility.

For the record
I have considered the bigger picture. Should I discourage people from blogging at all, as posting articles in the ether that build up our profession may raise awareness and respect? Indeed, this is a strong point. If you’re in it for the greater good, may you thrive.
The observant among readers will have spotted that I said bloggers should have twenty posts written before they start. It seems to me that if you can produce and edit that much material, arrange it into an appealing order, and post regularly over a few months, then you may be set for success. I find that blogs with infrequent posts or that appear to have died slowly make the authors look disorganized or to have failed in their goals. It would have been better not to raise expectations.

In conclusion
Please take piece this in the spirit that it is intended, to help us make the most of the time we have as we run our businesses. I’m not trying to be a stick-in-the-mud, just a realist. Not all of us can be that blogger we aspire to be.

The verdict
A successful blog will be:

• Uncommon (be the first in its field)
• Regular (have a predictable posting pattern)
• Novel (give me something new)
• Entertaining or Instructive (make me laugh or teach me)

I’ve never been a big fan of the Trados concept: high price, lackluster support unless you buy a separate support contract, expensive upgrades, and so on. However I’ve also talked to a number of translators who I really respect, who are not in the high volume-low margin market and who are enthusiastic Trados users. So a few weeks ago, along came the perfect storm of circumstances: a client I really like approached me about a large (50-60K words) project that would require Trados Studio, I needed a new Windows computer anyway because my old XP machine was starting to die a slow death and my translation partner Eve Bodeux offered to take the Trados plunge with me. So rather than hemming and hawing about it for a year as I normally do with major decisions, in the space of a week I bought a new Windows computer, bought Office 2010, bought Trados Studio 2011 and Eve and I hired a colleague who was a Studio 2011 beta tester to give us an all-day orientation and training session before the big project started.

Now here’s where you need to sit down. Ask me what I think of Studio 2011. Go ahead, just ask. I love it. Hopefully this is proof that I’m not yet too old to change my mind, because after years of railing against the Trados business model and all things associated with it, I have to say that Studio 2011′s features are incredible, and that it was much easier to learn to use than I had anticipated. On the down side, I do still think it’s a little nutty that a piece of software that costs circa $1,000 doesn’t come with any human support unless you buy a contract, but here are some of my takeaways from about three weeks of using Studio 2011:

• If you’re going to spend the money on this thing, learn to use it correctly from the start. I dove into Wordfast in the middle of a huge project and my abilities stalled out at using a TM, using a glossary and using the concordance feature. In 9 years of using Wordfast, I never really put in the effort to learn more, so I stayed stuck with the limited features I knew how to use. Whichever TM tool you use, don’t make that mistake: either teach yourself slowly, one feature at a time, or (my recommendation) hire a very knowledgeable colleague or Trados trainer to teach you how to use it.
• Filter, filter, filter. The filters in Studio 2011 are fabulous. You can filter for all of the duplicate segments and translate them first, you can filter for all of the segments with a certain word in them, you can insert comments right in the segments and then your editor can filter for just the commented segments, and so on. Don’t underuse this feature!
• Take some time to work on your settings. Here again, Studio 2011 has some really great features (see Tools>Options) that can save you a lot of hassle. For example you can blacklist your typical typing errors; for some reason I often type “tot he” when I mean “to the,” and the spell-checker doesn’t catch it because tot and he are real words. Now I’ve blacklisted that expression so that Studio alerts me if I type it. Ditto with naughty words whose non-naughty counterparts often appear in the documents you translate (i.e. pubic/public).
• Whatever TM tool you use, or if you use no TM tool at all, just make sure that you’re making an objective decision rather than an emotional one. Definitely, when I work on something that needs to be really well written, I prefer to just open up a Word document and write. But I realized that for projects that require TM, I was resisting trying Trados for no particular reason other than that I insisted on resisting, if that makes sense.

Any other thoughts on selecting and learning to use a TM tool? Anyone tried anything new lately?

No question about it, handling inquiries from prospective clients who have little to no budget can be draining. Sometimes the slim to nonexistent funding isn’t mentioned until 25 minutes into the phone conversation (this happened to me recently), and sometimes it’s brought up with a tone of righteous indignation on the prospective client’s part (“If you can’t do it for $25 an hour, our marketing manager’s son who studied abroad in Belgium will be happy to do it for $15″). It’s just a bummer to spend so much time talking to prospective clients who expect so much for so little. However, I agree with The Freelancery’s suggestion that these interactions are also opportunities: maybe an opportunity to refer work to a beginning translator who charges less, maybe an opportunity to mention that professional translators don’t generally work for what the client’s budget is, etc. In the end, I do think that we perform a service on behalf of the profession when we have these types of conversations.

In terms of posted rates, I feel that I’ve found somewhat of a happy medium that works for me.

• I removed my general “Rates” page from my website and I ask prospective clients to call or e-mail for a quote. However, I don’t prepare a detailed quote until they confirm that my rates are at least somewhat within their budget. This avoids the time-suck of preparing a full quote only to find out that the client’s budget is less than half of what I charge.
• I left my rates for “fixed-price” items on my website. For example for certified translations of official documents, I always charge $50 per page for the translation and $15 for a notarized certification, and most of these clients are first-time, one-time clients. The Freelancery’s post hits this one on the head (and they mention translation in their examples!); clients who want their birth certificate translated into English don’t want to call for a quote, they just want it done fast and for a not exorbitant amount of money. My rate to translate official documents might be more expensive than some other freelancers, but I know it’s much cheaper than most agencies’ minimum charges, so I feel fine about posting it.

In closing, although I think of myself as a kind and understanding person and as someone who tries to be helpful whenever it’s possible, two aspects of rates and quoting really raise my blood pressure. I’ll admit them publicly in order to get them off my chest:

1. Why do so many prospective clients seem to lose the ability to do math when it comes to translation quotes? If I give the example that at 25 cents per word, a full page of single-spaced text would cost approximately $125 to translate, why is it then a surprise that a 10-page document costs $1,250 to translate?
2. Why do so many prospective clients feel that it should take a couple of hours to translate something that took months or even years to write? I get this a lot from authors: “But the book is so short! It will really take you 10 hours to translate it?” I can’t decide whether it would be helpful or nasty to ask if it really took them more than 10 hours to write the book, but I try to just answer the question objectively since I enjoy doing literary translation and working with authors.

Feel free to add your own observations on rates and quotes too (or associated issues that you need to get off your chest!). Thanks for listening, I feel so much better.

One of the best parts of the trip was having no cell phone reception or computer access for four days; I really needed a break and didn’t think about work more than a couple of times. But Eve made sure that we didn’t forget about our profession entirely; she packed some snacks in her conference swag bag from ATA Boston, and we thought it deserved a pose in front of the Airport Tower rock formation! That’s Eve (the cute one!) on the left, and me on the right. Happy Spring Break to all of you too, wherever you’re spending it.

• Are TM tool developers paying more attention to the editing process and how to support it?
• What’s the best terminology management tool for freelancers?
• Are translation management, content management and machine translation systems becoming more integrated?
• Does Déjà Vu support terminology blacklists?
• What is the best quality assurance tool for freelancers?

We also learned that Jost has co-authored (with Nataly Kelly) a new book called “Found in Translation,” which includes 90 stories of how translators and translation affect almost every aspect of our daily lives. It’s forthcoming from a Penguin imprint in the fall and will be available at the ATA conference (can’t wait to get a copy!). Thanks to Jost for so generously donating his time, and if you don’t yet subscribe to his Tool Box technology newsletter for translators, you should!