| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] | Trend to reduce translation rates Thread poster: Friedrich Reinold
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Friedrich Reinold
United States
Local time: 02:12
Member (2003)
English to German
TOPIC STARTER | Freelancers are businesses, not employees | Mar 4, 2020 |
I agree with Dan. Freelance translators should realize that they are independent contractors selling a service, regardless of whether they are corporations or sole proprietorships. Your customers are buyers striving to purchase your service at the cheapest price while receiving reasonable quality. They don’t have any responsibility towards you except for paying the price you are selling your service for. It’s the same as what you expect when buying a product or service from a business. The s... See more I agree with Dan. Freelance translators should realize that they are independent contractors selling a service, regardless of whether they are corporations or sole proprietorships. Your customers are buyers striving to purchase your service at the cheapest price while receiving reasonable quality. They don’t have any responsibility towards you except for paying the price you are selling your service for. It’s the same as what you expect when buying a product or service from a business. The standard price is basically the market price in the region where you are offering your service. The only controls you have is quality, reliability, ease of business handling, reputation – and specialization. Of course, your price is also influenced by competition in the particular language pairs and subject knowledge.
The reason why I started this topic a year ago was that I noticed a distinctive trend in agencies (I only work for agencies for my personal reasons) willing to pay current market prices, and I wanted to know whether others have been noticing this as well. In fact, I am still noticing this ongoing trend, supported by getting continuous offers to do post-editing of machine translation. It seems that many agencies have chosen edited machine translation as their business model. In fact, I am convinced that machine translation based on deep learning will eventually be so good that it will replace the majority of common human translation. The only tools to postpone this trend is to provide lingual quality and expert knowledge. This does not rule out using MT and other productivity tools yourself to improve efficiency. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lincoln Hui 
Hong Kong
Local time: 17:12
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
| Survivor bias | Mar 4, 2020 |
Jocelin Meunier wrote:
I do understand where your position come from, you know. But what you advise doesn't work in our days. Most succesful translators are long-established in this industry, sometimes as far as 30 years ago. Newcomers can't emulate what the most succesful translators do because things don't work the same way.
30 years ago, most successful translators were also long-established in the industry, sometimes as far as 30 years ago.
I've been in business 6 years, and by all accounts I'm raking it in without charging a very high rate, by being exceptionally suited to the job, working in fields that are an excellent fit, and having more than a little bit of luck.
But even if I had fewer natural gifts and less luck - say, if I never met my biggest client right now - I don't think $60k-70k USD per year is unlikely, which was what I was making in Year 4, and I think that's entirely reasonable for a good, solid translator with an ordinary run of luck. Not spectacular, but comparable to a junior professor or middle management in many parts of the first world. That's for somebody in their mid- to late-20s.
What would it be like for me 30, or even 20 years ago (with ProZ in its infancy)? Somewhere in the range of $25-30K USD, I expect. Most likely, I would not be in business at all. I would not even have the opportunity to fail; it would be an unfathomable career path with no viable means to reach potential clients. In a highly immobile market, I would be working 60-hour weeks for translation houses for a junior's salary; the limited freelance opportunities available would be clogged up by a few big names with many decades of experience and shiny qualifications. Young upstarts who don't have the right professors wouldn't even have scraps to fight over. This is still the case in a number of market segments, some of which limit their exclusive memberships to degree holders from big-name universities or their professors, others to translation-degree holders.
Even if I had something of a legitimate freelance practice - say, doing contract work for a few law firms - I could not possibly hope to make anything approaching what I do today. Even if I charged twice the rate that I currently do. I simply would not have had the market reach to fully occupy my productivity. I would be spending twice the effort on marketing, and getting half the results.
I say, with absolute certainty, that it has never been easier for someone who does not have a translation degree to look up one day and try to make it as a translator. Of course more people fail to make it today than they did 30 years ago, because 30 years ago they would not even be in a position to try.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:12
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Lincoln Hui wrote:
30 years ago, most successful translators were also long-established in the industry, sometimes as far as 30 years ago.
This is an excellent contribution that covers different ground to my posts. The point about survivorship bias is so true - there have always been winners and losers, for as long as translation has been a commercial endeavour.
Also spot-on are his observations on the dramatic improvement in accessibility, ease of entry, and the general reduction of costs. I myself remember the days of documents being sent by fax, resulting in reams of curly paper spilling all over the floor, which you then had to flatten with a big book or two. People not much older than me remember the days of sending hard copy around, so that regular trips to the post office (with its attendant costs) were a part of a freelancer's life.
Certain young people moan about how difficult they have it compared to older generations precisely because they no more understand how much they are benefiting from the bonanza of the Internet than a fish understands the benefits it derives from the miracle of water.
I feel that I want to sit one down (people, not fish), and explain that as recently as the early 1990s, if you wanted information - something as mundane as the cost of a package holiday, or details of a book, or a bus timetable, or the listing for a record/CD - you had to set aside a couple of hours and physically move somewhere else to obtain it.
As a student in London in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I would walk to Dillons to find books (I would have said Foyles, but you could never find anything there). I would walk to Euston station to get a timetable or train information. For travel you walked to the place in ULU, or the Japan Centre on Brewer St, not that I was ever able to afford a holiday. Records, tapes and CDs meant trudging down to HMV at Piccadilly Circus.
Communication was similarly arduous. If you wanted to speak to somebody you telephoned them after first finding a fixed-line phone (no mobile phones), which was very expensive during the hours of daytime. Alternatively you could send something called "a letter", involving a quirky combination of small sheets of paper and a pen. This too meant a visit to the post office. Faxes were popular, but not among individuals. It all cost huge amounts of time, or money, or both.
Today all the above activities are trivially straightforward, taking only seconds and costing pennies, at most. It is extremely difficult to get people who grew up after the internet flourished in second half of the 1990s, and after the diffusion of smartphones, to really, truly understand what it was like. Intellectually they know the internet and mobile telephony didn't exist, but in reality they have no conception of how limiting and isolating it was back then.
As Lincoln perceptively comments, that has had ramifications for translation as an industry, and they are almost all positive. He is also right to argue that the market is (orders of magnitude) larger, and it's never been easier or cheaper to begin translation. But that also means, of course, that there are many more competitors. If you're good, and can offer something different, that should not be a problem.
Regards,
Dan
| | | | Friedrich Reinold
United States
Local time: 02:12
Member (2003)
English to German
TOPIC STARTER | Tools, tools, tools | Mar 4, 2020 |
Dan described very vividly the path in the history of freelance translation. I started out on the side of my corporate job as an engineer when the only tool of the trade was a typewriter. Since then, plenty of tools have become available that make your life much easier, and I’ve come to see translation more like an engineering job.
But I also understand Jocelin and Emily. Translators of relatively rare language combinations like Japanese or Chinese to English (from which the people in th... See more Dan described very vividly the path in the history of freelance translation. I started out on the side of my corporate job as an engineer when the only tool of the trade was a typewriter. Since then, plenty of tools have become available that make your life much easier, and I’ve come to see translation more like an engineering job.
But I also understand Jocelin and Emily. Translators of relatively rare language combinations like Japanese or Chinese to English (from which the people in the trenches have to translate into their respective native languages) and/or in relatively high-paying markets like the U.S. don’t realize that the situation is different with common European language pairs in most European countries. The rates may be reasonable in East European countries with their considerably lower living costs. But the rates in Germany, France, Italy, … and the U.K. are just ridiculous from an American viewpoint and nowhere compare with the cost of decent living in those countries. The competition is just overwhelming. To counteract: specialize, and maximize your productivity by embracing the best tools available. They are worth their cost. Of course, agencies are aware of these productivity boosters and try to further lower the market prices. It’s kind of a vicious circle. But as a freelancer, you have to stay ahead of the game and diversify to different countries, making the best use of the Internet. ▲ Collapse
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I see many points discussed here that I wasn't making, so I'll try to keep things simple so that it does not derail again.
I do agree that the Internet made many things far simpler. While some seem to think that I was born yesterday, I did live the transition before-after Internet. Which makes me appreciate Internet even more. But it wasn't my point.
The point is that there is less stability in the job of translator than before. It is a fact that in-house positions have reduce... See more I see many points discussed here that I wasn't making, so I'll try to keep things simple so that it does not derail again.
I do agree that the Internet made many things far simpler. While some seem to think that I was born yesterday, I did live the transition before-after Internet. Which makes me appreciate Internet even more. But it wasn't my point.
The point is that there is less stability in the job of translator than before. It is a fact that in-house positions have reduced drastically. It is also a fact that rates now are far lower than before. In my specialisation, subtitling, the rates have been cut by 50% in 30 years or so. And like Dan himself pointed it out, only a minority of translators manage to make it good.
Yes, we are freelancers, not employees. We have to accept some risks and hard pills. But the market is disbalanced and too much power is in the hands of clients and agencies, who dictate the rates and condition of work, with translators being left with the only options to accept it or scram.
I don't think it is "entitlement" to expect decent rates and conditions. As professionals, I believe it is also our duty to have acceptable standards, for both clients and freelancers. My point is simple, actually: standards nowadays favor one side more than the other, and that's something we shouldn't accept that easily.
You can not agree with that thinking and this is fine. What makes me adamant is that one truth remains: conditions for translators have become worse. This is what every study, graphs or any other information we can find can show us. This, I find hard to disagree with. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lincoln Hui
Hong Kong
Local time: 17:12
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
Jocelin Meunier wrote:
What makes me adamant is that one truth remains: conditions for translators have become worse.
I say, with absolute certainty, that it has never been easier for someone who does not have a translation degree to look up one day and try to make it as a translator
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