Use languages to earn money

1. Introduction: welcome to how to be a successful freelance translator introduction. This course contains instructions on how to earn a living through freelance translation. Obviously, everyone's experience is different, and it's possible that you already following a few of these points I mentioned, especially if you've already started out as a freelance translator. But following these steps is a great outline of how I was able to achieve this life and how I was able to earn a living through freelance translation. And so I feel it's the way that you can, too. I should emphasize one point right from the beginning. It's not easy. I worked my tail off and I'm still working my tail off right now. I doubt I have more free time than your average worker, but on the other hand, I do get to choose which clients to work with and when to work with them. I also choose where and when to work, and I answer to no one except myself. But once again, I do work a lot and it takes a lot of work, and it's not easy or simple. And as with anything else in life, there are no step by step instructions that can guarantee you success. And if anyone tells you there are there scamming you, this course just shows you the steps that I have taken. And it also tells you some mistakes I've made along the way just so you don't have to make them. I should also mention that I have very few, if any, translation tips. I'm pretty much assuming that you are all translators and that you know two languages or your native in one language. And you've learned another language, etcetera, etcetera. If you weren't, then you probably would not be seeking a career in this field. Also, obviously, there are way too many languages for me to say anything meaningful here in one course, and I don't think there is one course that could ever cover all languages that need to be translated. So if you wouldn't like more general translation tips, I recommend checking out the forums on pros dot com and board reference dot com, where you can also post your own questions and queries. But you'll find a lot of people discussing a lot of the nuances in various different languages there, but this course teaches you how to use these skills so you can work for yourself and become a successful freelance translator. Additionally, you might also notice that in this course there are no quizzes. This is because this course is for you. Think of it as an apprenticeship where I teach you what I've learned and you practice it and then you apply it in the real world. I want all the information contained here to be practical and to be information you can use as a reference later on, so you can come back to each lesson as needed. Lastly, as a disclaimer, I should mention that I will talk about and I will mention many products and brand names and APS and books and websites, etcetera, etcetera in this course some favorably and some less. So I promise you that none of them are paying me. None of them are paying me anything. I am subscribed to a couple for my own purposes, and I've bought a couple others etcetera, etcetera, just for myself. But I have no incentive to talk up one or talk down another one, and my only incentive here is to give you the best information I can based on my experience . Having said all that without any further ado, let's get started 2. Day 1 (Pre-game): Hi, this is Robert. Get part with how to be a successful freelance translator. And this is the first lesson. The part that I like to call the pregame. Now the pregame is the stuff that you need to do before you get started. I know you're probably at this point ready and itching to get started right away. And that's exact motivation you need at this point. So these steps might either seem like a waste of seem like something you can get to later. But trust me, you want these so that the rest can be flowing smoothly. You want these things ready and eso I divided it up into days and later on it will be divided into, ah, money as well because certain websites or other places where you can sign up for my costs something so I tried to make it as easy as possible, and I divided up. So this is just a one. This is waiting to concentrate on Day one. Resume specializations and photo or a picture of yourself. So let's start day one. It's one day maximum or half a day maximum if you already have a resume. I know that many of you do now. And these days in general, I'm also quite generous. You might be able to do day one and Day two all in one day if it's a weekend that you have the whole day available or something like that. But either way, feel free to follow along just with, you know, just starting on day one and just taking all day to do this and to do it right now, the first thing you'll need is an updated resume. Second point is a list of the services you offer, and this is different for the resume. We'll get into it and ah, and then you want a good picture of yourself. Um and you know, which means Ah, not a glamour professional one, but one where you look like a decent human being. So let's start with the updated resume. First of all, we should point out that this is not the most important part. Let's say this is Ah, actually not the first thing that the clients will see, but obviously you do want to resume, and it helps to have one detail ing any translation or writing or associated material. You might have and this can range from personal blawg or published articles or anything in between. You also want to show you a real person. The problem is, if people find you online, you quite anonymous, and they might not know. You know, if you're hiding anything or if they can trust your field, just disappear. Something like that. So you want to show that you can be reached and this means that you list, you know, riel, institution schools, places he worked stuff like that stuff that seems traceable. If you have a linked in account, obviously linked to that people at the beginning, they just want to know that they can trust you. And so you kind of want to want to be able to show that also, you want your resume to be in both your source and your target languages, just in case you might have clients and either or and so it helps to have this now, especially when you're starting out one of these languages. Most likely, your source language might not be your native tongue, so don't be shy about hiring someone to proof. Read it and make sure it's written correctly. Also, remember that different countries have different conventions for writing resumes, so you might want to look up. A few examples of rhythm resumes in that language. First, to be sure, and once again, you know, feel free to hire someone for 10 20 bucks to, ah, look over the resume and make sure that it's reading correctly because you don't want mistakes on it. And last but definitely not least remember that no one likes reading resumes. It's basically a general rule. Nobody enjoys reading the line by line. Bullet points on all your carefully crafted words and expressions. No, I I know this sounds a bit, you know, you put a lot of work into it and no, and telling you that no one likes reading it, but unfortunately, it's the truth. So just keep this in mind. Keep in mind that you want to get to the point quickly. You want to be able to sell your skills and experience that relate to translation. And obviously, you know you're applying as a translator. You want this to be type o free. Um, and you wanted to be were well written. That pretty much covers it for updated resume as I said. Many of you might already have one, but I thought I should cover what what people will be looking for. So you know, even if you have, when you might want to tweak it a little bit, just to make sure that it's that it's correct for being a freelance translator now the next point is a list of services. This is separate from your resume, and it's also more important. This will be the first thing that any potential client will see here. You want to make sure that you can offer any services they require. You know, you have to picture basically inclined to. It's nothing to do with translation, you know, But they needed, say, a new Web site. And the boss said they need a new website in some language and they don't know what to look for. So you know, when they go see a search, they're going to find you and they're going Teoh, you know, Then judge if they want to hire you or not to translate their website. Now, my recommendation here, at least in the beginning, if you if you feel a bit lost, is to do it this way basically to have a narrow list of languages. You don't want to say that. You know you can do Portuguese and Spanish and French and Italian and etcetera, etcetera. If you feel more comfortable with, say, just Portuguese and English, then just have Portuguese in English later on, you can see if you want to do variations, but for now I will start with a narrow list of languages. However, I would have a wider list of specializations again. This is just the beginning. By specializations, I mean, you know, in business and finance and our legal or history or religion or travel or stuff like that, I would I would do this because at the beginning you're not sure people what what people are looking for. Also, you might not really be sure what you're good at. You might be really good at something that you had no clue about. And so, um, be rather generous with your specializations. Let's say, however, having said that, you obviously do not want to list topics. You're not comfortable translating. And if you know, if you don't know much about biology, then you don't want to list that as one of your specializations because, uh, you know, you definitely don't want to be doing a bad job because you don't know what you're talking about. Something like that will definitely show. Now, here I want to show example of what I have, actually. Well, this is a bit dated. This is from when my book came out. But yeah, you can see on the top that I only have two languages, English and Italian, so I keep it very simple. You know, I target English and Italian. If someone needs an English to Italian translation, but they see French and Portuguese in Spanish as well. They might start wondering. You know how good I can be in all these languages, but English and Italian kids, right to the point. But here, you know, specializations. You can see I have 10 specialties I have. Ah, you know, a couple listed there and then and then in the also works in section. And this is from pros dot com. It's a website that will get to later. I'll explain about it, but, you know, they let you list many more, and I have many more listed, I think basically the maximum there and you know if someone needs a translation done and say slang, you know, they'll see that I have slang that Elsa working slang. And so it shows up there. And I think it's good to have it a wide variety here just cause you don't know what people are going to target at the beginning. Third point, a picture of yourself. Now, this is actually more important than you think. Right? In the beginning, you're going to be establishing trust like I mentioned before. And this means that once again, people find you online, you're anonymous, and so people right away, even before the skills, they want to know that they can trust you. They want to know that you're someone that you know that really exists and that they can turn to, and that won't just disappear. So their first impression is going to be very quick and very decisive. And your picture has a lot to do with this. So I would Well, I wouldn't take, you know, don't take a glamour shot or professional photo or anything like that. But you also don't want anything resembling a mug shot. I would make it a slightly candid Don't worry too much about the quality and on any provider's website, it won't be that big. It will be a maximum, I'd say 300 by 300 pixels, probably less. So just have something small and easy. Also, keep in mind this could be done right away. The picture is not a reason to delay getting started. If you're on a laptop, chances are you know, if your work in a coffee shop, you can turn on your webcam and take a picture itself working at your computer with a cup of coffee right there in front of you. After all, this is the image clients like toe have other freelancers. So I mean, feel free to just show yourself that way. Otherwise, you can look through some old pictures. I'm sure you can probably find something something where you look a bit human. Let's say you know you don't want to be stiff is a board. You also don't want to be drunk of the skunk. Now, I've also been told that sometimes smiling or at least looking at the camera conveys more trust. I'm not sure about this. You can get a general idea. Should you look at the camera. Look away. Whatever you feel more comfortable with, I don't again. You shouldn't delay too much. I probably even talked about it a bit too much. Just take a picture. Itself, however, is easiest. And put it up there. You definitely do not want to be without a picture. And that pretty much covers it for day one. I would say at this point in time, make sure you have these steps and they're done correctly. Once they are. You can feel free to move on today too. But you don't have to do so right away. You can wait until the next day to do so. 3. Day 2 - Your Website: day to your website. I wanted to update this for a reason which will get into, but your website is often overlooked, but it is absolutely essential to have your own website. Your personal website is another touch point that ensures trust with the client. It shows commitment to what you do now. I used to love the website about dot me for this, since it offered exactly what was needed. Unfortunately, recently they've severely limited what can be done for free, and I'm not sure that I liked the paid version. I'm not sure it's worth it, so that's why I wanted to update this and ah and recommend something else these days. I generally recommend either pros dot com or linked in dot com. Now, while these do not give you your own website per se, they do provide all the relevant information in one place in a professional design. Plus, they have built in S. E O, which could make it easier to find you on the Web. You can, of course, also purchased the domain and then create a free one page website through most registries like go daddy dot com or register dot com, etcetera Alternatively, you can also have that domain redirect to one of the online profile pages and most registries when you do register the website that make it very easy to do this now. There many reasons for using a ready made website, however, rather than creating your own, and that's why I recommend it. First of all, it's much cheaper and much less time consuming because everything is already built for you and, uh, and it's already done, and you don't have to spend the money to, ah host and design a whole new website from scratch. But mainly it's because these ready made websites already have built in S E O, which, let's face it, they will inevitably be better than the S e O. You'll be able to muster for your own personal website. So a couple things to remember for your website is, um, when you're making your personal page and your personal photo. The task is not to show how cool you are, how awesome, how intelligent you are or something like that. The main thing you want to showcase here is that you are trustworthy and you want to show that you can totally, completely and efficiently handle the clients job. So think of it sort of as a business card or calling card that you can show people, no matter how far away they are from you. So a note on the word freelancer, despite it being in the title of this book, even I tend to recommend against using the word freelancer or freelance anywhere in your resume or your bio to a client. A freelancer sounds like someone who might not be around. In a few months. I would recommend using something like translation, professional or professional translator as your title, and to just refer to yourself as a translator rather than a freelancer. This gives you, um, or professional air. Some of you might be worried that recruiters are specifically targeting freelancers that might be intimidated by the word translator. However, if they are finding you on pros dot com or Translators Cafe, they already know more or less what you are. Most recruiters air only if he about dealing with agencies. Since they see it. An extra middleman costs there, so they will want to avoid agencies. But most of them won't consciously register a difference between translation, professional and freelance translator. At the same time, however, it will just give us sort of subconscious boost to your standing. Now, which language should you translate into in case you haven't come across this yet? As a general rule, a translator translates into their native tongue. If you are truly fluent in both the source and target languages than either way's fine, but chances are you feel more comfortable in one language than you do in the other. The more comfortable language is your target language. While the other one is going to be your source language, you always translate into the language you are more comfortable in into your native tongue . Interestingly, the opposite is actually true for interpreting here. The source language should be your native tongue so you can catch all the nuances and speech. But if you work in Britain translations than remember, you always translate into your native tongue. So I wish I didn't have to cover this, but I probably should cover this, and this is fibbing or lying on your resume on your CV or on your website during your bio. In general, you're bio or your resume. It sort of talks about you and obviously you should not lie about this. Some people will recommend twisting words or exaggerating or being vague just to sound a bit better. But I really don't. First of all, these are lies, and you know they are. Second of all, it's just bad business. Everyone, especially people who are paid to sift through resumes, can spot them in a way these people are paid precisely to spot stuff like this. And so they will be very good at figuring out where you might have been exaggerating or lying. And third of all, though, even if the lies air fibs that use are good enough not to be spotted, well, then you risk having to complete a job that you have no idea how to do. So don't waste time with odd wording or trying to make stuff sound really cool or impressive. If you can translate from one language into another, you have all that is needed, and the rest, frankly, is just fodder. So I should probably say a couple more words about Seo or search engine optimization. I touched upon it before, but ah, I should just explain a little bit more about it at least in terms of how it relates to us as freelance translators. When you're creating a website, you'll hear this term quite often, you'll hear Seo search engine optimization, and you'll hear that having your website means that you have to use certain keywords or tags or formats and that possibly you should be getting Facebook ads or use Google AdWords or something along those lines. And my advice is always not to worry about any of that. And I have two main reasons for this. First of all, you're not good at it. Ah, if you are not a techie person and if you're just creating your website now, then you probably are not a techie person. Ah, then you won't be nearly as good as some other companies out there, no matter how hard you try. Second of all, even if you get very good, you still won't be nearly as good as pros dot com as Twitter, as Facebook as linked in or any of these websites. So why not just use these websites and take advantage of their S E O. And just keep your profile prominent on them rather than rebuilding everything from scratch and trying to recreate the wheel 4. Resume Extras: Now here's some extra points about your resume, and I include these as sort of a bonus just because I did not want to go into too much detail right away with the resume because I was afraid that that might make people delay trying to, ah, post their resume or delay starting out and stuff like that. So I do think that all these points are useful. I really don't want you to ah, use these as an excuse or as a reason to delay getting started. So feel free to add these on later or take these into account later. But the important thing is that you do get started, and then later on, you can tweak your resume as needed. So to get on with the points there some points that should be emphasized in your resume. And the 1st 1 is obviously languages. If you're gonna be a freelance translator, you should obviously emphasize anything that has to do with languages. This is translation teaching languages, anything that was done in different languages, etcetera, etcetera. Another point is computer skills and ah, remember that all of your work will be done on a computer and so it is good to at least confirm that you know how to use basic computer programs and you know how to, ah, work a computer and how to use the basic programs that they might want you to use now. This also includes design skills. The climb will very often send you files that need to be worked on in terms of layout or in terms of DTP desktop publishing. And very often you will see the term DTP, either in requests or in things that people are looking from and freelance translators there for specific jobs. And generally this just means working on a layout. So if you have financial statements or if you have a chart, if you have a graph, if you have maybe a table and Microsoft Word something along those lines. So if you have any skills along these lines and be sure to include them, another thing is your self driven or entrepreneurial points. You want to show that you're a self starter. You want to show that you're good at working by yourself, and so if you have anything that sort of emphasizes this, then be sure to include it and the other thing is that specialization skills. Now the specialization skills are basically the industries that you'll be working on, right. So if you specialize in financial translations, then you want to emphasize and experience you have in the finance world. If you're working on legal translations than emphasize and experience, you have in the legal world, are working in law or anything along those lines. A couple of other points to keep in mind. Remember your name spelling. Remember to use the same spelling for your name throughout your resume, and this goes for your list of services and profile pages as well. This seems quite obvious, but I was surprised at how often I've seen a name spelt differently in different places. Obviously, not all languages use Roman letters, and so when you write your name using Roman letters, sometimes they're different ways that you can spell it. But make sure that you always use the name same name spelling, and this will include any hyphens or any dashes or anything along those lines that you have in your name. You can also specify your time zone, as this can be very useful to. The client was reading your resume now, gaps in employment aren't all that important for freelancers, so don't worry about these too much. If you have a gap in your employment, you don't need to worry about filling it in with some other job. Even if it had nothing to do with translation or trying to find some way to fill in the years or months, it's better to have a few gaps than to detail activities that have nothing to do with translation or with your specialization. Remember, once again, people here are not hiring you to be a permanent employees, and we usually learn that we have to prepare a resumes for getting hired in a permanent job . And in those cases, yes. Then they want to know a lot more about you and how you've been spending your time. But since you're being high hired here as a freelancer, you don't need to worry about that too much. And people are only interested in what experience you have that pertains to that job. Specifically 5. Freelance websites (1 hour max per website): hi. Today we're gonna talk about setting up your accounts, and more specifically, we're going to talk about the freelance Web sites, as opposed to the websites that concentrate purely on translation. So for the freelance Web sites, I've calculated about an hour maximum per website. You have most of the information already that you need to enter into the website, so it's just requesting of of getting signed up. You have a couple options for setting up an account on the various freelance Web sites. Some of them are free, some of them require payment, and some of them are free until you actually want a bid for a job. And some of them have guaranteed escrow payment and some don't and some will help you in the case of non payment or something like that. And some won't and some have decent jobs available, and some just don't so plainly speaking. Some are worth it, and some aren't so. The main issue at the beginning is you don't know which ones are worth it and which ones aren't. So I suggest taking the time to create profiles for all of them, any one of them that you come across, because why not? And when it comes to time to paying for their services, you can take a minute and evaluate each one of them one by one. But at the beginning, you might as well be present in as many of them as possible. So we have to start off with up work dot com upward dot com is a combination of oh, desk and the lance. Now, this is very recent effective still happening. I think as of this recording, elance dot com still exists, but it's in its last days. It's ah, it's going to be part of up work dot com soon and everything will be combined. Which means some of the stuff I say might be a bit out of date or might change since the changes going on very quickly. As of now, however, it combines oh, desk and the Lansing combines the features of both. So oh, desk has already up work dot com so actually cannot access oh, desk anymore. Delancey still can, but it'll it will have both aspects now. The main thing about oh desk was that you could track the time spent on each job. This means that anyone who assigns a job, too. You can track how much time your spending working on it, and this is done through random screenshots. While you say you're on the clock, it'll take screenshots at random times to show that you actually are working and you're not just surfing Facebook. Another option they have was is to take random pictures through through your webcam of you working. This always seemed a bit controlling. I actually never used it, and it never had had a used with me while working on translations. Another feature that exists and this is from both ODS candy lances, the placement test so placement test will come up. Once your profile has been built, you'll have the option to take a test. I would not take this test right away. If you've been building up your profile, it probably hasn't been very hard work. But at the same time you have been building up your profile, and it's best to take this placement test when you're fresh, and I think it's worth waiting until the next day or that afternoon, or whenever you're fresh, just to make sure that you have a good placement test. Also For now, I would only take a test in the language combination you're most interested in. So, for example, say French to English. If that's what you concentrate on, just take the test for French to English. You have time to take the other ones at your leisure, and so you might as well give your favorite combination a better chance from the start. You can feel free to add the other tests later on as time goes by. And don't worry. If you don't do well, you don't have to show the score, and you can always retake the test after a short wait. Regardless, however, if you're considering signing up for freelance Web sites, and there's no reason you shouldn't be considering this than up work dot com is definitely the 1st 1 you want to go to. Before, I would have said either ill answer. Oh, desk. I would have been leaning more toward Zealand's, but now up work dot com combines them. So definitely set up your profile on that. And whenever you feel fresh, let's say take your placement test. The next freelance Web site to consider is called freelancer dot com. Now this is has also been gaining in popularity. At least it had been. Now it seems to have stagnated a bit, but it's initially from Australia. Now it's worldwide. One thing you should keep in mind, though, is that freelancer dot com does not have its own form of escrow. Which up work does this means that there's a chance that once you complete the work, you could send it off to the client and then never hear from that client again. So here you're gonna have to use a bit more common sense when dealing with clients and be a bit less trusting. Let's say I should also mention that getting cheated once or twice. It's pretty much a rite of passage for long term translators, but you just want to make sure it never happens on a large job and in fact, just aimed to avoid it altogether. If you're wonder how tow avoid being scammed, I will discuss it in, ah, the lesson called getting paid, and I will cover it in detail and talk about how best to avoid getting scammed and how best to ensure that you do get paid. However, I don't mean to scare you freelancer dot com does have quite a few jobs there, and I in the past had found quite a few jobs. I just stopped using them once. I did not get paid by a client there, and I already had other things going on through other websites and portals, and so I just didn't bother anymore. But I definitely made more money than I lost with freelancer dot com. So at the beginning, I would definitely recommend it. I just group the other websites in a generic section because they can vary depending on your language and your country of residence. As an example, mock duda start G e is a website that you're gonna want to sign up for if you translate tour from German while ta go dot i t is a website that we're all in Italian translators should probably sign up. The main issue is that besides, there, being as many websites as there are languages is that they often change so rather than make a list, that will probably be outdated. By the time you hear this, I suggest you perform several searches using Google or being or whatever you prepare for, um free last translation in quotes or find translators in your language. And the reason for typing finds translators is that you want to put yourself in the shoes of someone looking for a translator, right? And that's what they are most likely to type in order to find you so as an example here, if you're an Italian translator, you would type fine translators in Italian or trouble which, as you can see when I type it into Google. The first result is ta go dot i t. So that's definitely a website that I will want to sign up for if I deal with the time to English or English to Italian translations now, I mentioned escrow a couple times, and not all of you might know exactly what this means or how it works. So, first of all, it's offered by up work dot com, as I mentioned, but it's not offered by most other websites, so you should be a big careful and eso What is it exactly? It, um, it's It makes payments safer The way it works is that the provider or your client when they award you the job, they'll deposit the money to be paid into an account into an account that is held by up work dot com or by whoever holds it. And this money is then Onley released to you upon completion of the job. So this ensures that, first of all, that the client actually has the money and it's ready to pay you. And at the same time it assures them that you won't take the money and run, so it tends to work very well. So right away you know they have the money to pay you, and they know that you won't get paid until the job is done until they approve it. There are possible issues, such as a client refusing to accept your completed job, but it's something like that happens. The issue is taken up by the lance and now by up work and which will look into both parties sides. And so if you do your job well, it's very hard for the client to cheat, cheat you on your payment. I have to say, I've never had that issue happened to me, so I've always found working with escrow to be a lot safer and a lot more secure, especially when you're working with new clients and you're not sure what to expect. And that's it for the freelancer websites, and the next lesson will be about translation websites or websites that specialize in translation and not in freelance work in general. 6. Signing up for Upwork (a walkthrough): Okay, so now we're going to go through signing up for up work up work, as you probably know, is the main website. It's the main general website for freelancers. It's not specialized for any specific type of freelancer, but you can find all types of freelancers. And for this reason, a lot of people looking for freelancers will automatically go here because they're not necessarily well versed in what type of websites are best for designer freelancers of freelance photographers, freelance translators, etcetera, etcetera. So a lot of them will just come toe up work because they know it's the website for freelancers. So let's get started when you sign up here. First of all, you goto up work dot com, and then you click on Become a freelancer, assuming that's what you want to do. And then you see here again become a freelancer. There's an option if you're hiring, but obviously you're freelancing. And so this is where you want to be. So you click on, Sign Up. Now, if it's your first account, obviously, just ah, come up with the name John Smith work email address John Smith at whatever it is, and then, ah, click here. Then it will have you United States create a password. I'm going to create a password. Then I want to work as a freelancer. User name? John Smith won a one. Hopefully, that works No on them. Type in these letters. These air, the usual things you see everywhere. Three or four. Yes, I understand and agree. And then you get this, uh, screen, which says Very frightening. Well, I just to access all of up work. So they're obviously going to send you an email address just to um confirmed that it's a really email address, and the one I said should have worked. There we go. Please verify your email address. So you click on this and then click on sign up, Verify. And then this should open up the new tab, and then you should be ready to Ah, Sinan. It's pretty much a simple as that. And at this point, you can fill out whatever information you need. The main services you offer here. If you're translator, you write translation. If you're a web developer Ah, Then you would click on this designer, etcetera, etcetera. You have You have pretty much everything you need here. or you can find out where you fit best. Let's say you're a software developer. Something along those lines. Mobile development website, mobile design. I don't know, you know, whatever it might be. And then you click on a couple of these up to four and then whatever skills you might offer , say website develop meant yes. Yeah, there we go. If you're not sure about your experience level for now, just click intermediate and ah, and then you can see if you are first starting, Obviously, then it's more honest. Put entry level and but just click intermediate for now, if you're not really sure, and you'll get a better feel as time goes on, hopefully soon enough, you can put expert, which means, obviously, that you can charge more. Of course, entry level. You charge less, but people are also more likely to hire you, especially if they're looking for something on the cheap side. Honestly, it's a bit of a gamble. Either way. If you're not sure, just click intermediate, then just click, save and continue. So this is the information they have so far. At this point, you just add a photo, which we already covered in the pregame section on all of this. We pretty much covered in the pregame section because you just come up with a professional title and whatever describes what you do because this is it shouldn't be snazzy. It shouldn't be too flashy, but she just describe what you do so potential clients can see it right away. And this overview comes straight from your letter of introduction that we already covered in the pregame section. Education, employment history can come from your resume again from the pregame section. Your English proficiency just ah, put in here what your level is. If you are following what I'm saying, you're pretty much already a conversational fluent, and or, you know, if it's your native tongue, your native bilingual, then ah said your I really rate and and then it'll calculate. So if your hourly rate to say 30 it shows you that the 20% up work service fee is there and then you'll get $24 per hour so you can kind of a justice accordingly and see what works best for you. I would also a justice, depending on how many if you put 30 and you're getting a lot of jobs. Try raising it, you know. And if you don't get any jobs, try a little, ring it a bit and see what happens. Sometimes you can, ah, kind of play around with it and see what works best for you. So how many hours available? This depends If you want to work part time full time, this is all up to you. And then they ask for your information just so they can make sure that you are a real person. And but obviously only your city and country will be shared with clients. And this is this helps with clients so they know which time zone you're in. And you know they can deal with you like that. Obviously, the other information won't be shared with them. Anyway, you just fill it out, and then at the end, you just click submit. And then it says if your application to join is approved, they're gonna prove it unless you're missing something or if you've been on this before and kicked off for something along those lines that they won't. But otherwise, as long as you fill out the information truthfully and everything that no prove it. I'm not going to do this obviously, because I'm already a member. I'm just doing this to show you have to get it done. That's pretty much the whole process. So it isn't hard. And especially if you follow the pregame section, you already have all of the information ready. So it should really be easy. And again, this is another reason why I have that pregame section so that you can have all the information available ahead of time. And you don't waste time. Every time we're sending out for these new websites again, this is up work. So this is the, ah, the main website for freelancers in general. But depending on what type of ah freelancer, you are there other. There might be other, more specialized websites, but they're gonna ask for more or less the same information. As long as you prepared it ahead of time as we did in the pregame section. Then you'll be set. Then you're fine. So that's pretty much it. And ah, this point you can be signed in as ah as an up work user and you can start bidding for jobs right away. And you're searchable right away. 7. Translation Websites (1 hour max per website): here. I should mention a few words about the blue board that I mentioned before. I'm pros dot com. The blue board is where translators can give evaluations regarding the company's they've worked with, and they can provide feedback. Always check this board before doing business with any company. Also, remember to check the comments. If someone gave a little score to a provider, it could just as easily be due to a bad translator as it could be to a bad provider. In general, however, people try to avoid giving bad reviews because this is a very important part for all for all companies on the website. So it should always be a red flag. If you see a low score, as you can see at the bottom of any job notification or any job that's offered on pros, you'll see something like this. The job was posted by a blue board outsourcer, where the likelihood of working an average rating of five out of five, which is obviously good, but it can be four out of 53 out of five something like that, in which case you'll probably want toe click on it and see why that is, you can also just directly goto pros dot com slash blue board. And since pros dot com is the most important website, I'm going to go through some other features that it that it offers and some other factors to keep in mind. First of all, kudos points. If you hover over your name at the top, you'll see a long list appear. I told you this. I can get complicated, but yes, you have your over your name at the top. You see a long list appear in the first important link. Here is the one for the kudos points. Would you get by answering questions posted by other people in your language combination? Basically, if you go to prose dot com, you see job offers in your combination, and if you scroll down, you'll see questions asked. Needless to say, this is a great place to ask any questions you might have regarding any particular terms or phrases, etcetera, etcetera. Although you won't get any points for asking the questions, you only get them for answering them now. I don't want to go into too much detail here because it's beyond the scope of this introductory lesson I know I made a video about it before, but ah, when a provider looks for you, chances are depending on how they perform their search. You will be ranked based on kudos points. So it's worth it to get these kudos points and to answer questions about expressions about terms, etcetera, etcetera, just so you can get these points. So anyway, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but just to keep in mind that it can be worth it to get more kudos points whenever you can . Another option to keep in mind is, uh, W W A. Are their willingness to work again. You can only get these for jobs you've completed, so be sure to keep track of all your clients while you're working on a job. And once you've completed them and once you have completed a job to their satisfaction, you can ask them to give you feedback. Prose dot com makes it quite easy to do this. He could just send them a link, and it's almost all filled out and with the ability to add of their own information if they want, So just be sure to collect these. Once you get started because these could be very valuable as well. People want to. People like to see that you've worked with other clients, and they've been happy with your work. Another translation website is translators cafe dot com. This is the only other website that's more or less ubiquitous in the freelance translation world. Unfortunately, it isn't any more user friendly than pros dot com. It is, however, free for the most part. They do have a payment option, but for the most part, you don't need it. I don't think I've ever paid for translators. Cafe dot com I know I don't at the moment, and you can access pretty much everything you need with a free option. So the initial process is pretty much the same as pros dot com. You go to this website here. I spelt it out because it's a big, complicated Teoh say out loud. Here you will sign up as a linguist, and then you fill out all the information once again that you have from your before getting started lesson. This time, however, like I said, I would start with a non paying membership. He can upgrade later, but I would just start off without paying, you'll still be able to see job requests and even apply for them, although you might receive them after everyone else after the paid members, let's say, which could put you at a disadvantage depending on your situation. If after a month or so you think it's worth it. As you haven't been able to get any responses from Translators Cafe and you're not too busy working on jobs from other sources, then you can always upgrade. The good thing about this website is that it only has one paid membership option, which makes your life easier. I mean, it's less choice, but it still makes it easier to choose. My recommendation here is just to sign up for the full year. Things like this can take some time, so you might as well give it the whole year. Now here's a list of other websites that concentrate on translation for freelance translators. I was going to give translators based its own section, but I don't think it deserves that placement, at least not just yet. For translators Base. Those supposed jobs don't have to pay while freelancers do. I've got some decent jobs from this website, but I've also been burned. The translator's base and freelancer dot com are the only ones that have burned me. Let's say it's just too it too easy for an ill intention person to post a job for nothing and use a yahoo dot com email address with a fake name and have some over your freelancer that was me, complete their translation and then disappeared from the system without having to pay. That is literally what happened to me. And unfortunately, translator's based dot com not having its own payment information cannot do anything to help you. However. Translators based dot com and all these other websites I have listed can be useful depending once again on on what country you're in and the languages you deal with. They're by no means exhaustive, and in fact, they may be more geared towards what I have experienced in which is Italian English with some other European languages. So you might hear about other websites. In fact, you almost certainly willed if you deal with other languages now, you might notice his Asterix next to taco dot com taco dot com a the same as Thiago dot i t . Which is what I use for the Italian translations. The reason for the ass traces. I was almost not going to include this website, but I have used it quite a bit. And so I did include it. However, I do want to specify something about it, namely, that I've had serious issues with toggles. Safe pay system. Safe pay is their version of an escrow system. It's not exactly the same as the one you would find on up work, but it's their version, and my issue was just that. I tried withdrawing money from it, and after several weeks I saw nothing in my bank account and nothing on my 12 go account, either. So I contacted them on two of their country's websites, and I was told the bank information was incorrect, although I'd copied and pasted it from a past transaction which had been successful. And then they go back and I'm reading now. Please consider that taco is not able to pay for any transaction fees or fees cause due to the bounce back. That's literally what they wrote. And the fee that they charged me for this transaction fee that apparently couldn't occur was 94.8 euros. So it's not nothing again. This is anecdotal, but I thought I should mention it Nonetheless, Another thing to keep in mind is that some translator websites just aggregate from other websites, so you might start finding some repeats if you sign up for all of them. I had this with E translators dot net, which features various jobs that, when clicked on, will link right back to translators based dot com. I'm not sure why they do that, and that's it for this section. The next session will be about translation agencies themselves. 8. Translation Agencies (1 hour max per agency): hi. Today, I'm gonna talk to you about translation agencies. Now, the main difference between translation websites and translation agencies is that translation websites like pros dot com and translators, cafe dot com or aggregator websites. They bring together translators and people who need translations and then all the businesses up to those people. Translation agencies. On the other hand or more, they're more like middle men, and so they will actually have clients, and then they will hire translators themselves. The easiest way to think about translation agencies is to think about them as pre Internet agencies. Before the Internet, a translation agency would exist, and a bank or a law firm my contact them. And then they, in turn, will higher and contact and be in touch with other freelance translators. Essentially, they still work that way, except now they're online. So a couple other things have changed. Most translation agencies thes days let you sign up online. They let you apply. Sometimes they'll want you to submit some information like a resume. Sometimes they want you to take a test. Regardless, I would say one hour maximum per agency, but for the vast majority, it will be a lot less. It will just be a question of filling out a form with information that you already have. So our translation agencies, your clients or not, If you spent some time on the translation websites like translators, cafe and pros, etcetera, you'll find that a lot of the people recruiting translators are translation agencies. So what's going on here? Well, as I mentioned, most inclines end up contacting a translation agency which will then contact you for the actual translation. So, yes, this means that a translation agency will act as a Mittelman, but it also serves a purpose. First of all, this agency is a buffer in between you and the end client. So, for example, if the end client doesn't pay them, the agency will still owe you your payment, because your contract essentially is with them and not with the end client. So they take care of that risk if you will. Secondly, it's up to them to interpret what the client wants. And since the end, client maybe has no idea what a source where it is or what the difference between simplified and traditional Chinese is. Etcetera, etcetera. The translation agency will have to interpret this and give you clear instructions. So at the beginning, it will definitely be more comfortable for you to work with the translation agency rather than directly with an end client, since they will interpret what the incline wants for you. Once you get more comfortable, however, you might want to start actively targeting end clients. While they will require more hand holding an explanation, they will also pay much more and often in advance. Now this is probably worth repeating. You should definitely know what you're entitled to when you deal with translation agencies . If you do the work for them, they have to pay you. If they say that the end client isn't paying them, that doesn't matter. If they say the end client is late in paying them, that doesn't matter. If they say any other issue with the end client, then it doesn't matter. Your contract is with them, not with the end client. Now, many times you might want to work with them or be nice about it, and that's totally up to you. Of course, more often, the excuse you'll find is they'll say that there was, ah, big problem with the translation and too many corrections had to be done. And so they're going to want a discount or not to pay you at all. Obviously, in this in these cases, you should ask for proof of this. And you should offer to redo any translation that wasn't done correctly. If that was the case, and then how much you get paid or whether you get paid, that will depend from translation agency to translation agency. But barring you're making any mistakes or getting anything wrong, then they should pay you. Absolutely. No matter what happens with the in client or with the final project, they can tell you Oh, the incline has decided to scratch the final project. No, If you did the work, you deserve to get paid for it. So how does the recruitment work for these translation agencies? Sooner or later, most likely via one of these translation websites you signed up for, like, pros or translators cafe. But it could also just be out of the blue. You will be contacted by a translation agency to become a member in general. It's a good idea to sign up for them all, since you might as well have your information and as many places as possible, some of them might ask you to perform a short translation test for evaluation. In general, these tests should not be longer than 2 to 300 words. I mean slightly longer. But around that range, if they are longer, beware because they might be trying to score a free translation off you. And yes, this can happen. Thankfully, it's rare, but it can happen. I wouldn't expect too much from these. Even if you do a translation test. Many of these translation agencies get clients by being able to claim that they have X number of translators in their database. When they collect your information, they're basically beefing up their database. Whether or not you hear from them later on is another matter. On the other hand, if and when they do receive a job request in your language combination, it's always better to be on their list than not to be. Having to perform a translation test makes it a bit more likely that they will hire you, but it's absolutely not a guarantee. Now some translation agencies might ask you for personal information, like a Social Security number or equivalent, which could understandably make you feel uncomfortable. Some others might ask you to physically male your information to them even internationally . And I'm not kidding. I would suggest that you politely just ignored all of these. There's no use spending money or time or risk your identity being out there for no real return. It's just not worth it. Also, needless to say, if they ask you to pay for membership, just skip them. This means that their business is collecting your fees and not finding translation jobs. Once you pay, they'll concentrate their efforts on finding some more freelancers to pay them rather than finding you translations. Now, if you're dealing with translation agencies, you should also get to know some of their tricks. I should say that translation agencies come in all shapes and sizes. There are some excellent ones out there, which are usually listed and rated on the pros dot com blue board, by the way. And then there's some terrible ones. And if you're confused about what the pros dot com blue board is, you can see that in the previous lesson on translation websites. There are also, however, some terrible ones and these are some of their tricks, at least some of the ones that I've seen. Now, one trick is to change a translator mid job. What happens is that the incline to say, the law firm or the bank, or whoever wants to hire the translation agency but wants to have them translate something short first before they give them a huge translation toe work on. So this translation agency will hire someone good and more likely expensive Teoh translate or at it, a short document. And then they'll give this translated document to the client in order to win their bid. They will then hire someone very cheap to perform the actual work if they win this bid. So if you're performing a translation test, just be aware of this in the back of your mind. Another thing they might do is hire you for the first part of the translation. I either short test so that they can win the bid and they will tell you Oh, can you do this for a low price? Because we will have a lot Mork coming later on and huge volume. But then when they do have the huge volume, they hire someone else even cheaper than you toe work on it anyway, you never know. But just keep this in mind. Number two is they might try to hire students for little or nothing. They might offer to pay them in things such as recommendation letters, future references or just abysmally low salaries because they feel like they can again keep this in mind. Another one and one of my favorites is when they translate something using only Google translate or being translate. And then they try to hire you on Lee as the editor. And so this happened to me and I was given a translation, too. Edit quote unquote. And they said that their translator have worked on it and they weren't very happy with it. I got a bit suspicious also because the translation was really pretty crappy. And so I entered the source text in the original Italian language into being translate. And then I asked big translator to translate it from a time to English. And sure enough, it sped out exactly what the client could send me. So I wrote back to them. I was polite, and basically I didn't claim that they were trying to cheat me. I said, Oh, whoever you hire the translator tried to cheat you. And so I can translate this document for X Price. But I won't do an editing job on this because it obviously wasn't translated. I never heard from them again, but quite frankly, that's not a company I want to deal with. So it worked out fine. Now, once again, none of this is to dissuade you from dealing with translation agencies. Like I said, they come in all shapes and sizes, and the vast majority are honest translation agencies that actually make their money from honest translations. So I would definitely sign up for them and work with them, however thes air just things to keep in the back of your mind when you're dealing with them . Just so if you notice something is amiss that it might raise a red flag 9. A bit more in depth on Translation Tests: Translation tests are something that you've come across already. If you're a translator, if you're just starting out as a freelance translator, you will come across them because there are just a fact of life in the translation world. And they can also be a big pain. Why? Because what happens is an agency usually will ask you to perform a translation tests of say, two hundred, three hundred words, something like that for free in order for them to assess whether or not you are good enough to perform the translation of their document or of their project or whatever it might be for the end client. And so yeah, everything there seems pretty straightforward. You get tested if you're good enough, they hire you if not know. Now, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. However, first of all, always it's the length. It's usually the last cue to perform, say around 200 words and maximum 300 words depending on what it is. But it can run the gamut. It can be anything. I know of one particular case where someone was asked to translate ten pages worth of material, and he did and then didn't hear back. And then when he followed up and asked what was going on, they said, oh no. You didn't pass the test or you weren't good enough or something along those lines, which means he translated ten pages for nothing. So this is something you want to avoid. So as a general rule, if you're first starting out and if someone asks you to perform a translation test, you can assess if you want to or not. Because obviously if you're working on other projects, you should work on the projects you get paid for. But if you're interested in performing this test for future jobs with this company and the company seems legitimate obviously, then feel free to perform the test. The test once again should be 200, maybe 300 words maximum. That's it. If it's anything more than chances are they're trying to get a free translation out of it, or who knows what's going on. And if they do give you a lot more to translate, just say I'll be happy to translate the first 23 paragraphs or whatever it is. Now, unfortunately, another thing that happens is after you perform the translation test you handed in, they'll write back and say, OK, we're happy with your translation test, but were not too happy about your rates. Do you think you could lower your rate of it because it's a bit high for us. Now this is also a trick that agencies can do. Why? Because you're already invested in it. You've already performed a translation test. And so you've already expended some effort. And so at this point, you can feel the job it is almost there, it's almost yours. And they just want you to lower your rate a bit and then it's yours. And so you kind of feel like you want to. Unfortunately, there's a reason why they waited after the test to ask if they could have asked you before. But if they wait until after the test, then they know that you're that much more vested in it and you're that much more likely to accept the lower pay rate. And quite frankly, this is a stupid game they play. I really don't like it. And so I usually recommend whenever you get asked to perform a translation tests to right back in your email be like, OK. If you're fine with my rate, like if you confirm my rate and my specification is whatever they might be depending on the translation, but usually it's the rate that I'm more than happy to perform your translation test. This way you have it in writing that they accept your translation rate. Before we actually perform the test, so you don't have to waste time later on. So another thing to keep in mind is do you always have to take these tests? Is there a way not to take these tests? And is there a way in there's something else he could do instead of taking these tests. And yeah, there definitely is. And for those of you who have already had some experience in translation, maybe you've noticed this, but sometimes when they ask you for a test, you can just say, well, I perform translation similar to that one in the past. And you can see in my portfolio what I've done and you can send them your portfolio or the parts of your portfolio that pertain to that particular translation. In fact, I had something similar happened to me once I was hiring translators, I did not issue a tester or have them perform a test, but I was hiring and translators for a registry of commerce entry. And this is from China and I needed them to translate it. I can't remember into which language. And one of these translators wrote to me and said, I perform similar translations in the past. Here, take a look at these and he 73 files of registry of commerce entries that were exactly the same format at exactly the same type as the one that I did a translating. So right away I knew this was the right person for the job because he had experienced in it and he had done it before. And so I hired him. If you have something very similar to what the client has performed already in your portfolio, that you can just send that and that shows that you can perform the job that you have performed the job in the past. And that way they know you are the obvious choice and you're the right person to hire. So this also means that every time you translate something new or something a bit different point you've translated before, you should add that to your portfolio as well to show that you've performed that. So if in the future someone asks you to perform something similar to that, you have it right there in your portfolio. You don't have to go searching for it back in emails from two years ago or something along those lines. So in essence, if you're first starting out, you're going to have to take translation tests. My recommendation is to make sure that they accept your rate before you actually take the translation test. Usually you will have applied for a job wherein you state your rate. And when they ask you for the translation tests, say sure. If you're, if you find my rate and all my conditions acceptable or if you find as long as you find my rate acceptable, I'm more than happy to take your test that way, you know, and that you have confirmation that your rate is accepted before you actually take the test. Next, make sure the test isn't too long. 200 words usually may be to 300 words if if it's needed, but no more if they ask you for three pages, four pages or something like that, you can say I'm happy to perform the translation of the first two paragraphs, three paragraphs, whatever it might be. And next, once you start getting some experience, you can actually start using your portfolio instead of these translation tests. And if they need something translated in something similar to what you've already done, you can send them a portfolio and say, look is what you're translating similar to this because I've done this and this. And so that might be representative of the type of work you'll need from me for this translation. So yeah, that's pretty much it. Hopefully, you can find this useful in the future in terms of translation tests, in terms of what you should do when you should not be doing. My recommendation, however, is right now to start off with your portfolio, and chances are you've performed translations already. I don't care if they're volunteer translations or if there were paid or whatever they might be. But make sure you have portfolio, make sure your portfolio has different types of translations you performed, not just the same type of translation over and over. If you've performed translations of registry of commerce and trees, don't just have 345 different registry of commerce entries, but tried to also feature other things you've translated. Maybe you've translated contracts or documentation, stuff like that, tried to diversify a bit in your portfolio. So you have an example of each one and in the future every time you do translate something new, add that to your portfolio if you feel comfortable with it. 10. Pricing: hi. Today we're going to deal with pricing, which, as I mentioned before, is a very important section. But we're going to start off with something other than pricing, which is alerts now. Hopefully, you have job alerts set up wherever possible on websites such as pros dot com and translators cafe dot com etcetera. What they entail is just entering your language combination, and your specializations and jobs that fit your profile will be sent directly to you either via email or however you decide if these are available from whatever side you're working with. You should definitely sign up for them now. Some websites might not offer this option, and I find that in these situations you might want to check their website sporadically for a few days. But sooner or later, you'll just forget about it because other things will come up. And then chances are you're going to miss out on some opportunities. So the easiest option here is toe make your own, and this means, at least for me, it means setting up regular alerts on Google calendar or whatever other calendar you use. And so I'll set up an alert with the name of the Web site or link to the website, where I could just check my language combination and look through the dates of the posting and depending on the frequency, I'll set up my alert for, say, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or once per week or once per month, or what have you. This could be your judgment call, but alerts themselves are very useful. So I would set up and alert for every single website you sign up for, whether it be from the Web site or you make your own now into pricing. Now, at the beginning, you'll find that ratings are just as important, if not more important than prices. The job providers won't want to hire someone totally new, so you might have toe suffer a bit at the beginning. Many established freelance translators might be mad at my recommendation here, but I do recommend under pricing yourself at least of the beginning. There are, of course, downsides to this. You were gonna earn less and ah, the hiring company will also expect the same price from you for all future translations. And also, the reason people get mad is that other translators are gonna lose out for you due to your under pricing. Now, people might clean that. Also, this makes you look inexperienced. But I would retort that your if your first time translator on any website, no matter your experience elsewhere Ah, then you're gonna look at experienced regardless. So getting some experience, um, or a track record and some money is better than not getting anything due to misplaced pride . Also, the idea that this under prices the entire industry, I don't think it's necessarily true. There's always there always going to be extremely low price translators. The ones that are worth it will naturally be able to command more over time. And so, if you are worth that, you will be able to raise your prices over time. On the other hand, the new ones, they're gonna have to start somewhere. When I first started out, I was told by several people never to go below 10 cents per word per source word, since that's what I was worth. Ah, the result was that for five months I got absolutely no jobs, and, um so I got desperate and I started accepting some pretty ridiculously low price jobs. And then I started making money. In fact, you can even tell the client that you're going to accept their little rate as long as they provide good feedback for you. Since you're trying to create a track record, I think you'll find that most providers air happy to save money if all it costs them is giving you, Ah, good rating as long as they're happy with your work. Of course. Now, of course, this is just the beginning. You can't constantly underprice yourself because then you won't make money. However, I would set a goal in the beginning, maybe to get three good reviews or something along those lines, after which point you stop under pricing yourself because you don't want to be working for pennies now onto pricing itself. The main question here is how to price your work. Do you price it per word per page per line per hour per project for cups of coffee, their various ways to do it? I will go through the main ones and explain what I prefer and why the 1st 1 is per source word. This is definitely the most common and, ah, when you start out, I would always try to price yourself per word and more precisely per source word. This, of course, means per word of the source text this insurance that you get paid for the work you actually perform. Being paper. Our will always be more of an art than a science, Let's say, even if the client is using up works supervision options, which I discussed earlier. Also, a page could consider just a header, or it could consist of very small text with wide margins, so the amount of work per page can vary greatly. Charging for word, on the other hand, ensures that you get paid for what you translate now. The reason I specify a price per source word again per word of the source text rather than per target word or per word of the text after you've translated, is so that the client and you can both know ahead of time what the precise price will be. This also ensures decline that you won't be adding any unnecessary words in order to squeeze a bit more out of them. I e. A bit more words in the target text. Sometimes, however, especially when the client has a scanned document whose word count. They don't know how to calculate or don't feel like calculating. They will ask you for a quote for Target Word, which is fine now. This condemn penned on the language but variations between source and target work counts can vary by up to 30% with Western languages and even more with others. If you don't believe me next time you see a text that is translated into Chinese, compare the number of characters to the number of words. Ah, you can search forms for discussions about this based on language combinations for differences in your language combinations or in a worst case scenario, you can find a certain number of past translations and see what the average difference inward Countess. The easiest option, however, is always just to use the source word. Also, depending on which language combination of which countries you're dealing with, you might receive a request for a quote for 10 words or poor 1000 words or even per character per line, etcetera, etcetera. Obviously, now, if you receive a request for a quote in one of these variations, you should reply in the same variation. If someone asks you for a quote per page or per character and you reply per source word. The client might not want to deal with you, so you want to make their life easier. Just as a rule of thumb. Obviously, there many variations between the languages, but I would say that there are 50 to 65 characters, including spaces per line and ah, about 2 2500 Sorry to 1800 characters per page. And I say this because in Italian many times we have to do translations per character. Once again, you can search for it, especially the discussion boards on Translators Cafe in prose dot com. Many people discuss these issues. Now this brings me to the second pricing strategy, which is per project now. I mentioned this as a second option because because you can only really start doing this once you're used to the pitfalls that can arise. For example, a document of 10 pages coming very different things or a document of 1000 words you know, could mean ah scanned berry barely legible copy of around 1000 handwritten words or could mean 1000 new words was with 4000 repeats or could mean 1000 words of poetry which can take much longer than, say, 1000 words of ah websites about us page. But if you know more or less what to expect both from the document and the type of client, then you can start charging per project. The advantage in doing this is that the client will often prefer something like this. You definitely make their life easier. And I can illustrate this with an example. So you receive an email for a translation request that says Hi, we need to translate this document from Italian to English. Can you help us now? Say you look at the document which they've attached, or pace it or whatever and you write back. Yeah, sure, I can do it for 77 cents a word. This is the email that the client will then receive. Unfortunately, the client will also receive emails from the other translators they contacted. So one might be able to do it for eight cents a word. So what else? For six cents a word someone else for 18 cents a word. And suddenly they have all these quotes per word. And this is not to mention the translators who are going to quote per hour or per page or per character, etcetera, etcetera, which can even further complicate the client's life. But put yourself in their shoes. If you have a document to translate and you're getting quotes per word, suddenly you need to be able to do a calculation to find the total amount. In fact, if you receive a quote per source word than they need to look up, what a source where it is they might not know. And then once they figure that part out, then they need to figure out how many words there in the total document or the total word count, which they might not know, either, in which case they need to search for it and figure that part out. And then once they have figured out what a source word is, what your prices per source word and what the total workout is, then they say, Okay, I guess it's the total word count times the price per source word. Um, and so they'll do that calculation, which in this case is for 79.99 and but then they need to redo the calculation for each price quote they receive right, which can result in very different numbers. As you can see here, the highest quote there they received was, ah, a lot more. But why not make the client's life easier? And maybe just do the calculation yourself? You can save them time and a headache if you just write something like my price would be 480 for the entire job. Thanks. So right away, the client doesn't need to look up what a source where it is. Try to figure out what the word count is and try to do the calculation for each section. Hope that their calculation is correct and that they actually have the right definitions. But instead they see 4 80 for the entire job boom. And even if this quote is above what other people quote after the calculation, chances are they'll still choose you because you save them a headache. They can be more secure about the total amount rather than rely on their calculations. And chances are it's not their money, but they're operating out of an expense account of their company. And so even if it's a bit off as long as it falls within the budget, they might go with you anyway. So again it might seem like a small thing, and in a way it's a bit of an advanced step. But I do bring it up so you can keep it in mind and hopefully use it, because it will put you that much further ahead of other translators that are competing for the same job. Now, this point, I want to mention another pricing strategy, which I don't consider strategy at all. And that's working per hour. Ah, you do see this every now and then, and some people might be happy to work per hour. I am. Generally, I am against it for several reasons, and I list them here. First of all, there's a ceiling in the number of hours per day, and so you cannot work more than that number of hours. There's also a ceiling for the rate per hour. It also becomes very quickly a race to the bottom. If you charge X per hour and someone else charges less than expert, our that someone else will get the job and you find yourself very quickly selling your time rather than the work itself, and this means that there's no incentive for you to work efficiently. It's also bad for the company hiring you, because although they might not realize it, you have no incentive to finish your work quickly, and you have every incentive to drag it out as much as possible. So you're gonna start becoming very good at finding ways to add time here and there, which isn't good for the client. But it's also not good for you, since he could be using that time to do better work. And aside from all this, I found that for the same work, you will get paid mawr if you charge per word or even per project, etcetera, then per hour for some reason per hour, just comes out to less money Overall. Now, the only other thing to keep in mind for this pricing section is your price minimum. Especially once he gets started, you're gonna want to have a minimum price. Some translators want to skip very short jobs like, say, the translation of a driver's license or a birth certificate, because they might only have 15 or 20 words in them and are therefore not worth the time it takes tow, you know, correspond with the client and accept the job. However, if you do charge a minimum price that each of these jobs can be an easy way to add some money. Obviously your minimum can't be too high because then you won't get hired, so just find what you're comfortable with. Maybe if your price per source word means that you will get paid a total of five bucks, it's not worth your time. And so you might want a minimum. That's a bit above that. But once again, you can figure this out and refine that as you go along. Just keep it in mind. And if you want more discussion on this subject or more concrete numbers once again, you can always go to prose dot com to end two Translators Cafe, and they have forums and where people have discussions about this until the cows come home now as the last point, I did mention word count, and I mentioned that the client might might not know how to calculate the word count. However, you should always know how to calculate the word count. If you're doing with translations, it's also good for double checking the clients assertions as well as being ableto obviously set your own pricing scheme yourself. Now, the easiest and possibly most common way to check your word count is using Microsoft Word. If you're using it, you just click on tools and then word count. I'm not sure if this varies depending on your version of Microsoft Word or refusing Windows or Mac OS. Just make sure you don't have any of the text highlighted. Otherwise, it will just calculate the word count of what you highlighted. You want to calculate the whole document on? Be sure to check the box include footnotes and endnotes, because sometimes that can change the total amount as well. You can also use other programs. Different programs have different methods to calculate the word count. So if in doubt, I would just copy and paste the text from wherever it is on to Microsoft Word and follows the same process just to be sure. Now, what if a scanned document or any other document doesn't allow for were account like you might have a physical document, or maybe something that's in handwriting, etcetera, etcetera. So in this case, you're gonna want Teoh use what's called an OCR optical character recognition. I won't go too much into detail. I do have a video about it that I can link to in the notes. I have my preferred OCR website, but there are other ones. They're free options. I the one I use I pay for. I think it's definitely worth the money and they will basically scan documents and transform them into Microsoft Word so you can get a word count out of them now. What if you don't have Microsoft Word? This could actually be a bigger problem than you think, especially if you receive translations that require a certain format. But for now, there are websites that calculate word counts. One of the main one seems to be a word count tool dot com all one word all attached. Regardless of the one you use, though, just make sure to copy and paste all the text rather than upload a document. Since your guarantee a more precise count. Now there's a lot more I could get into about pricing. I think this is good just to start off with. In fact, it's probably more than enough. I will, however, include some more details in the notes, including the OCR I'm also going to include I'm also gonna include other things, like maybe creating an estimate for your client rather than just pricing Anyway. I'll get into it in the notes. However, if you're just starting out, I would just concentrate on what I've been talking about and take it from there. 11. Working for free: so I thought this deserved a little bit of an update, and I touched upon this before and I touched upon working for a lower price as well as working for free. And as time has gone by, I'm thinking that the option of working for free deserves its own section and deserves some more attention. In fact, I almost decided to delete the whole part of under pricing in favor of this one. And the reason for this is that working for free is both more effective and less damaging in the long term than under pricing. When you're first starting out, your ratings and reviews can be leveraged for winning future jobs. So what does this mean? Well, in essence, it means that when you're assigned a job, you can ask for a rating once you've successfully completed the assignment. Platforms like up work dot com or Translators CAFE provide a star rating system, and I'm pros dot com. This is known as the W. W. A. Regardless, these ratings provide tremendous value over the long term, when prospective clients wish to hire a translator, seeing ratings and reviews by previous clients is probably the single most important factor they take into account, and you can take this from someone who runs his own agency. And ratings and reviews are extremely important. So when you're first starting out, these can be more important than even earning money because they really provide you with a platform in order to get future jobs. So when you're first starting out, when your first applying for a job, why not try to say something like, As you can see, I'm just starting out? So I'm willing to perform this job for free for you in exchange. All that I ask is that you leave me a good review. Obviously, if you're satisfied with my work, I don't know many people who would refuse free service. And as long as he do a good job, you're pretty much guaranteed a great review. Of course, since he won't be earning anything from this job, it might be best to limit your non during assignments to small jobs. You don't want to be working on a job. That's 20,000 words all for free. But an advantage that this has over under pricing yourself is that it doesn't pigeonhole you in a certain price range which is what happens when you decide to charge a very cheap price to get your first clients. Everybody knows that working for free is not a long term strategy, and so they won't expect you to do all your jobs for free. However, if you do charge a low price, people will automatically associate that low price with your level. So this is why lately I recommend doing your first jobs, especially if they're small jobs for free rather than trying to underprice. 12. Sales Emails: 3 Strategies you can use: Now there can be a lot of insecurity around sales emails. And the reason for this is that you're playing the numbers. You send out quite a few sales emails and you don't get any response. And so you decide to change up your sales emails and you rewrite it, and then you send out sales emails and you don't get a response except after a while you do get a response. And so you're like, okay, this sales email works, but you're not really sure why or how and you might've changed his sales email maybe a couple of times. And you're not really sure if you can apply certain things from your first email into the next one, et cetera, et cetera. And so my advice here is to go a bit more methodically because in the long term this will really help out and getting a better idea as to what works and what doesn't, and what are the best ways of grabbing attention of potential clients, et cetera. So let me get a bit more into this. There's three main strategies for sales emails that I recommend. And the first one is called the Kaizen Method. And I've mentioned this in other places. For example, in my language learning course, this is quite prominent. But basically for these circumstances, what it entails is applying very small, very gradual changes. So this means that if you're sending an email to someone and you're thinking it's not working well and you'd like to tweak it, will then tweak it, but just one small tweak. Just do one small tweak and then try that out for the next week or month or whatever it might be. And then if that still doesn't work, try another small tweak. And this way, because you only do one small change at a time, you get a much better idea when someone does reply, what that change was that made it work out. And then you can work on changing something else and seeing what works out. And slowly you get a much better idea as to what works and what doesn't. This way, the changes in your emails aren't just chaotic and haphazard, but they actually have structure to them. And you get to understand a lot more of why your potential clients are looking for. The next method is AB testing, and you can do here is take the Kaizen Method a bit further. If you don't want to do just one change, well, you can try to do to changes and see what happens. Or you can try to apply that change, but still keep your older version and send both at the same time and see what happens. Now the way a B testing works. And for those of you working in online marketing and stuff like that, you know, you know all about AB testing. But the way would work here is that you have maybe 20 different places you can apply or 20 different jobs to apply to her, 20 different end clients to a contact, et cetera, et cetera. And you divide them into 101010 of them receive one version of an email, ten of them receive another version. And you keep doing this. And after a while you get an idea of which one gets the best responses, and then you can go with that one. So at version a is working better than version of B, okay, then stick to version a. And when you make that small tweak, make it to version a. You can forget about version B and then make a small tweak to version a and maybe make two small tweaks to it, or maybe make a small tweak and leave your original version a and your tweaked version a and see how that goes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And this way, you can sort of once again methodically test two different methods at once and see what happens. And the third here is not to work on your weak points. What I mean by this is that if you're targeting law firms and financial companies, let's say, and you start to hear back from a lot of law firms, but not financial companies, you might think, okay, well, I need to work a lot more on targeting financial companies because those emails aren't working out well, what should I do? What should I change, et cetera? I'm saying don't do that. And my recommendation is actually to just forget about the financial companies that only concentrate on what works. If something works, just go for that and don't worry so much about the stuff that doesn't work. In a sense, this is like the opposite of school. If in school you are good at math, but you're bad at French, you have to concentrate a lot more on French to bring your grades up, right? But in working life, if you're good at one thing embedded Another thing, you should concentrate on what works and what you're good at. So if you're a targeting law firms and financial companies, and yet you only hear back from law firms. That doesn't mean you should concentrate more on financial companies, but no, you should keep concentrating on law firms and just forget about the financial companies because that's what's working out and you should concentrate on what's working out and keep trying to make that work out more and more. 13. Starting Strategies: today, we're going to discuss some other points to keep in mind in terms of starting strategies. We'll start with a personalized introduction now, after a potential client lists of potential job and hears back from translators. So probably be sifting through like 10 to 30 different introductions. So here you'll want to make sure that your introduction stands out and for the right reasons. Now their various ways of accomplishing this. Some people recommend rewriting your introduction for each new job offer, But in my experience, this is the quickest way to ensure that you will never want to apply for another job again , especially after your 20th application. Or so. Remember, if the clients are receiving about, say, 30 applications for every job offer, there will only choose one out of the 30. So, yes, you may be sending out 20 applications or 30 or even mawr before you hear back from everyone. And that is a sure fire way to achieve burnout. On the other hand, you can't just copy and paste your same application to every new job, since this will guarantee that the potential client will send your application to the very bottom of the heat. After all, if you aren't willing to put in the effort of applying, why should they bother putting in the effort of checking into your credentials? So what is the solution? Well, as with anything else, it's better to combine the best options of each choice. Let's say, as an example, that your main specializations, our business and legal translations in this case I would set up three templates one for business translations, one for legal translations and 1/3 for all other translations. On this page, I will show ah, generic example of a possible template for it, trying to a Italian to English legal translation offers. This is a variation of what I've used quite effectively for several years. The parts and red should be filled out specifically for each client. I tend to leave these in caps and in a different color on my templates, since it's a glaring, extremely obvious reminder for me to fill in these fields. First of all, as you can see the name if you don't have a name for the client, just right, Hello, don't use the agency's name or, even worse, to whom it may concern. It's fine to just write Hello. If you aren't sure about the name, the second part of Red should restate what the client wants. So usually this will be the name of their requests, such as 10 page court of paddle, a document or something. Once again, if there is no real usable name, you could just stick with legal translation here as well. This third parts should mention the job you've performed, which is most similar to the one being requested. So, for examples, documents for the court of paddle or something like that, something that is somewhat similar to what's being requested Now, if you notice right under this, I follow this with with what I think will be the most impressive part of my generic experience. Describing Home a published author in both languages. I say generic experience because I use this at the template for any different clients. Right so I can show that I'm a published off author for these two publications, and then I entrench my credentials by stating that I'm fully bilingual, after which I tried to establish his trust factor by providing a link to my profile where they can always find me and yes, I always provide the same pros dot com profile, no matter where I'm applying to, whether it's through the Pro's website or another website. Now, it's only toward the end that I state my rate. As you can see right here. Obviously, the price per word might change, depending on various factors such as a subject matter that length, the type of documents, the deadline and, obviously, how desperate your for work. At the end, there's just a polite salutation, and at the very bottom, I add another factor of Trustor. That's the way I see it with a link to my about me website as well as the 80 a listing. I call these factors of trust because it shows that they can find me on the World Wide Web any time they want. I'm not just some fly by night person who calls himself a freelance translator, and also I won't disappear very easily if I'm in so many places online and including a prose dot com profile which obviously paid for and an American translated translated association listing, then it shows I'm at least somewhat serious about what I do now. This, of course, is only a template to be used as an example. I posted up here because it has worked quite well for me. But chances are you will have your own strengths and you eat. You may even have a better way of stating them. The main point I want to emphasize here is to have a reason for stating everything you stayed in your introduction. Ah, good way of doing this is to be able to give a reason for each sentence. You, right. Ask yourself, Does this phrase add anything that hasn't already been stated? If so, is it something that will make the client more likely to hire me? These are the types of things you should have in mind. Also, keep in mind that it can be as personalized as you wish. The only limit is how much time you wish to dedicate to it. In other words, you could have several templates for various types of legal translations, or you can send some samples to potential clients or eat even without there having requested them. You could even send pictures if you imagine they will help, or if someone says they need a precise translation, you can add that you are meticulous and have great attention to detail, etcetera, etcetera, on to some other points. Just a quick note about I. Now I've been told that you should avoid using the word I too much in your bio and rather use the word you. I've been told this by more than one person, and so that's why I thought I should mention it here. This comes from a sales or marketing viewpoint, wherein using you connects you with the reader while I separates you. I'm not sure how much I buy into that. As you can see, I use the word I several times in the in the introduction I had in the previous slide. I've tried to take it out a couple of times, but more often than not, the letter ends up sounding awkward, which is worse than causing some possible psychological association. I don't want to, so I'm not against the idea, but I would say, just don't sacrifice form too much for it. Using personalized bios offered by websites. Now, many websites come with their own personalized bio templates, their personalized introduction templates, if you will, where you can just fill in the blanks and then you already have an introduction. You consent to potential clients. I highly recommend not you using these. Also don't use biographical, bio and introduction examples that you find online, including the one that I listed in the other side. Remember that many other translators air following the same steps you are and the best way to blend in with the crowd and to look like you put in very little effort and to be forgotten. It's the sound just like everyone else. I'm not saying you should have some weird eye catching slogan just to stand out. You want to come across a serious after all, but you do want to stand out at least enough for them to remember you. So use your own words. You can use any pre written bio, including the one I provided as a starting point. But make sure your final piece of work is different enough, so it's not to be recognizable Now. If you have made initial contact with the client, you might want to make sure about what you're getting into before actually accepting their translation job. So don't be afraid to ask questions. Some questions you might want to ask her how many words their pages are in this translation . Or maybe what is the deadline you might ask to see the document, or at least a sample of it before starting out. Also, what format it should be in if they send you a pdf, are you supposed to send them the translation of Microsoft Word or also a pdf etcetera? And in case it helps, you can also ask, who is this translation for? I was the end client. Is it an author? Is it an agency or what? Not if you think it will help, it doesn't hurt to ask any of these questions. And remember, if you agree to something over the phone or over Skype always asked for written confirmation or for payment order. You want something in writing. It doesn't have to be a contract, but it has to be in writing now. I hesitated very much before listing this. I'll call it a strategy of last resort. I only mention it because I know it has worked. I think you should be aware of it just also, So you know that other people might be using it. I want to say that was not the one using it, and the person who did use it asked me not to use his name. I'm not sure how ethical it is, and I'm pretty sure it violates some terms of service. But anyway, the story was that he had signed up for one of those websites, like islands. It wasn't Delancey was another one that now doesn't exist anymore. So you can probably guess which one did it. It was as a freelance designer. He then went for a while without being awarded any jobs. And so what he decided to do was signed up for the same website. But using another name and another credit card, he then essentially assigned himself a job. And so according to what he told me, he actually assigned himself a real job. He's sent it to himself through the website, worked on it and completed his assignment and said it back. He said he actually perform the job because he wasn't sure how much of his actions would be observed by the website itself. So at the end of the job, his client self, let's say, actually paid his design herself just to close off the transaction So yes, he did a design job for himself, and then he paid himself for, said Job, even losing some of the pay as commission for the website. So why did he do this mainly, or the only reason is to give himself a track record. He was able to give himself a good rating for a completed job as well as used the completed job as part of his online portfolio. And and, he said then he had his first real job less than a week later. So a couple points about this. First of all, as I mentioned, I do not condone it. If you want a track record, I'm all in favor of getting easy points by doing a tedious job, even if it's not related to translations like a detailed Google search for a client, let's say or doing a job even for free, for just a good rating. Now some people might see one of these or both of these is mildly unethical. So maybe I'm just nit picking here, but to me, at least there you're doing a job for someone else. Doing a job for yourself seems to be crossing some sort of line. Regardless, I included in here for your knowledge as well as to show you how important these first few jobs really are because you really do need that track record to get going. But hopefully you're able to get your first job by following one of the many strategies that I've listed here. So at this point, Ah, congratulations is in order. You've now learned to starting strategies for how to be a successful freelance translator. 14. An easy way to apply to agencies that are currently hiring: Assuming most of you, all of you who are looking for jobs and you're interested in applying to different agencies and you want to find different agencies to apply to. And an easy way to do that and an easy way to find the agencies where you can apply that are openly accepting resumes and that are actively looking for new translators. And so I know this existed before. I think the path was different, but I recently found that again, and I've found it and I wanted to make sure it worked, which it did. And now I went back to my page. So let's hope I can find it again. Pros.com, as I've mentioned before, I have issues with the website, but fine. I think you hover over jobs and directories, hover over more. Yeah, and then go to applications. Click on Applications. I think this is right there. There we go. And you have blue board outsourcers accepting applications. So this means that these are agencies that are on the blue board, which I've mentioned before in other videos, is the standard pros.com place where people can rate the agencies. And here you see what they've rated. So 55, this one, these ones have no entries. 55, this one has 3.74.35, et cetera. In essence, there's no reason not to apply to all of these. I recommend actually going through and just applying to all of them. Even if they have a low rating, you might want to avoid it, but quite frankly, there's no reason not to apply. And then later you can evaluate, you know, maybe you can go through the ratings and see why people rated badly, or maybe they just did it many years ago and now they have a new project manager. And anyway, you can, you can test for yourself and see, I mean, it's your judgment basically. However, this is just a very easy or you can just go to this URL actually, if you don't want to have to click on everything. But regardless, this is a good place to find companies, agencies that are actively looking for new translators and it should filter it, I think, yeah, only the outsources you qualify to apply for are shown. And so as you can see, these are my languages that I have on Prozac conference to English, any language all languages should have Italian to English. Yeah. I'm Italian to English, French to English because those are languages that I've listed there. It should filter that out automatically and then you can apply to any agency you like and see what they say. I've mentioned this many times before. This is a numbers game, so don't expect to apply to one agency and then suddenly you're career is set. That's why I recommend just pretty much applying to all of them. And then you can make a choice depending on what they say, when, if and when they get back to you. But anyway, just because I had mentioned this before, I thought I should this is a great way to just put your resume in front of different agencies that are actively looking for translators. 15. Where to find Translation jobs: Hello fellow translators. So in today's video, I'm going to do a recap and overview. Now this is stuff I've touched upon before, but I don't think I have one video where I talk about this in its entirety and I still get asked this question all the time. And that's the question of where to find jobs for translators. If you're a new translator, GNU freelanced translator, just coming into the market, where can you go to find jobs? And there are quite a few options. And those of you who are in the industry already know of them and please feel free to add, let me know in the comments if I've missed anything. But I just wanted to have sort of a comprehensive list or semi comprehensive lists because it's impossible to have a comprehensive list of all the places where you can find jobs. And so hopefully this will help you out. So let's get started. First of all, if you're a freelance translator and you're first starting out, I recommend setting up a profile pretty much everywhere, so at least people can find you if they have to. But the main places are, first of all, you have the freelancer websites. Now this is not specifically for translations, but it's a freelancer websites and these are the main ones are Upwork.com and Freelancer.com. I guess. I've had issues with Freelancer.com. I talk about it like in my course and I think in other videos, so I don't like him at all. But these are some of the main websites. So you can definitely pull your profile there and you can definitely find jobs there on Upwork Freelancer.com. You'll find translation jobs every now and then. People who don't know any better will go to these websites looking for translators. And so by all means, set up a profile there if you want, just so you can be found by recommendation however, is to, once you've set up your profile, they're not concentrate those on so much. Not concentrate on those so much, sorry, but concentrate more on websites that specialize in translation. And so by, what do I mean by this? I mean prose.com is the main one. Absolutely. Definitely the main one. And, and then probably translators cafe, Those are the two main ones. And so I recommend setting up your profile there and these are probably the best ones for finding translation stops. Prose.com, also pronounced pro Z.com, sometimes is PROC.com. And prose.com is kind of a mess of a website, even though they've been trying to update it and make it a bit more user-friendly, but is where you're going to find the best jobs for translation. And they definitely pay a higher rate on average than Upwork does. So definitely put up your profile there. You will have to pay if you want to apply for jobs. The other one is translators cafe.com. You do not have to pay for that. There is a option you can pay for a master's, something like masters level. But you can decide later if you want to do that at the beginning, you can just get a free a free profile there, a free account, and you can still apply for jobs that way. And that's definitely another big one where you can find jobs. Now both pros.com and translators cafe have job alerts so you can set it up so you receive job alerts into your email inbox and you don't have to worry about it too much. It'll be in your language combinations specialization, what have you. And then yeah, so those are probably the main ones. And then I wanted to discuss a couple of other ones. First of all, it will depend very much on your location. If you are, say in Italy, I know that one of the main websites there is add lands.com, ADD LAN c.com. And you know, the best way to discover these, like if you go to Google or whatever and you just type in the search engine, freelance translator. In Italian, you freelance or something along those lines. Then one of the first things that pops up as Atlantis.com. And so my recommendation is to do this in your other language. If you're a Russian to English translator, then type it up in Russian and chances are some other websites will come up. I know in Germany, for example, mock told us, but you at least used to be a big one. I don't know if it still is, but that was big for translators there in Germany and for translators who work in German as well as one of their languages. So my recommendation there, once again, it's to just do a search for in whatever language you have four freelance translator, freelance translation jobs. You know, hiring freelance translators, you know, put yourself in the shoes of the prospective clients and stuff like that. Now all of these websites will put you in touch with prospective jobs. And usually these will be translation agencies. Because the translation agencies know that they can go to these specialized websites for the best quality, the best type of translator. And so these are probably the best places to find translation agencies and some N clients every now and then. However. So my recommendation if you're just starting out is to do that. That's it. You don't want to be targeting and clients just yet, unless they're like people, you know, family, friend, something like that. Because quite frankly, it's enough to have to deal with just the translation when you're dealing with clients, you have to deal with a whole lot of other stuff. You have to educate them, you have to let them know how it works. And you need to be a 100% sure of how it works before you can educate them. So that's why I say start off with a translation agencies. So you can really get a feel for it before you start targeting and clients. One place that I recommend not going as Fiverr.com. Fiverr.com works in a different way anyway, because there rather than you finding jobs, it's you just post up your profile, whatever it is and people submit jobs to you and you pretty much have to accept all of them. And that's not a good way to work as a translator. Plus the at least from what little I've seen on Freelancer.com, you don't get paid, anything like very, very little, and it's just not worth it. Don't go to Freelancer.com for quite frankly, I don't like going there even for finding people for jobs because I've found much better quality elsewhere, but I might be wrong, haven't used it in years, but I do know that if you are a translator, you shouldn't go there looking for jobs to get paid because it won't be worth it. And yeah, and that's pretty much it. And you know, so those are the main websites, definitely. And then you'll find other ones depending on your locality and sometimes depending on your specialization. So by all means, feel free to search for something like legal translations or find financial translations or something like that, see if it pops up. Because there again, you never know I do it in your other language as well. Whatever your language is, maybe be sure to search in all those languages. And that's pretty much it. Because the other step would be finding end clients, but that kind of is a whole little thing unto itself. And so I won't discuss that right now. But yeah, I just wanted a brief overview of the best places to find translation jobs when you're first starting out, where to go, where to set up your profile and where to try to build up your profile and start getting the wheels running, getting the wheels turning so you can start earning a living from freelance translation. 16. Getting Paid: My personal example: getting paid. Getting paid is a good problem to have. This means that you fulfilled your duties and now you are old money. Of course, it can still be a problem and an issue. But hopefully by following certain methods and tricks, you can reduce the probability of not being paid to a minimum. Now, after having set up your profile where it's needed and conducted marketing and applied for your job successfully, you will hopefully start being assigned jobs. Now, this is an exciting moment. You have a client who will pay you. So this is the beginning of your endeavor as a full fledged freelance translator. Your main effort at this point should be to turn out the best possible translation you can . At the same time, however, there are other points that you should be keeping in mind. First of all, tracking jobs. So a client assign you a job and you're excited to get started. Chances are right after being assigned a new task. You're revving up to make a dent in it, so by all means work on it. But before you close up for the night and certainly before you deliver the job to the client. You should take care of one more thing. You should collect as much information you can about this client. Now. This includes the name of whoever emailed you the link to the job, Earl. If available, as well as any email addresses, physical addresses, websites, etcetera, remember to collect phone numbers as well and include any other email addresses you might have for the company, even if it isn't the direct client. Physical addresses and phone numbers are the best things toe have, since they make the client accessible offline as well. Also, don't be shy about asking for their information. If a client is legitimate, there should be no issue in providing whatever information you need. This information is going to be used later for invoicing, which we will cover here. But it also comes in handy if the client starts delaying or postponing the payment date, or, even worse, just disappears and becomes incommunicado as a personal example. These air the steps that I take. When I'm assigned a new task. I opened my Google spreadsheet, and in it I enter this information. So first of all, the name of the person this is the direct person I'm dealing with. Second of all, is the invoice number. Now, this is just chronological for me. Third is the name of the company that I'm dealing with and then is the project name. This is usually the name of the document they've sent me or some variation thereof here have included Italian to English. Um, you don't need to specify that if you don't want just, however you feel more comfortable. The next point is the email address that when I used to contact them and then here you see price per unit units and the total load the price per unit and the units can be included if you want. Definitely include the total owed at least ideo. And sometimes he won't have price per unit units. If it's a set amount, say you agreed to do it for 100 bucks or something like that, then obviously it's just a total load. After that, you see the total paid, which, if it has been paid, is blank, and um however you see the payment due date close by, so you can easily see if the payment has been made by the due date or not, and as I mentioned, I do this for every client that I have. This is the first step I take. In fact, as soon as I am assigned a new translation, it's only after this that I actually performed the translation. That's my Step two after the translation is done, and usually at the end of that week is, um, when I'll check to see whether the client requires an invoice or not. If so, I'll send my invoice of the invoice template with decline and job details filled out. Don't worry, we'll get to the invoices soon, but I just wanted to let you know what my processes now This might seem like quite a bit of work to do, but first of all, well, you get used to it, and it's actually quite satisfying, especially when you have a monthly total and you're happy. Adding to the total sum. You see where I have total owed and total paid Well, I have a monthly total that adds up all the jobs I have, and you know, it's quite satisfying to add to those numbers. But the main point for doing this is that you want to make invoicing as easy as possible. Otherwise, you might find yourself delaying the invoice process, which is just stupid. Quite frankly, you should never forget that you're doing this to provide yourself with a better life, as in making money to live that life. That is your first reason for doing this. Providing the world with better translated documents is the second reason yuk unjust regard that as a nice bonus. But first of all is to provide you with money so you can pay your bills. So take the time at the end of the day to collect all the information you can, as well as to, ah, tally up the total amount you'll be earning, which again is always satisfying. And it's good to keep track of getting paid. Now you've got your translation job and you've got the hang of the work and you're doing great. And that's awesome, it really is. But once again, remember that the goal of this whole process is to provide you with a paycheck, so we're going to discuss getting paid now. First of all, I should mention that translation providers are notoriously I really cannot emphasize that enough bad at paying look most of them are honest and even good people. But for some reason, translation agencies seem to think that most market rules don't apply to them. And, for example, you can check out the video, just search on YouTube for the vendor client relationship in real world situations, and seriously ask translators who've been at it for a number of years and get ready for some pretty weird stories as a brief, quick example. Also, I was once hired by an agency for a translation at a certain price on I did the translation . I delivered it on time, and the agency was happy. Later on that week, however, the agency sent an email to us because it was a group of us who were performing translations for them and said, OK, the incline was very happy with the translation, so we'd like to make them even more happy and offer a discount. How about cutting 10% from your prices so we can make them happier for future jobs? Seriously, they seriously ask this, and I mean, obviously no one agreed to it, but you will be approached with odd things like this, so just keep that in mind. But The most common thing that you'll see, however, is ah toe have paid a come and go, and emails that you send them for payment will be ignored. And then finally, when you do get a reply, it will say something along these lines. As you can see, I actually copied this from an actual email. I got so the ah typos in the bad grammar or not mine. But I should say that this was after my fifth email asking, Why payment with over two weeks later? I think. And this is the total amount of explanation I had to go with and and by the way, this client had even added me on Facebook and giving me her phone number. So this wasn't the kind, obviously thought that this would be a neck septa ble response. By the way, that last word there said It's supposed to say Sorry, I know it said sortie. But as I said, all spelling mistakes are not mine. However, however, however, before you run off back to the 9 to 5 World, I should set your mind at ease. While clients do come up with ridiculous excuses and practices and stories. You can certainly deal with these if you have a steadfast demeanor and you make sure that your back is covered. In other words, there are ways of dealing with this and making sure you minimize the number of times that you have issues. 17. Getting Paid: Some other tips: the first thing to be mentioned than the main point here is escrow. You should use an escrow service. Absolutely. Use an escrow service if at all possible. If you're using websites like up work, then you have to use their escrow service, which is great. Ah, some websites off for optional escrow services which you should always opt for. A swell. Now the websites, They're going to take a percentage whenever you used these services, but they are worth it. Trust me, if nothing else, for your peace of mind in case you're unsure about the process, this is how escrow services work. First of all, the client pays the full amount in advance to 1/3 party, either bank or ah financial branch of some company. And once this is done, the escort was funded and you usually get a notification. Now, this notification will also show a certain deadline after which the money is sent to you. During this time, the money is being held by the Esco service, which once again is not your client. But it's also not you. It is literally 1/3 party. Now the deadline that is set should usually coincide more or less with the due date of your job. So at this point, you can start working with peace of mind on your job and deliver the job to the client once you have delivered the escorts released and then it sent to you either upon completion or usually upon approval. Now I know what you're thinking. And obviously, if there's a problem with the work or the client says, there is a problem with the work. Ah, the client may then opt to block the release of the funds, but this does not mean that decline gets the money back. So keep that in mind. It's not that the client can just decide. Oh no, I've changed my mind and they get their money back. That's not how it works. This only means that the client would then have to give an explanation to the company holding the money in escrow so up work dot com or whatever other website. They will have to explain why they don't want to pay you and you have to offer an explanation. You can offer your side of the story as well. The escrow company will then decide how to proceed itself While this can be an issue, I've actually never encountered this problem personally, so I won't go into further detail about it because I don't think it's that big of a problem . Once the money is put into escrow, you'll usually get paid unless you don't perform the job and in which case and you won't get paid and the money will revert back to the original client. Here's some other tips to keep in mind when worrying or wondering about getting paid by a potential or future client. First of all, collect as much information as you can. If you follow the steps that I just listed before then, this should pretty much be completed. You have all the information you need to trace the client in case they try to disappear. Once again, you want to do this before problem occurs and before they try to start deleting their information or changing stuff around. Secondly, asked for partial payments now once again for new clients, especially for big jobs, he should feel absolutely free to ask for a partial payment. This payment can even be just a small percentage, but the willingness to paid shows a great deal most payment methods give you an immediate notification. So even if you don't have the money in your bank account, you get a notification from your bank or PayPal or whatever that the money is being sent to you. And if they don't, you can still ask for proof of payment from the client. And this should be enough to at least start with your job. I know these could technically be forge, but I have yet to hear about a client who goes that far. Another step is to password protect your files. Ah, however, remember, this is not foolproof. So you may end up just annoying and honest provider. In fact, you confined programs and tutorials on YouTube, teaching you how to hack into a password protected file. That's how easy it is. However, chances are most people don't know how to do this, especially people working in corporations and one not so, if you're afraid, you're dealing with a slacker client who might get a bit too lazy and never send a payment over. Ah, password protected file could be the kick they need to realize they better hurry up. If, however, you want an example where a password protected file did not work. Then you can check in the documents, and I have a personal example of mine where I did password protected file, but it didn't work. So remember, this is not foolproof. Now, Number four is to look out for red flags. The first and main red flag. To look out for all the time is a non company email, and this means something such as a Yahoo or Gmail address or Hotmail address, etcetera, etcetera. If a company is contacting you, they better have a damn good reason for not using their company email address. So if they're not, you should ask them. Why not, however, also remember that private individuals might contact you at any point as well, so don't discount a Yahoo or Gmail address correspondence right away. However, if they only have ah Web address, it's probably wise to ask for something else, like references or partial payment up front, or at least a phone number, etcetera, etcetera. Just so you have a way of tracing them and of contacting them later on in the next section , we will deal with invoices 18. Getting Paid: Invoices: how to create them, how to fill them out, how to send them to clients, and mainly, how to make sure you get paid. If you have 10 different clients, you're gonna have 10 different requirements for invoices, so you should keep this in mind. Pearls dot com and other sites offer their envoy own and voices. But unless you can make a payment through the website itself, as you can with up work and Tiago, chances are you will have to issue your own invoices. I've found that the best way to issue invoices is once per week. You definitely do not want to wait until the end of the month, since most payment terms start from the envoy states and not the translation delivery date . The invoice writing process starts basically when you're assigned the task, and that's by filling out the information I mentioned at the beginning of this lesson. Now, as an example, I will show you my invoice template. This is an example of what I send to every client after I performed the job as an invoice, so they paid me. So let's go through this in detail so you can collect what information you want and what you think you can use. First of all, you can ignore the logo at the top. I added that when I decided to get incorporated, which is the next step after you've started making money for your translation services, you can see if you want to get incorporated that it's not something I would count in becoming a freelance translator. But I might add a little something about getting incorporated later on. For now. Don't worry about it. You could just put your name up top or you don't have to put anything. Also, keep in mind if you're just starting out and maybe this is your first translation. You feel a bit insecure about using invoice number 001 or invoice one. You can start the invoices wherever you want. This is for your reference, so you can start them at 101 or 1 50 or any number you want. This is just for you to keep track. I would suggest, however, once you start to keep them in chronological order, so it's easy to find invoices later on. As you can see, this one says invoice 405 which means the invoice before that was 404 The one after will be 406 at several etcetera. Now the information next to Bill from never changes since it's mine. And so this will show up the same on every single invoice I send out. The information next to Bill, too, will remain the same for each client. So if this is a repeat client, say, I could just copy and paste that from an invoice from the past Next, as you can see in the four part I'm here, I copy the information from the Google spreadsheet I mentioned at the beginning of this lesson. If the client is using any of their own reference number, I'll include that here as well. Otherwise I'll just put the name that I used. And once again, you can feel free to show ah, rate and a word count or not. The important thing here is the money. Do so triple. Check these numbers at the end. You definitely want to make sure you do not make a mistake, whether it be the currency or the amount due. And last but definitely not least you want to include that big green box that I have there . It could be obviously any color or any shape, as long as it's prominent. I always plays this in a very obvious place so that the client has no question as to which number is the amount due. Obviously, the client is going through many different invoices for many different people, so showing this number very clearly helps them out. That means that you don't risk their misreading something else and paying you an incorrect amount. For example, here they might see lying total 589 And just pay that because you know they're going through a 1,000,000 different invoices. So here, if you have something that says Total Do and it's very prominent, it just makes them paying you that much easier. Now, as you can see there at the bottom, I have a due date that is net seven days from issue. Usually, a client will specify their due date, whether it's seven days or 15 or 30 days, etcetera. If they don't, however, I'll usually right one of two things, either payable upon receipt so that it's do right away or seven days, which gives a precise due date. If the client wants to pay you 60 or 90 days after the invoice or anything else that is too long for you. You can try to negotiate something quicker if possible, or at least like a partial payment. Just to show good faith below that, You see, invoices more than 30 days overdue are subject to a 10% late fee. I will get into interest later on, so I won't cover that right now. Just keep in mind this is something you can dio. And lastly, at the bottom, you may have noticed this advertisement basically in red. I didn't have this at the beginning when I first started issuing invoices. But it's time goes by and you get more comfortable with what you do. You will appreciate your invoice as another marketing mechanism. For example, in this area or wherever there is white space or somewhere that's notable. I guess you can write what I wrote and offer Ah, discomfort, referral, which is what I tend to prefer. Or you can write other stuff like maybe, you know, receive ah, hat with my with my company or country logo on it for ordering at least Ted jobs from me or , you know, whatever prize you want for whatever benefit you want, an invoice is valuable real estate. So why not use every part of it rather than just leave the empty space? I guess that's my reasoning behind this. This obviously doesn't mean you should clutter it up as much as possible. But a sentence or two in the right place could go a long way, and it certainly won't hurt. So once I've added all this information, all I do is click print and choose the option save as pdf. This gives me a nice PdF file without the rolling column lines that you see in the Excel file so I can send it off to the client. 19. Getting Paid: How to collect money: Here's some other editions you can make to your invoice. Although I don't include them in mine. You can make them to your invoices if you wish, so I'll mention them here. First of all is a deadline for reworking. Every now and then, the client might ask you to rework or modify a translation you've made. For the most part, it is wise to do so since they mean you've made a mistake. Or if not, regardless, they just keep the client happy. However, you also want to make sure that the client doesn't contact you. Say five months later and ask you to rework a translation you forgot all about and want to include that as the same as part of the same invoice. Or they might just want you to add a little bit here and there or tweak something here there and not have to be charged for it because, you know, it's quote unquote under the same job. So the way to avoid this is to set a deadline. Something along the lines off. You know, all rewrites and edits shall be made within 30 days, after which no claims will be considered or something along those lines at the bottom or wherever. On your invoice. You can also choose to limit the number of times you re work a certain document, although this might show a lack of dedication on your part. And honestly, if you need more than two or three, we re works. Something is wrong regardless, either with your translation or with a client. So that's why I personally don't recommend writing it. The next point is retaining copyright. This is because sometimes you might not get paid your full amount or you might not get paid at all. And so, while you're fighting to get your money, you might find out that the client is using your translation on their documents or their website. So you can protect yourself against this by writing something along the lines of the translator. Retains copyright of this work until the invoices paid in full or something along those lines, right, and this way you can then pursue them for copyright violation, which can be a good Steptoe have if they still owe you money. And lastly, as an opportunity to redeem yourself, it's possible that the client might find a few mistakes in your translation and may use that then as a reason to pay you less or not pay you at all in some cases, and sometimes they might be entitled to do so, at least for paying you less because maybe you did make a bad mistake. However, you might want to give yourself a chance to redeem yourself. So if they find something wrong with your translation, you can then work on it for them again before they decide to lower the price. So this means that if they find a mistake in the translation you made, you can then re worker right away and send it back to them. And hopefully they won't lower the price after that because he was so responsive, and in the end you did send them the correct translation. Now we will talk about how to collect your money once it is due. Now, once again, the good thing about gaining more experience and working with different clients is that over time you can choose to go with those clients who pay you on time rather than those who don't. In the meantime, you will have to start implementing a collection method and remember no matter how angry or frustrated you may be, the client until you get paid, still has your money, so you should wait to vent your anger until after you receive it. So remember, do not get angry with a client while they still have your money. I just I want to emphasize that on the due date listed on your spreadsheet. If you've not received payment, I would suggest to send a polite email to your client, noting that you have the payment listed as do and ask when you can expect payment at this point. Once I've sent this polite email, I automatically set a reminder on Google calendar for two days later. And then, if I get no response, I sent a second email asking when it can expect my payment due. And then and then I set reminders for ah every other day from that point on. So at this stage, if you can tell, what's happening is basically you're trying to be persistent or annoying and eso the client has to deal with you because they keep receiving your emails in their in box. And I would say 90% of the cases you will usually receive a reply within one week and giving you either the payment or proof of payment or a more definite payment date. So 90% of the time that will be enough, and then you'll have your payment. And that's it, right. However, it might not be enough. And so if it isn't, then what I'll do usually is. I will basically after one or two weeks. If I don't hear from the client, I'll send an email to every other email address I confined from the client's company. This will include the info at company name dot com or contact at company name dot com or any other person, especially if you could go to the website and find the boss's name, then sure, send it your old money. So you know this way you can be sure that the clients, colleagues and boss know that this client is late with, uh, with their payment the the tone. However, at least when I send the email, the tone is always very polite. It's never mad, and I never lose my temper. Always play, so if I still don't receive any reply, then I'll try one more email and Ah, wait another two days. So I repeated basically. So I start being persistent with everyone else in the company. And at this point, if the client is still incommunicado and if I don't hear from the client will use their phone number to call them. I often say that I'm calling on behalf of me now. This is just something I do, I confess. I don't know if it's a better tactic, but it seems that if they think a whole organization is behind me, they might be more likely to take me seriously. And at this point, I also contact the website through which they contacted me. So if they use pros dot com or up work toe, hire me. Then I will contact pros dot com More likely pros dot com been up work because up work has an escrow service. But, ah, contact pros dot com or translators based or translators cafe, etcetera, etcetera and let them know. Oh, by the way, this client hasn't paid me, and just to let you know that I can't get in touch with them at all, they aren't responding to emails at all. I will also write up a bad review on pros dot com and elsewhere. Prose dot com Remember, has the Blue board, where you can look up any company and see how well they're rated or how badly they're rated and Prozac common most places that allow you to retract their review. So what I will do is write up a bad review and then email declined and say, I had to write this bad review I will have ever retracted. Once you've paid me, I should say that. Actually, I prefer to keep it up even after they pay me, because I do feel that other translators should know if payment is bad, I might add an update to it, but I feel like it should be kept up. However, when you're asking for money, you want that money. That's the main thing you want. So, you know, offered to retract it if it's something that's important to them, as long as they pay you and then later on evaluate how you feel. My last resort, when at all possible, is to pay a personal visit to the client. This obviously has geographical restrictions. However, you might have maybe family or good friends close to the client at this point. Depending on the total amount, it might be worth offering half of the payment or partial payment, You know, percentage of it to whoever can pass by the client with a copy of her invoice and insist upon payment. Now, I've only reached this stage once, and I had a friend of mine called the client. And my friend called to say she was passing by to collect my money later that day and call declined from a local number. Once the client received the call, they sent their payment to me right away, so it actually worked out pretty well. 20. Getting Paid: Some excuses you may receive: What about interest? As I mentioned before, you might want to be able to charge interest for payments that are overdue or that are late . Now, if you want to charge interest, first of all, you have to mention that up front I e on the invoice like I did. Second of all, charging interest might actually depend on the legalities of the country residing. For example, in most of Europe, you are allowed to charge interest as long as certain rules are being followed. I e prompt notification. So you let them know on the invoice. So look into what the laws are for your own country. You also have to keep in mind that your client might or might not want to deal with interest. But I've found that the more you take your own payment seriously, the more the client will take it seriously. So if you can seriously charge interest and do it correctly, then by all means do so. Just keep in mind to have it clearly stated on your invoice and also realize that some clients might not take it as seriously. So this might also be a good litmus test as to which clients you want to take seriously in the future or not, as I showed in my example, I charge a 10% interest. I've heard of other people who charge a certain percentage every week or months that it's late. I find that's not usually worth it just because it's too much of a calculation to make. And the 10% interest after 30 days is usually enough to get paid. Within the 30 days, however, you can see whatever works best for you. Also, once again, I want to mention that in the documents for this lesson, you will find a personal example of mine of non payments that you can learn from because I did make certain mistakes and so you can make sure you don't make them yourself. And I think it helps to see a personal example and see step by step, what happened to see how the mistakes can occur and how they could have been avoided. Also, I feel since I didn't get paid, at least if someone else can get some benefit from it, then it wasn't a completely wasted experience. Now, to top it off here, just some other excuses you might come across and some reasons that I've received for ah, late or non payment. Obviously, this is by no means exhaustive, but just some of the excuses that I have encountered first of all, the bank is processing the payment. This is the modern equivalent of the checks in the mail. So if this happens, it's very easy. You just asked them for a proof of payment. Even if the bank is still processing it. They received proof on their end, a confirmation of some sort, and so they can send that to you right away. Secondly, the end client has not paid me yet. I think this was in the example that I showed earlier in this lesson. So I had another agency that I worked with that continued saying this for about two months . And finally, even though I reminded them that my contract was with them and not with the end client. Remember this at all times. Your contract is with whoever you're working with, not the end client. If the incline hasn't paid them and that's too bad your contract was not with the end client, you did not assume that risk. They did. However, I still hadn't been getting paid. And so finally, after two months, I offered to contact the inclined myself. I said, Well, obviously the inclined is not fulfilling their duties. And so I'll contacted myself and ah, you know, insists that they pay you. And they then threatened me with legal action. The translation agency did because they said, you cannot contact and client. Obviously, this is completely bogus. They cannot threaten you with legal action in this case. I mean, they can threaten all they want, but there's nothing they can do because they aren't. They are in breach of contract. If they don't pay you for a job you've done. And once again your contract is with them, not with the end client. In the end, they did pay me, so it worked out. But unfortunately I had to get ugly. Another example is you didn't send me the invoice, and they do this when you obviously have another version of this would be Oh, we need, say, X Y Z information added to the invoice. So we need something different on the invoice, and I say this is another example because the wait until they owe you the money to say this . They don't tell you this right away. And so I mean, in this case, you know, what are you gonna do? You just send the different invoice. But also note that the money is overdue. So feel free to add that 10% right away or something along those lines, that 10% interest, I mean or whatever penalty you have for late payment. Another example is we will pay you after the next job. And honestly, I've received this. And honestly, I wonder if anyone has ever accepted this because it seems ridiculous to me. Another one that I've received and I should say more than once is the, you know, the client. Whatever name is in the hospital. Now, I say clients name because, you know, they mentioned the person specifically that I was dealing with. Now I received this. Well, I mean, a variation of this twice. You know what one is very sick and another one is in the hospital. And in one case, they stated that the client was in the hospital for a week or at least a week or something along those lines. Unfortunately, decline or whoever contacted me forgot that the client had added me on Facebook. I'm pretty sure was a client emailing me and just pretending not to be herself. But I was friends with her on Facebook and around one hour later she posted an invite to a party on her how at her house that weekend, which was two days away. So the answer to give here if a client is in the hospital or sick or something like that is to say that business life, unfortunately still goes on as callous as business life. Maybe it does still go on, and despite someone being sick, you still have to pay the rent and pay your bills. Also, I would recommend if you do hear this, excuse not to do any future business with that client because, look, it might be true, in which case you can work something around it. But if you find out that it's not, it wasn't excuse. It's definitely not a client you want to deal with in the future. 21. Active Marketing: What is it?: marketing for freelance translators. If you're a freelance translator, marketing is going to be a big part of your job. Their many differences between free last translators and in house translators. Obviously, freelance translators work for themselves and in house translators work for an agency. In addition, ah, freelance translator has no boss and doesn't have to clock in. A freelance translator can pick his or her own hours and can pick which clients he or she wants to deal with. A freelance translator can even pick the location, toe work from IAEA bedroom, a coffee shop down the street or even a coffee shop in Tuscany or anywhere else. However, an in health translator does not have to worry about finding new clients. Things like that are taken care of by the translation agency. So as a freelance translator, you'll have to take care of the marketing yourself, and you will be working on marketing. In fact, at the beginning, most of your time will probably be spent on marketing. I would recommend contacting at least 10 prospects in per week at the beginning, but feel free to raise that to 20. Of course, there's no set formula and You can raise the response rate significantly by following certain steps like those outlined in this course, but expect this response rate to be rather low. In the beginning, marketing itself should not be taken lightly. If you're going to work on something, amaze will work on it. Well, marketing done badly can be the biggest time waster of your career, and it can be so frustrating when it doesn't work that it will make you want to quit. So since you have to do marketing, it's best to take it seriously later on. Once you have steady work in more regular clients, you'll dedicate less time to marketing, but it will never go away entirely. So this is important for all freelancers. I've divided this into two main sections. The 1st 1 is active marketing or marketing activities you must continue to perform. These activities may change over time, but there will always be activities. The second is passive marketing or marketing activities you need to set up once and then have them work for you. It's probably best not to rely too much on passive on passive marketing activities, but you shouldn't neglect them either, as once they're set up. They constitute little or no work, and you never know what type of potential client they may reach. Another thing to keep in mind throughout this whole process, however, is that your goal is to find new clients. This may seem obvious, but you can lose track of your goal when you're designing marketing materials or maintaining a blawg etcetera. I know a translator who's Blawg morphed into a travel blogger because he rightly thought that travel videos would bring him more views. And the view count did increase but not the number of clients. This was due to the simple fact that most viewers were not potential clients in need of translations. Active marketing. Once again, these are marketing activities. You must continue to perform in an active manner. They may change over time, but they will always be active. I eat, you will have to perform them yourself. The first type of marketing should be personal contacts or the to EFS, which stands for friends and family. Presumably, you'll have told them about your new career as a translation professional, if not feel free to let them all know most people are more than happy to help out, and you never know who among them will need a translation or know someone who does. So feel free to let people know on Facebook on Twitter and do not neglect things like family re unions, etcetera. And remember, you can always offer a little bit of commission for jobs. They send your way as well. The next thing to turn, too, is your business contexts. If your career thus far has had to do with translations, then this shouldn't be too hard at all. If, however you work in any other industry is still worth a shot, remember, it might sound intimidating, but you have nothing to lose and very much to gain. You could just send an email to pass colleagues or clients or associates or contacts, and just let them know that you are embarking on a new career as a translation professional and just to keep you in mind for future translation jobs. If, however your A student or otherwise have no past colleagues, clients or associates, then chances are you still do have business contacts. Being a translator means you deal with various languages, and you've probably encountered plenty of people in both sets of languages who aren't friends or family. These can all be potential clients. In fact, you might have already performed a translation job or interpreting job as a favor something of the sort in the past. So these people already know about your abilities, so why not approach them as well? 22. Active Marketing: How to apply it: organizations are also very important. For active marketing. You should join translation and language related organizations, and this will mean your source and your target language. But you should also join organizations related to your specialty. For example, if you specialize in financial translations, then find all the financial organizations in your area and joined them. You might be the only translator in the room full of financiers and bankers. But what better way to stand out? The next time they need any translation is done, they will remember you. You're gonna obviously join as many organizations as you like, but try to stay active in the ones pertaining to translation and your specialties. This means attending at least once a month or so. You should look for upcoming events once again, thes congeal with translations and languages or with your specializations. For example, if he specialized in legal translations, find events held for lawyers and bars, association etcetera, as well as events for legal researchers, law schools and law school alumni and any other type of event tied to the legal field. The same goes for financial specializations or any other specialization you might have. Obviously, you should also definitely not neglect Google. Remember, you confined almost any client via Google search or being or your search engine of choice. Obviously, your first step should be translation agencies, but don't be afraid to contact end clients, either. So if you're good at translating websites, why not search for Web developers in your metro area, for example, or any other types of businesses that may lead to translations? This mean businesses that can either expand internationally or that my cater to tourists or foreign nationals feel free to try zip codes instead of city names as well. Obviously, these will be cold contacts, so avoid sending group email to a bunch of them. But take the time to read about their business and to find the right person to contact within their organization. Another point you shouldn't neglect is online forums. You can find plenty of these on websites such as pros dot com and translators cafe dot com , but also uncertain. Blog's Facebook groups, Yahoo groups, etcetera. You should also search for these on linked in, and don't forget to search for both translation forms and any other ones pertaining to your specializations. You can also find some good ones on Facebook. And don't forget to find out where people in your industry hang out online. And once again, when I say industry, I'm not talking only about translation, but also your specialization. Many times people will post questions regarding translation terms or something similar. So feel free to answer these and join general discussions that may be going on. These can bring you new contacts in the translation world as well as provide valuable sources of information. And don't forget to find forms relating to your specializations as well, even if they have nothing to do with translation per se. For example, if he specialized in real estate, find out where your local realtors, real estate developers, property managers and architects, etcetera, etcetera, go online for all their information, another step to keep in mind your block. Maintaining a block is a great way to create an online presence and new context, but is also one of the most time consuming ways. The basic litmus test for this is if you want to write stuff being a translator, chances are you feel comfortable writing, and if you like updating people on your progress, your life, what you learn or anything else, then by all means, set up a blawg. If, however, writing each post seems like a drag and finding topics to write about seems daunting, then maybe this isn't for you. You can set up a blogger on a personal website if you like, or on many free websites such as wordpress dot com, blog's spot or Tumblr. Don't forget Teoh. Link your articles toe linked in and Facebook as well, where you can link them as posts in their own right. Obviously, if you feel more comfortable speaking, you can also choose to make videos. Instead, feel free to write up a few posts and experiment with your preferred style photos, long posts, short post colloquial, more formal, less formal, etcetera, etcetera. And then, once you have some material, you should start searching for other blog's that are similar to yours. Here you can comment on their posts and possibly add to what they wrote or answer their questions. Usually, these blog's allow you link back to your blogging your profile. You can also approach the blawg owner to write a guest post for them and allow them to reciprocate if they wish 23. Passive Marketing: What is it?: passive marketing. Passive marketing strategies are strategies that, once set up, can be left alone, still allowing you to reap their benefits. Obviously, many of them, such as a personal website or linked in, can be active if you wish. But the sites listed here can all be passive, especially if you prefer to concentrate your efforts on other marketing endeavors. The first passive marketing technique is to be online now. This ties back to having your own website from the pregame section. An online presence is pretty much essential for people to find you. This can be done via your personal website or blawg, a ready made sites such as about dot me or even your profile page on pros dot com, etcetera. Remember that each one of these has pros and cons, but the important thing is that you do have an online presence. If you have your own website, you can personalize it as much as you like and even maintain a blogging if you wish, along with the resume or past clients or anything else you'd like. Then again, it will likely come to cost around $1000 or so. After domain registration, Web hosting hiring a Web designer encoding and having someone for periodic updates or fixing bugs, etcetera, etcetera. Also, it's much harder for people to find your website via search engine than it is to find an established website like pros dot com. This is due to search engine optimization or a seal, which websites like pros dot com have a lot of experience with. And this is why I Like about Me. Pages about dot me allows you to create pages that can be personalized to a certain extent . But they're free, easy to update and have a certain amount of S E O built into them already as a reference that this is my about me page. The second technique to keep in mind for passive marketing is your email signature. Again, this is passive, and it's an easy edition that can help you out. Most email programs allowed you to add an email signature or a few lines below each outgoing mail. The best option here is to make a few lines at most, and anything else is probably overkill and might seem like an advertisement. For example, this is my current personal email signature. It's short and simple My current business email signature is longer because it's business. And so I don't mind a bit of marketing along these lines. You can also personalize other things like your status on Skype or Google chat or your tagline on forums and meet up groups, etcetera, etcetera. The next technique for passive marketing is very important is linked in This is the main social network for business professionals, and you should definitely join it if you haven't yet for the set up, you can refer to the pregame section, since the format pretty much follows the same format as all other professional websites. Once you're done, you should add your website if you have one, as well as links to your Prozac com account, translators, cafe dot com account and any other accounts you might have. Once your profile is complete, you can search for organizations and groups to join. For more information on this, you can refer back to organizations under active marketing earlier in the course. Obviously, you can be very active via linked, and if you wish, and over time you'll get a better idea as to what works for you. But for now, you should just make sure they at least have an updated and searchable profile. The next passive marketing technique is Facebook. Chances are you already have a Facebook account. The important thing here, though, is to have a plan ahead of time. Since Facebook tends to be for personal use, decide ahead of time How many work related posts you want to be sending to your friends and how often. Obviously, some work related post will be good, and you want to keep your friends updated and be able to use them as possible context. But you also don't want to annoy them with daily sales tactics or to harass them for more business. What I do is I have created a friends list called Professional made up of business contacts , and every now and then I send Outpost and links on Lee to these. For the most part, however, I save Facebook Post just for major news 24. Passive Marketing: How to apply it: The next technique for passive marketing is Twitter. Twitter is similar to Facebook in that it is a social network. But many things are different as well. First of all, there's a cap of 140 characters for each post. This keeps things short and sweet, although you can include links and images as well. Secondly, you don't have to follow people back for them to follow you. In fact, they don't have to follow you at all in order to see your posts. And likewise, you can see everyone else's posts unless they make him private. Of course, if you follow people you're guaranteed to receive their posts anyway is worth setting up a Twitter account as well. In fact, you can then search Twitter using something like looking for translators and see if anyone is looking for translation to be done. You never know. The next point to keep in mind for passive marketing is connecting accounts. Now this can help all the accounts you have set up, and it can pay exponentially. This is especially valid if you have a blawg, but also if you have any type of social media, the idea is that any time you write a new block post, you automatically ST send out, say, a Facebook message, a tweet and or a linked in message with a link to the block post. However, if you don't have a blawg, you can also set it up. So every new Facebook message or every Facebook message with a certain hashtag say, creates a new tweet and Arlington message, etcetera, etcetera. The best source for this is I have t t t dot com. I have t t t stands for if this then that you could connect your accounts and set it up. So if something happens in one account, it should happen in another account. This saves you the time of writing it more than once, or trying to remember which accounts to update each time. Since one update will update all connected accounts, it could also be personalized as much as you like, So check it out at www dot i've t t t dot com. And this is the website. I should specify that. Obviously, I have no affiliation and no association with I've t t t I just really like it and use it a lot if you find yourself repeating the same post or update on more than one place. Then chances are you can have it done automatically on I've t t t. So I think you should. It's a major timesaver. The next point in terms of passive marketing is stickers, postcards. Now remember that all the other translators looking for jobs will have a resume and possibly business cards. So why not stand out and have stickers or postcards with your name or logo? This can make you more memorable and help you stand out from the crowd. Then again, these should be in addition to normal business cars rather than as a substitute, since no one wants to put a sticker or post card in their wallet or roll Adex. Other ideas could be pens or notebooks, so potential clients will constantly be reminded of you whenever they use them. I would not recommend shirts or baseball caps because people might not want to wear stuff with your logo. They don't want to consciously be marketing your stuff. On the other hand, ah, no pad or a pen is perfect because it's something useful and they'll use it without thinking and therefore be reminded of you. If design is not your strong suit, you'll have to find someone to design a sticker a postcard for you. Since it takes a bit more skill than a normal business card, you can always ask a friend for a favor or worst case scenario. Feel free to check out fiber dot com or 99 designs dot com and fiber dot com. Designed John's can be done for $5. They can be more expensive, but they start at $5 which is nice. 99 designs dot com is a bit different here. Designers compete for your business, and you only pay for the design that you choose to use. And then as for ordering the stickers or postcards, or even if your business card, for that matter, I have used Vista print in the past as well, a zazzle dot com and I like them both. I know mood dot com also offers a similar service, but I haven't tried them yet. 25. Other Marketing Tips: Now this brings us to the chicken and the egg, which is an odd name for something that happens not only a freelance translation but in all freelance business and pretty much in all start up businesses. So what is the chicken in the egg? Basically, clients want to know that you are good at translating before hiring you, right. But at the same time, you'll need a client before you can have a track record to show that you're good at translating. So how can you get the ball rolling? In other words, you need clients, but you cannot get clients without a track record. I eat former clients, but you can't get a track record without clients, etcetera, etcetera. That's why it's called the chicken and the egg. So how do you do this? How do you start the first client now? These air five solutions I've come up with there might be other ones, but in my experience, these air, the five solutions that I've seen and that I've seen work, I will start with the solution that I believe has the smallest effect and gradually work up to what I believe are the better ones. So The first solution is s CEO and online marketing. Now, this includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etcetera. I call it the most boring and probably the most useless because all of you are going to try it and most probably with little or no effect. As you can see, I do it too, and I definitely recommend not neglecting it. And you should have Facebook and Twitter accounts just so you can be available and be accessible. But at least for me, if I had to rely on these to get my clients, I'd be starving right now. Now, these can all work very well if you already have a name, brand out there like Coca Cola or, you know, McDonald's, etcetera, etcetera. But if you're just starting from scratch, you should should not believe that if you build it, they will come because they won't. And this is true. Even if you use s hell, whatever you learned about s CEO, and once again, this stands for a search engine optimization, whatever you learnt about it, other people are getting paid quite a bit to know more about it than you and also to beat you at it. Because in many senses. It's a zero sum game. You're all vying for a set number of eyeballs on the Web. So it probably won't be worth the effort to you since you already concentrating on actually doing translations and other marketing techniques. Just as a personal example. I once actually paid another company to do S Seo marketing for me, and I paid them close toe 2000 U. S. Dollars, and it was completely useless. In fact, I didn't give them their last payment because I realized it was a complete waste of time and they were showing no results. And I thought it was in fact, pretty scam me. So the second solution. Friends and family. Now, once again, this is self explanatory. You should not be afraid to contact them. You never know what they need or who they know. But you also don't want to be the person who bothers them about it all the time, either. Now, these could be a great source for your first translation job. But as I mentioned in the active marketing section, they can continue to be a good source because even in the future you might have friends and family who need a translation, and it's always good to be able to help them out with them. Solution number three is to do jobs for low pay at the beginning. You want to get clients, so doing a job on the cheap can get your foot in the door. You should just realize one thing. No one's going to hire you for a cheap price now and then. Keep using you when you raise your price later on. They might, you know, maybe after a year or mawr of being their regular translator, but not anytime soon. So why should you do this? Well, you do it because you can get references and ratings from these first clients. You can tell them Hi, I'm doing this at way below market price because I would really appreciate a good rating. Obviously, if they're happy with your translation, you should also have a plan to have them right. You ahead of time. You don't want to complicate their life. They're already taking a gamble with a translator who has no references, so the cheap price that they're getting is still a risk, so just make it as easy as possible for them. to rate you later on. If you want a quote or a w w. A rating on pros or a five star rating on the Lancer up work, Um, or whatever it may be, then just let them know up front. Now the importance of ratings leads me to solution number four. I mentioned doing a job for cheap in Solution Number three. So here I say, Do a job for free. If you're doing it for cheap, then why not? You can tell the clients you have the same reason. As I mentioned for a solution. Three. And once again, you should try to make it easy for them to rate you as I mentioned. This is based on the premise that ratings and referrals are worth Maura the beginning. Since they help you with a track record later on, I should mention that some translators say this devalues everyone's translation. But I would counter that you have to start somewhere, and if you're worth anything, you'll be able to use these references and raise your prices later on. If after a year or MAWR, you can't and you find that you're not able to raise your prices or find clients for ah more suitable price than maybe you should be working harder on raising the quality of your translations or quite possibly, searching for a different profession. As harsh as that might sound after a year or more, you might have to face this possibility. Now. Solution Number five is an important one and one that's very often overlooked, and that's to recognize opportunities. So with the question of the chicken and the egg, you should recognize when a chicken or an egg comes to you as an example. And this is something that happened to a friend of mine. This friend of mine had been complaining that someone had contacted him to do taxes. IE. He was translating their tax statements and from French English, and the French client wanted to know if he could also file the taxes in the US Now my friend said no because he's a translator and not a tax attorney. But then he later on, he was going on to complain about how he can't find enough work. Any time someone asks you to do something that you don't normally do, they're giving you an egg. If this metaphor still holds for example, here in this example, my friend who lives in the U. S. Could have contacted someone who does file taxes and asked if they might be interested in working together on translation plus filing. Then, if it works out, it could be an excellent niche to offer perspective clients. And I know it would have been excellent for this friend of mine because I know he works along with financial statements of various companies and as ah, for a more personal example, I originally came to Taiwan just to study Chinese for three months and toe basically take a break. But once I was here, I was contacted by lots of colleagues and clients and people that I dealt with all asking if I knew anyone who could translate to and are from Chinese. And so I decided, Well, why not? Let's look into it. I got in touch with other translators here, and this eventually led to a car. He and my living here. It's four years later, and I'm still in Taiwan right now. So anyway, next time someone asks you to write an article or to do a transcription, or even for artwork or some type of research, etcetera, etcetera, anything else you don't normally do, you should recognize it as a potential opportunity 26. OCR (Optical Character Recognition): Okay, so the first tip is OCR or optical character recognition. Now I've mentioned this in passing in earlier lessons, but it deserves a bit more of an in-depth look. Your personal methods for translations may vary, but chances are you've had to at some point deal with files like PDF file or a say, a scan of document or a hard copy or an image or any other form of document that didn't contain text per se, but just an image of the text. So how can you insert your text into your CAD program or into word? How can you get text from these examples? Well, one solution would be just to see what is on the scan documents are hard copies in your hand and just write them out by hand. But if you're dealing with a document of several thousand words, then rewriting everything in the original language. Just so you can rewrite it in the target language, seems like a colossal waste of time. So luckily, there exist technology that can come to the rescue. And this technology is called once again, OCR, or optical character recognition. Now this recognizes characters and displays them as words onto a document for you. Obviously, the quality will only be as good as a program and the better the program usually the more it costs. I'm not exactly sure how the technology works behind this, but in essence, you can have an image or a scanned copy of a hard-copy or scanned documents, et cetera, et cetera. And this is able to parse through and identify words and letters, your particular language, and converted it into text. Now, once again, some of these programs work very well, some less. So I've tried a couple of free options out there. But now for me personally, I've switched to a paid one, which is one I recommend for anytime people ask, and it's called online OCR dotnet. Here's an example of the website as you can see and how it works. You can choose the source language of your document here, it's Italian. So say I have a document with Italian writing on it, or an image of a document or a scanned or however it is. And then I say I want the output to be in Microsoft Word, usually that's what I work from. So I asked them to spit it out in Microsoft Word. And then here I can say which page numbers if phi, because since I pay per page, so here I can limit the number of pages. Maybe I only need the first two pages out of a 100 page document. So anyway, once I've made my choices, then I just select the file and it uploads. And then I click on Convert right under that, and it spits out the file with a converted text. Hopefully most of it's correct and usually if it's a clear scan or clear copy of the document, then as I said, this program tends to work pretty well for me. Now you do have to pay for this program, but as you can see, the prices aren't too bad. These are the prices as of this recording. They've gone up a bit since I first started using it because I think if I remember correctly, when I first started, 300 pages were like 15, 95. Anyway, either way, it's still pretty cheap. I know I get to quite a few 100 pages at some point, so I usually I think I might buy the 300 pages. I think I don't know. I can probably by the 500 or more. But anyway, first starting out, you can just pay for 95, which isn't much at all for 50 pages and see how it goes for you. And it might also depend on your language, your source language, et cetera, et cetera. But regardless for me, this works quite well. 27. Time Management: Time Management. Now, as freelancers, entrepreneurs and people who do not work for a boss, time management becomes critical. Every freelancer is familiar with the feeling. Well, I could just watch TV right now and no one would notice, for example. Or even worse, well, I got into business for myself so I wouldn't have to deal with too much stress. So why not relax right now? Let's face it. When you have a boss, you basically just need to do what you're told by the boss. And if you keep doing that, then you will get promoted and you'll keep having a job. Even when you're not busy, you try to spend your time looking busy. That's how it works in an office. So what happens when all of that goes away? What happens when you are the boss? Can you really stay at home and not do anything? Well, of course not. And hopefully that's not why you got into business for yourself. I firmly believe that the goal of anything you do should never be idleness with a limited number of hours and days we get on this planet, it makes no sense to waste any more time than we have to. I know that I've had quite a few issues with this in the past, and frankly, I still do. I will go through what I call the cycle of extremes. Basically, I would get burned out because I was, I had too much work. And so then I will take time off and I'd have more of a mindset. Well, I should just relax and take it easy because, you know, I got into business for myself so I could have a better life. So why not take it easy? But then I would panic because there was no business and I wasn't making money. So I'll jump back in and work too hard and then repeat over and over again. Now, because of this, I got very deep into time management. So based on what I've learned, I will make some recommendations here. I can give some basic pointers as to the tips I follow and hopefully they can be useful to you. My tip, number one is to embrace lists and labels and folders, et cetera, et cetera. In essence, everything you do and everything you have should be retrievable. It should be retrievable at a moment's notice. This includes your bank account information, your invoice information, past jobs, tax info, et cetera, et cetera. I actually tried to have as little as I can in physical format. It helps when I'm traveling or on the road are going even to coffee shops, et cetera. And so everything and everything I do have is labeled clearly, and this counts for my computer as well. I treat everything like my cabinet and label it clearly if it's whether it's on my computer or actually in my cabinet. And if need be, I take time out every month or so to make sure that it is and to relabel things and to put them back in order. And no miscellaneous or other is not a label. Now if you want to know more about lists and labels and folders and how to divide up everything that you work on. Then I actually recommend a book called Getting Things Done. I will mention this again in the, in the lesson about books that I recommend. So I will talk more about it then. But for now I just want to recommend that you actually do setup folders and labels and lists with all your work and with everything you do, just so everything is easy to find at a moment's notice because once you start getting busy, it can really be a time-saver to have everything readily available. My tip number two is to plan your day the day before. Ideally, you should plan your work day, the day before, before you go to sleep. By all means, leave some time for surprises, but not too much. Trust me, your life isn't as exciting as you think it might be. I'd recommend planning your most important thing or the hardest thing as the first thing you do. So you can get the hardest or the worst thing, let's say out of the way first thing, and then plan the other maybe more fun things are things you look forward to later on. And this actually brings me to the time management tip number three, which is do not check email first thing in the morning. Do not. Absolutely not. You already have your most important task planned out if you followed the tip number two. So no matter who e-mailed you, they can wait until after you've completed that task. Remember, emails are a great way of keeping busy and feeling like you're doing things and actually not accomplishing anything. When the best ways I've heard it described is that your email inbox is a to-do list that other people have made out for you. So it stands to reason that you should finish your own to-do list first before you start doing this stuff other people gave you to do. Now, the way you go about this can vary, but I generally recommend checking your emails at set times during the day, ideally, say two or three times. And during this time you can respond or delete or otherwise take care of all your e-mails all in one. Go. Once again, if you are interested in this topic and how to deal with emails, there's plenty of information on the internet and there are also several books that deal with it. And I will go through these books and mentioned them in, once again in the recommended book section, just quickly I can say that Getting Things Done by David Allen also deals with emails. And so it's good for that as well. Also, the 4 Hour Work Week talks about emails. And so both of those have some quite interesting recommendations. But I get into them in more detail when I talk about the recommended books later on. Now the time management tip number four is to focus on the three or four most important tasks per day. At most. When planning your day, ideally the evening before, as I mentioned before, you should be asking yourself, okay, if I completed these things, would it be a good day? And if those are all you need for a good day, then why not just complete those? The main idea behind this is that if you have a to-do list with 20 items on them, you'll never get them done. And even while you do get done, you'll probably concentrate on the easiest tasks first, which means that the hardest, most difficult, most daunting tasks will be on your to-do list for a long, long time. So my recommendation is to put three or four important tasks and concentrate on those. Once those are done, then you can see how you feel or how you want to go about it. But know that once you've completed those task, it's already a good day. And so you don't have to stress out about the other things. So tip number 5. Now this one can see a bit complicated, but basically it is that once you know how to do something, you write down the steps that are needed. In fact, this might seem a bit useless, but bear with me here. Remember that first of all, you can always miss something. Even if you know how to do something, you might miss a step later on, especially when you have, say, four or five or eight different clients contacting you for jobs. So it makes sense to actually list what to respond, you know, when to respond, and how much time to allocate to what went to start invoicing, when to start sending reminders for invoices, say, et cetera, et cetera. Secondly, once everything is written out, you may spot methods of improvement you couldn't notice before. Like maybe should I create an e-mail template for my standard responses or something of that sort. Now in thirdly, and this might seem advanced, but in this day and age you can find VAs or virtual assistants anywhere. So if you wanted to, you could hire an assistant and you could just copy and paste the list of your steps and send it off to them. So if you have things that you need to work on that are pretty much standardized, like say you have certain steps you need to take in order to, I don't know, for your marketing endeavors or in order to keep track of your jobs or this, that and the other. Or maybe every week you want to contact, you know, 20 potential clients and you have a standard way of doing it well on one of those websites like Upwork or guru, et cetera, you can find virtual assistants who will do stuff like that, or else who will find the people to contact. Or either way we'll do administrative jobs. And so if you have the steps already laid out, then it's very easy to explain to them what to do and they can get it right the first time. However, as I mentioned, this would be a more advanced step that you might take later on. For now though, I still think it's useful to write down the steps that are needed once you figure out what you're working on. Just because, as I mentioned at the beginning, once your business grows, it can be very chaotic. And so you want to make sure you have either a checklist or just list of steps to take so that your life in that sense can be much easier with the stuff that's more or less regular. Tip number six is to use help whenever possible because you will probably need it. Now this isn't necessarily help, as in asking people to help you out, or it doesn't necessarily have to deal with other people, but just with yourself and with what's available out there. For me personally, I noticed that my productivity started increasing a lot once I stopped having faith in myself. What I mean by this is I stopped thinking that I had great willpower and in a time management skills. And I decided instead to treat myself like an employee and to be my own mean boss. So I started downloading apps that blocked websites where I waste time, such as say Facebook or Twitter or YouTube. Just so I could make sure I don't get distracted without thinking and end up wasting an hour watching YouTube video, say. I also was able to find some coffee shops with no internet. And so I started going there to work when I needed to concentrate on something offline once again, So I wouldn't be distracted by Facebook or by other things on the web. Basically, what I tried to do was try to make it as easy as possible for me to work and as hard as possible to waste time. A lot like a micro-managing boss would do. And so I became my own micro-managing boss. Now as a quick pointer, I use self-control. This is an app for Max. I'm not sure if it exists for PCs as well, but I find it very useful for max. Now I will get into this in more detail later on when I talk about all the apps and programs that I recommend. But just briefly, this is an app that is free and that makes it very easy for you to block any websites or any applications or folders on your computer that you might waste time on. So even if you have games, et cetera, on your computer that you might be tempted to waste your time on. This will block them for you. 28. Shares, Commissions, Rush Jobs: Shares, commissions and rush jobs. When dealing with clients that are offering payments in shares or commissions, or clients with rush jobs. The basic gist is this. Avoid them. At least that's my recommendation in general ISA to avoid them. But let me go a bit more into detail. First of all, I'm going to start talking about shares and commissions. Now, this is something you'll see most of the time with book translations. So sure you have a standard rate and for your translation and maybe even have a discounted rate based on volume. But let's face it, some authors simply cannot afford to pay you. And they definitely cannot afford to pay you for their 200 thousand word book to be translated. So instead what they're going to do, and I've seen this quite often in the forums and on the website, is that they will offer you a commission based on sales in your language. Now, you might think that this could be a decent offer, and for all anyone knows it could. But there are several points against it, which is why I bring it up and I wanted to go through them. First of all, you should remember that you are a translator. You aren't, I assume an expert in book sales or a literary agent in the books target market. So this book that you're translating might have been a bestseller back in its original language and Bulgaria say. So if you're translating from say, Bulgaria into English, it might have done well and Bulgaria, but it won't, it doesn't mean that it will do well in the United States or in England, et cetera, et cetera. In fact, you don't even know if it will be published in those languages. And even if it is, and it does start selling, do you have a way to track sales? Because those can be quite complicated to keep track of. And remember also that the author just got a translation for free. So the author doesn't really have much skin in the game at this point. And we'll expect you to do the marketing. This is all to say that basically you don't know what will happen. What you do know is translation. And so you can explain that you get paid as a translator and that's it. Secondly, remember also that even if it is successful and you are able to track sales and it does make quite a bit of money that there will be a huge delay in payment. Because remember from translation to then publishing and to sales, don't be surprised if you have to wait about two years to see any payment. Third of all, now that you've performed the translation, basically for free, the author knows that you have a stake in the book sales. And this means that he or she will probably expect you to do some, if not all of the marketing in your target language. After all, if the author was a Bulgarian author and doesn't even speak English, then this author will probably expect you to do a lot of the marketing in the United States or England or wherever else. And once again, your translator. So you don't specialize in marketing. And just because you speak the language of your target language doesn't mean that you are in any position to start market and book out from scratch. So hopefully that was enough to dissuade You. And I only bring it up because I've seen it several times and I've been approached several times to perform a translation. So I've actually thought through a quite a bit, and in fact I was going to do it at 1 and then at the last minute basically I decided not to. And I've also by the way, seen similar, if not the same things with other businesses, such as with startups. Mainly app developers, at least for me, were they offer basically shares in their business in exchange for translations. And this is pretty much the same concept and it brings about pretty much the same problems. So as a general rule, I would say anytime anyone offers new shares or commissions instead of a direct payment for translation to say no, or at least value yourself. But keep in mind all these issues that might come up. And maybe you can negotiate some intermediate thing where maybe you get paid a certain amount of small amount, but then you still get some commissions based on sales, et cetera. But remember, you need to feel comfortable with the marketing and sales because chances are you're going to have to share in that as well. The next point is rushed jobs. Now, here there might be some disagreement, but you go to pretty much any job posting website and you'll see a couple of rushed jobs or jobs that are marked urgent or very urgent or due tomorrow, et cetera, et cetera. Now, this isn't the case a 100 percent of the time, but very often these will be problem jobs. So at least for me whenever I see a rush job or urgent are very urgent or anything along those lines, I think problem Job. Remember that customers who need 5000 words say translated by tomorrow morning are the same ones that we'll find mistakes with your translation. Or that will say that the end client has been complaining about something or another, or that will ask you for a discount or be very late where their payments, et cetera, et cetera. I generally find that clients with the most relaxed schedule are actually those that are the most pleasure to work with. And those who pay me the quickest, those who are stressed out are usually problems. Now, there's, now this might just seem like some random rule that I've set out, but there is sort of a logic behind this theory, at least from what I've seen, any urgent job most likely means that someone along the chain of command is disorganized. After all that PowerPoint presentation that you're translating wasn't just thought up and written out yesterday. And the client meeting that it's needed for tomorrow morning wasn't just planned out today. And if they were, you know, maybe it was just written up yesterday evening and it was just planned out at the last minute. But that also means that somewhere along the chain of command, you know, someone should have noticed that this was a bad idea or someone should have planned ahead. Once again, I'm not saying that this is always the case, but it often is. And I can often sends the client being pressured by their client or their boss and then they pass that pressure onto me. So whenever you see urgent, very urgent or rush job with a few exceptions in that if there's say a medical emergency or anything along those lines, otherwise chances are there was a problem somewhere down the chain of command and you might risk getting saddled with that problem. On the other hand, remember, rush jobs, urgent jobs, and all these can also pay more because they are needed right away and they're desperate to find a translator. So once again, evaluate what it's worth to you. And if he can negotiate a good salary or a higher salary for some rush job urge and job then by all means, but just realize that very often it means disorganization on the part of the client or somewhere along the chain of command. 29. Apps I recommend: Here I'm going to speak about some apps and websites, et cetera, that I recommend for freelance translators and often for freelancers in general, but mainly for freelance translators. First of all, I would say boomerang. Now boomerang has been very useful for me for collecting payments. Boomerang works with Gmail and probably with other email hosts as well. I use it for Gmail and that's the only one I know. And the way it works is that when you're writing an email, there's a Boomerang option at the bottom. And this option allows you to re-send the same e-mail. If, for example, you received no response within two days or a week or whatever time period you want. You can also choose to send the same email multiple times or at various intervals, whether or not they replied to you. Anyway, in case you want to chase someone who say owes you money, then this makes it a lot easier for you to chase them. So you don't always have to remember to e-mail them regularly. Ie, you send an email and if they don't reply within two days, automatically, your email gets sent to them again. And you can keep repeating this, or you can just set it to send the emails once every week or so constantly. It also allows you to schedule an email for later on. And you may have various reasons for this. For me quite honestly, it just gives me x number of hours to think of something else to add or change in the translation I just worked on. As you can see from this screen grab, you can choose to send a message in an hour and two hours, four hours tomorrow morning and two days, four days to weeks a month, et cetera, or a specific time. So I find myself using this option quite often. The next app I recommend It's self-control. I already mentioned self-control earlier, but now we'll go a bit more into detail. Self-control is for use on a Mac. I'm not sure if it exists for the PC. However, I'm sure there's an equivalent somewhere, it's free and you just search for self-control and download it. And what it does. I apologize, this is an Italian, but you can see below that it has a list of websites, these websites that are blocked, and they're blocked for the number of hours I specify above. So here it says one hour. I can do it for two hours, for a whole day, you know, whatever I want. So basically if I decide that I'm going to work for the next, say 34 hours on a particular job or translation. Then I'll click self-control. And automatically I know I cannot access Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, HootSuite. And you can put in any website or application or program on your computer here, just so you know, you won't waste time on it and you'll actually get to work once again, this is a handy tool to make it as easy as possible to work as hard as possible to get distracted. And I find myself using it quite a bit, so I recommend it and once again it is free. The next step is, again one that I mentioned before, and it's called online OCR.net. Now, I go into this a bit more in detail in the lesson where I talk about OCR or optimal character recognition, I think anyway, once again, this is a website that I use. You do pay for it, but I find that it is very useful. And once again, this is a screenshot that shows that you can upload any document just briefly, OCR means, and I'm repeating myself from the earlier lesson, but OCR means that you can take. A document that doesn't have text, but rather has an image or a scanned document of a text or something like that. So basically something you cannot parse text from because he can't copy and paste it because it's an image. And what it does is that it recognizes that text in it and turns it into a text and that you can then use to copy and paste into Word or into your CAD program or whatever it is. And so as you can see, it's very simple. You choose the source language and then you choose the format that you want it to spit it out in the whichever pages you choose. And then you select the file, upload it and click convert and it converts. The next step I recommend is actually not an app per se, but it's just a recommendation and a couple apps. The idea here is that you always want to back things up. In short, you should always just have a backup. A translators entire career will depend on his or her computer. So always use some form of backup. This can mean either an online backup like Dropbox or Box.com, et cetera, or an external hard drive, an extra computer, or an automatic backup program like Back blaze, iCloud, or carbonite. Just briefly here, dropbox. Most of you have probably heard of this, but this is an online external hard drives basically with a certain number of gigabytes. You get a certain number for free and then if you pay, you get a lot more. I don't remember the exact numbers now because now I actually have a paid program that has like 50 gigs or something. But you, I think the free version is around 20 gigs or something along those lines, but I'd have to check in and it's changing. So whatever I say probably won't be up to date once you hear it. However, dropbox.com allows you to copy and paste files and keep backups of them online on the cloud so you can access them from wherever. Companies like back plays and Carbonite automatically backup everything that is in your computer so you don't even have to think about it. And I actually have both. I have Dropbox and I have back blades working at the same time. So I'm constantly having everything backed up. And the idea behind Back blaze is actually that if say even if you lose your computer, they'll send you everything you need, either online or via USB or in a CD IV and or number of CDs depending on how much you have. And so you can retrieve everything that you have and it's backup to automatically so you don't have to think about it. Icloud For those of you who use a Mac are familiar with iCloud, otherwise you probably don't use it. Actually, I have a Mac but I don't use iCloud because I use these other programs, so but it works along the same lines. And an external hard drive is having an actual physical hard drive, which again, I have that as well. And every now and then I back it up there. I have redundancy upon redundancy because as I mentioned, all my work is on my computer and that means my livelihood as well. 30. Support System: Your support system. Now please let me know if any of the following phrases sound familiar to you. First of all, hey, can you run some errands for me this afternoon since you're not stuck in the office like me, or maybe well, of course you can have another drink. It's not like you have to wake up early tomorrow morning or else. So what is it that you do all day? 0 and another 11 of my favorites. Oh, life's easy for us and see you don't have to deal with the job anyway. So about all of these, how did they make you feel? Do comments like these irritate you so much that you want to break stuff. Well, welcome to the world of being your own boss and, or working from home or freelancing or entrepreneurship, et cetera. In all of these cases, you'll have to deal with stuff like this. Unfortunately, what tends to happen is that nobody else will take you seriously. At least not at first. I mean, in a way, how could they to them, a job is being told what to do. Having a boss breathing down your neck, following orders and then just waiting for your paycheck, right? And in other words, it's a basically a very passive way to work and live. Well, the way you work is probably the most active form imaginable. Sure. You could sit at home and watch TV all day, but then you wouldn't be making rent. And so you have to be your own boss and your own employee and your middle manager and intern all in one. And even after all that, you're still not guaranteed any sort of paycheck like someone who works for a large company is. The best analogy I've heard is that an entrepreneur is someone who works 16 hours a day so that they don't have to have a job. And so given all this, I feel it's very important to have a support system of your own. This is your livelihood, but it is also as real as you make it. So surround yourself with people who understand this. Also realized that people who don't understand this can be toxic. These are people who once again work for a company, worked for a boss clock in and out of work, et cetera, et cetera. So they think you're just at home doing nothing all day and then you have an easy life and they say, Oh, well, he's not doing anything anyway, right? Let's face it. If your friend wants you to pass by Ikea to pick up something because they're stuck in the office. You know, you probably could you probably could help them out that time. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, but if you do realize that you're emitting several things, first of all, you're saying that your friend's time is more important than your own, right, because you had work scheduled, but instead you're using that time to help your friend now, second of all, you're saying that you're available in the future for future Aaron's, as long as you don't have a predetermined emergency, let's say, and as long as your friend offers to buy you a drink or whatever after it's done. Third of all, it says to your friends that you are free during work hours. I mean, if you can run your friends Erin during work hours, it probably means that you can do other stuff as well other than work and forth of all, it means that your friends view of your lifestyle is reinforced to your friend. Will think now more than ever that you're just sitting at home and completely flexible and can do whatever. Once again, I'm not saying not to help your friends ever again, but I'm saying that this job is only as serious as you treat it. So the best way to avoid all this, I feel is to surround yourself with other entrepreneurs, freelancers, or people who work for themselves just like you. They will understand that you need your work time and in fact, they'll often help you to find the best time and method for getting work done. Another way that I've found helpful is to actually go to a workplace, such as a small office or a co-working space. This it makes it easier for you to say I'm at work or I'm at the office, sorry. And people are used to that and used to that meaning work, right? Rather than I'm sitting at home or I'm in a coffee shop. It also has the added benefit of surrounding you with other entrepreneurs and other people like yourself. And so once again, you get your lifestyle and the sense that you're working on something serious and real reinforced. But the main point here, once again, I just cannot stress it enough is to take your work seriously. It's only a serious as you're gonna make it and so you have to be strict about it. This means telling your friend No, I'm at work right now. Sorry. Then so be it. Note how if you had asked them the same question, they would have given you that answer and chances are, you would give it if you were in a co-working space or in your own office anyway. So when you are working from home, your home is your office and treat it as such. If your friend complains, then explain that this is your livelihood, this is your life, and you need to take it seriously. A good friend is going to understand this and will most likely respected and also frankly admire you and your self-discipline. 31. CAT Tools: Cat tools, cad tools are quite important and you will hear quite a bit about them. I've had quite a few people asked me about cat. Cat, first of all stands for computer assisted translation. And in fact, quite a few people asked me about CAT tools. And those who had been translating for some time have no doubt come across them. Clients or fellow translators might ask you if you use trade-offs or word fast or any other number of CAT tools. So what are they and are they worth it? Well, just briefly, what are CAT tools? First of all, they are programs that help with the translation process, usually by memorizing certain terms and translations as you come across them. This is so you can use them easily in the future. You can find a decent list of CAT tools at this website that I'm showing you. Sorry, it's not that simple, but it's a Wikipedia page. And if you search for computer-assisted translation, then this page should pop up. Also don't confuse CAT tools when machine translation or MT, machine translation is a translation performed by a machine. Think Bing or Google Translate even or more likely, the Skype translate option, et cetera, et cetera. These are instances where the machine translates for you. And as we all know, the quality on those is not really good. Cat tools, however, don't perform any translation for you, but they just keep the translations you've performed in their memory. And so they can recreate the translations if they come across again in the future. And they also usually recreate the format of the original documents so you don't have to worry about that. Just as an example to make it clear as to how they work. Say you're translating a long document, very long document that'll take a long amount of time and you come across a term that you're not familiar with. You don't know how to translate it. So you search for the correct translation on the forums. Maybe you ask some people some questions and you come across in 20 minutes or even I don't know, maybe you get an answer later that afternoon. So several hours later. In other words, it basically it takes you a long time to find a translation for this term. Then you keep continuing with your translation. And 30 pages later, say a few days later, a week later, the same term comes up, except you totally forgot what the translation was and why you decided to use at the end and you don't know where to search for it. And so basically you can waste another hour trying to go and find out where you found the translation and what the term was. Cat tools help you with this tremendously because with a CAT tool, it will automatically be translated if you translated a term before the CAT tool remembers it. And when the same term comes up again, boom, automatically is translated the same way it was before. Once again, if you have no cat tool, you'll have to go back and search for euro translation and waste a lot of time. So a CAT tool can be a real time saver in this sense. This also works not only for just terms or words, but for whole phrases. So if you have a whole sentence or even a paragraph that is exactly the same. Then it works well and it also works for new documents. So say you translate an annual report for a company and then a year later you translate their new annual report. Chances are a lot of the paragraphs or copy and pasted from the old report, right. But it was a year ago. So you don't remember what translation you use that you don't want to search for it. And a CAT tool automatically have them pop up. So it can be, as I said, extremely useful. So what's the catch? What's wrong with them? Basically, there's one main thing wrong with them and that is the cost. The most popular CAT tool by far is what's called SDL travels. I've heard trade-offs as well, but it's a German company, some pretty sure it's pronounced travels or something along those lines. Anyway. As of this recording, SDL travels Studio 2015, professional single user costs €2595. And I'm not kidding. Of course, this is the professional version and there's a freelancer version as well, which costs only 520. One-year-old is actually €695, but there's a discount at this moment while I'm recording it. That puts it down to 521. And other things. If you want to add to it, it goes up from there, the minimum will be 521 with the discount. The next most popular version is called a memo cue, and this one cost €620 or 770 US dollars once again, at the time of this recording, another popular one is word fast, which is 400 Euros, and so on and so forth. And by the way, if you have a Mac, you cannot use trade-offs or memo cue. They have a pared down version of trade-offs now, which I have not tried, but I've heard it's very pared down and not worth what the original travels is worth. Another point to remember as well is that clients often asked for discounts based on repetitions when using CAT tools. So say if a certain text has, I don't know, 1800 words, they may only pay you for 1500 because 300 of those words are repetitions. And there are programs that automatically calculate how many repetitions. So it's not like you can kind of fake it. Stl treadmills and other programs usually calculate how many words that are repeated and because they are automatically reproduced with this program, the client won't pay you for those repetitions, which basically means that any advantage you have is lost. So it makes sense for them because they decide if it's a repeat, we don't want to pay you for it, but you paid for the CAT tool in the first place and you paid quite a bit for it if you bought the CAT tool. So even the advantage of having repetitions has a cost, if you will. So you do want to get paid for those repetitions because you need to cover the cost that you paid in the first place for that program, right? And another thing I don't like about it is that this would not work in most other industries. If a web designer used a similar template for different web designs, the client doesn't get to pay the designer less. Likewise, a lawyer doesn't get paid less for using similar contracts for different clients. So how can we translators get paid less? Because we have similar terms and expressions in two different translations. Now some people might argue that the time you save helps you recoup the money. But I would disagree because keep in mind that any memorized terms must be entered in by the user. You are entering these terms, that CAT tool does not translate it for you. So there's no internalized dictionary or glossary is purely based on your input. So it might be easier just to develop your own glossary or translated terms, at least when you're starting out. And I'll cover this later on where I talk about keeping a glossary. But in essence it's something you could just keep in Excel and you can refer to whenever needed or simply just keep it open. And this quite frankly will perform 70 to 80 percent of what a CAT tool does. Now, having said all this, there are certain instances are occasions where a CAT tool could be useful. First of all, if you can get a group of translators together to split the cost, then why not? Make sure ahead of time that you all have access to it? You know, well, you'd be using different computers and if so, can you all use it under the same license, et cetera, et cetera. But if you can, then maybe it could be worth it. Secondly, if you have a client who, you know with a 100 percent certainty is a repeat client. And this client requires a CAT tool and we'll pay you back the cost of this tool in several months at most, you know, based on their jobs that they give you, then it might be worth it. This, unfortunately, as a calculation you'll have to do yourself. You'll have to think, okay, if I spend X number of dollars on the CAT tool and I get paid X amount guaranteed by this client and it saves me X amount of time, then it's a calculation that you'll have to do yourself. But my recommendation is at least at first not to buy one. I would recommend not using them until later on. But however, if you want to test the concept out, you can with some free versions and some of them, admittedly, they're not as good as a paid versions, but they can still help you out pretty much. One is omega T, which produces T and X files. Dmx files are the same ones that are produced by trade-offs. And so I've actually used omega t a couple times instead of tradeoffs and the client has been perfectly happy with them. Again, they weren't complicated files by any means, but it can be a substitute sometimes. Also word fast anywhere is also free and across. Word fast anywhere is web-based. Across is only for MS Office users, but it's probably the oldest free CAT tool out there. And so it's quite often used by other translators. If you want more information, by the way, feel free to go into a forum and talk to other translators about this. You'll usually find quite a bit of discussion about CAT tools. 32. A bit more about CAT Tools: So here's a bonus. This is something that I've added later on about cat tools, because I do talk about cat tools. But cattles air definitely the subject that I get the most questions on, whether they be in the discussion boards or in private or anything along those lines, because you come across them so often that a lot of people ask me about them and a lot of people say, Hey, you know, uh, tell us more about them or they are useful. And the fact is, we all have to, you know, live in this world, and we have to deal with clients who always ask about cat tools and want to know if we have them or if we use them and stuff like that, I should reiterate I. Still, my feelings about cat tools have not changed, but I want to go through them a bit more in detail. First of all, let's start off with a cost update. Um, because the costs have changed a bit since, Ah, since I originally talked about cat tools, so let's check it out quickly. Okay, So once again, the STL travels is ah, by far the most popular type of cat tool that there is out there and this is their website , and so you can see the price is right off the bat, and the STL treadle studio is 2895 section. I think the price has gone up since I talked about it last, and they'll probably keep going up every year. Ah, this is the one for freelance. So this is geared toward freelancers. Supposedly, and it's $845 freelance Plus is even more now. Here's what's interesting. However. They do have a stripped down version, a basic, scaled down version of the freelance addition for an occasional translator that is valid for one year this $129. So this seemed, especially when you compare it to hear it seems a lot more doable. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find much more information about it anywhere. Um, and as far as I can tell, a basic, stripped down version of STL Trey does is ah is basically Omega T, which is already free, and I imagine that that's exactly what you get. One. Once again, I should reiterate for all their products they say they have this. If you're using an Apple Mac, please consult our support pages or live chat. This is because and as I mentioned before and and it's been confirmed to me by several people, If you have a Mac, it just doesn't work. Ah, Travels just doesn't work. It's supposed to work within certain cases there, this, that and the other. But it doesn't really. And I was at the last Katie meeting. This is a Carolina association of translators and interpreters, and one of the sessions there was specifically on cat tools and we were talking about it. And, you know, that's basically what people were saying. They're saying, No, it doesn't work and you know what happens is or you know, it might work for basic stuff, but you can't get any of the add ons or every now and then there glitches or stops or anything like that. If you have a Mac, really, unfortunately just doesn't work. And this isn't only with travels. It's pretty much with all of them, but regardless, let's go through it quickly. The next big one. Once again, his memo que now memo que is another type of cat tool that you'll probably come across. So let's go here they have the project manager and stuff like that, which we're not really interested right now. Let's click on the translator Pro. That's their cattle computer assisted translation. Um, and, uh, if the several loads that I can, uh, show you what the price is now here, eso and the way it works is like all these things you have to scroll through all the information who went too far. There we go. The prices 620 year olds and $770. I think that was pretty much what it was. Actually, no, I think it's increased a bit. But anyway, the Yeah, you know, once again, we're talking prices like this for ah, for memo que What they do have here is your You have a 30 day trial. If you wish to try it and see if it works for you for 30 days, This could be an option if you Ah, you know, if you have one job that requires mental Q and so you get this and use it for the job and then get rid of her to decide if you want to get rid of it. But with Memo Q as with traders and all those, there is a learning curve, and you kind of have to learn how to use it before actually being able to use it effectively. So once again, it's a judgment call. So you have to see, uh, regardless. Here's the next one word. Fast now. Word fast, I should say WordPress classic eso Let's click on by now so you can see what the price is. Um, and that's that's the normal Ward fest. Let's go back. I think I have here. Yeah, because word fast anywhere is free. This is a free one. So by all means, feel free to try word fast anywhere and see how it goes. This is another one that, unfortunately, I was told, uh, while I was at the KT meeting the Carolina Association Translators, Interpreters, Um, one of the other translators was talking about word fast, and she said that she had issues on her. Mac, Um, now, I don't know, because this is supposed to be Web browser based, so it should, In theory, I think be okay, but regardless is free, So please feel free to check it out. If you do get WordPress Classic and you know once again here the prices, uh, clothes that were classic foreign 60 were fresh, pro foreign 60. Or you could get both for 560 which looks like a good deal, but it's still $560. And so I just wanted to reiterate these are the prices that we're dealing with. So be careful and just know about it. Ah, when when you are buying them that you have to deal with these prices now. The other thing I mentioned is that although cattles can make your life easier, that clients do ask for discounts based on based on how easier they make your life right, and so what cattles condo's is, they find out if there any matches. If you've translated similar terms in the past, and they make it a lot easier for you. But then the client kind of takes away that he's by asking for discounts. So let me show you some examples briefly to show you what happens and how it goes. This is These are all taken, by the way from real clients and potential clients people. I've been contacted that who are really agencies and eso I haven't invented any of these numbers or anything. This and this is how they come across. So you'll see this is a trader's model. And, um and what this means is, if you have no matches are basically a translation from new from scratch. This is how you would work without a cat tool and you get paid 100% for that. Good, Then what you have here is fuzzy matches, and so fuzzy means that a lot of it is similar. But there are a couple things that are different, and eso 84 to 75 is basically the percentage. And so, if you have and you know they always, right, it's so weird. Anyway, 75 to 84 will be a better way to do it. You get paid 60% if it's 85 to 94% you know, match the fuzzy match. Then you get paid 50% 95 to 99 40% 100% matches. Then you get you get paid 20%. Now if its repetitions you get paid 10% between 100% matches and repetitions. I'm not sure what the difference is. Ah, you know, it could be just The sentence is the same as a repetition or it just has the same terms. And honestly, this isn't, you know, the client doesn't know, You know, this is all based on the program itself. The program calculates this stuff automatically. So who knows? Certain things are repetitions. 30 certain things. 100% matches. One you get paid 20% of the price. Another you get paid 10%. So once again, this means, if you charge, say, I don't know 10 cents a word to make it easy, you'll get paid 10 cents a word for no matches. Here I get paid six cents a word here. Five since the word four cents that were two cents a word and one sent a word. So, um, once again, your life is easier, because the cattle will notice the matches and repetitions. But that advantage that you have it sort of taken away when you really get paid one cent a word for the repetition. And so you And by the way, when you use a cattle, we still have to look over it and make sure the cat tool didn't make any mistake and stuff like that because you never know with certain, depending on what type of stuff you're translating. Now, here, let's go through another example quickly. And here you can see how it works. Repetitions. 100% matches. So these a released or both 20% and then 20. But this is still 20% 90 1995 And then Ah, and here you you get at least 50 to 74. Still 100%. I think that was a case up here, too, because it only starts at 75. So, um and then it goes to 40% 20% 20% etcetera. Uh, and so this is how much you get paid, depending on how much it matches. And here I want to show you an example of the analysis once it's been broken down. And this is, uh so just concentrate on two things here. Concentrate on words and percent, right? Andan obviously, on these things, so new would be once again as if you don't have a cat tool. This is how you would translate. So you have 26,000 words that are new and this is the percentage of the total. In fact, you could probably ignore percent, but it just makes it easier. 32% around 33% of the total is new stuff. And there you get paid the full price, and then you have the ah aled these other things. So let's look at the 100% you have 3600 words, and that's 4.59%. You're like, OK, well, then, you know, not much of it is something that, you know, I get paid a huge discount, maybe only 10 or 20 percent of my real price for this. But it's a small percentage of the total that is like this. But look here. Pretty much. 50% of the total is crossfire repetitions. So what does this mean? This means that there's some other file that is very similar to this one, and about half of it is exactly the same as this one. So for this whole file, 50% of it you're going to get paid at the repetition rate, which once again is 10% or, you know, whatever it might be 10 20%. So here you have repetitions within this file are only 4%. But cross file repetitions, repetition with some other file. That is exactly, you know, similar to this one. That's close to 50%. So they're going to give you a huge file and you're only going to get paid. Uh, you know, for basically the full amount, you're only getting get paid 32% and then all of these, you know, you have negligible amounts for these. And then once it gets to like, closer, 200% matches, then it gets higher and, you know, but these you only get paid, what, 10 20% of your real rate. So anyway, it's such a complicated calculation. And the problem is, the agencies have all these resource is at their disposal to make things cheaper for them. And we, as translators were kind of were the freelances, you know, So we're kind of dragged into this game of theirs, and we have to figure it out and see if it's worth it or not. And so these are calculations that you probably should be making before you make such an investment and invest in a cattle and look once he start making money. And if you want to reinvest the profits you've made into cattles, absolutely do it. And you can, obviously by a cattle if you want to. But I do want you to keep these things in mind before you commit to a cattle. I also want to reiterate, In my opinion, this should pretty much be criminal. I cannot think of another industry where this would happen once again, if you're a Web designer and use similar templates for, you know, different clients. And I could I could not approach a Web designer and say Okay, if your standard prices 1000 I'm only gonna pay 20% of that because you're using the same template that you're probably using for other people on. You know, you probably use WordPress and so that the template is ah similar. And so I'm only gonna pay you a percentage. You can't do that. I certainly cannot approach a lawyer and say, I know you have templates for all your contract, so I'm not paying you the full amount, and you can't go to a restaurant and say, OK, I'm not gonna pay. I'm only gonna pay 20% of the price of this dish. Because I know you have a recipe and you use the same recipe for for all Every time you cooked this dish, you can't do that. And Ah, and it just seems so strange that this is so accepted in, ah, translation world. And I think a big reason for this is that unfortunately, as freelancers, we are Ah, you know, many people, many freelancers, air coming up and kind of don't know what the deal is. And so they accept whatever the agency gives them. And ah, and so it is accepted. So I should reiterate. Look, I'm not saying that you will not need cat tools. You might need cat tools and the more specialized you are, the more useful cattles will be. And I do think it is a judgment call. But I do think you should be careful about this judgement and you should make the judgment . If a cat tool costs you 800 euros and a client says, Oh, we will pay you 1000 euros. If you have this cat tool, then you'll say, OK, then I'll be making 200 euros profit, and so that's great. And so it could be worth it on, you know, and you can take into account opportunity costs and say, Well, the time and effort that it takes me to work on this maybe could be working on other stuff that earns me more than 200 years, Or maybe not. But once again, if you're guaranteed a job and ah, and you're guaranteed to make the money back to absolutely get the cat tool and or even if you're guaranteed a job, but you're really pretty sure that you'll get future jobs because you have a cat tool and you think it'll be worth it over the long run, that absolutely get it because it could be worth it. Ah, but I really want you to keep in mind how it works, because I see too many people jump into the idea that they could get cat tools and spend a lot of money on something that just collects dust and that they never learned how to use because once again there is, ah, steep learning curve that you have to go through, and the cat tools also change and get updated frequently. So you have to kind of keep up with them as they go along. Now, having said all this, I do want to reiterate once again that if you are still interested, you should check out things like omega T. I mentioned word fast anywhere before and previously also mentioned omega t it. And so once again, if you want to get Omega T, you basically just goto omega t dot org's and you click Download and that's it. And ah, I've used Omega T and I have a Mac, and it's worked fine for me. Um, I don't do anything that's too fancy, but it does help. It does remember things that have already been translated, and and it keeps the format Justus Well, because this is another point that a lot of people say that you know that it keeps the format and they like having the format kept the same way that it is in the original. And Omega T does that just as well. My recommendation is almost always when people ask me about these. If they are still interested in cat tools to try, I usually recommend Omega T because it's ah, it's more similar to traders. And that way, if they do want to go to trade offs later on, uh, they have a bit more family, Garrity. But otherwise do try word fast anywhere. Feel free to try that out and see how it works for you and ah and yeah, get familiar with it and try to ah, see if it's something that that you want to use and you wish to use. I would definitely recommend trying one of those before paying for it. And sorry if it seems like I'm repeating myself. But this is a question that I get a lot. And so I kind of wanted to go through it in a bit more detail and with a bit more of a fine tooth comb because I wanted Teoh. Make sure that you know what's happening and ah, and what you're getting into. If you do get a cat tool 33. Glossary and tips: Glossary and translation tips. Now, as I mentioned in the last lesson, glossaries can be important and I definitely recommend keeping a glossary at the beginning. This glossary should be something that you keep four terms and expressions and acronyms that you come across. Technically, every time you have to look something up, you should insert it into the glossary. Because if you have to look it up once and the same term comes across your desk in a month or three months time, then chances are you'll have to look it up again. So it's a lot better if you have it in your glossary. That way it'll save you time in the future. I keep my glossary on Excel and I don't think you need anything more fancy than that. Quite frankly, I have a glossary that I keep on Excel. It's very easy to sort it out alphabetically using data sort. And so that's what I do. And so if I need to look anything up, I can always check alphabetically, see if it's there and if it is, I can use the translation that I've looked up before. Now, as I mentioned in the introduction to this course, you will find tips for everything in this course other than translation itself. This is due to the fact that translation tips per se are much easier to come across and tips for setting up a translation business and earning a living off of it. And so this course does not concentrate on teaching you how to translate. Also, translation tips will obviously be extremely different for every different language. So it's impossible to include them all or even a good percentage of them in one course. However, having said that, I would be remiss if I didn't include at least a few general guidelines to keep in mind. Okay. First of all, when you're translating between two languages, generally, for written translations, the target language should be your native tongue. There are two languages that you speak, and presumably you speak both of them very well. Or at least you can write and both of them very well and you can translate from one to the other. There's target language, however, should be your native tongue should be the one you're most comfortable with because you need to provide text that is impeccable. Secondly, you'll notice that some expressions, such as job titles can be interchangeable, like say secretary and administrative assistant or a CEO and president, et cetera. So feel free to ask your clients for past translation or documents if they have them so you can get the terminology correct and see what they've been using in the past. If they've been translating expressions in a certain way thus far, you might as well find out about it right away rather than be corrected about it later on. So if you use CEO, but they've always used precedent, even if your usage of CEO is more precise, you still want to use what they've been using because they are the client. Also keep in mind that acronyms are different in different languages. Such as, for example, the UN in English will be new if you're speaking Italian or French. And that's COO Nita, or also with the EU in many languages is u e. Usually these acronyms need to be translated as well. You cannot just leave EU as you, but you need to find out what it is in the target language. It's better to check them all the first time you come across them and then include them in your personal glossary. At least that's what I do. And so I have all the acronyms that I've come across in the glossary so they're easy to look up. Also remember that numbers can be different. For example, in the US to say 2346.58, use a comma to mark the thousands and point to mark the decimal point. However, in Italy, It's the opposite. And you'll use a comma to indicate decimals while you use just a dot to indicate thousandths. So keep this in mind for your particular language, that the numbers can be different. All too often I've seen translators completely forget about numbers and neglect them. And this is a very easy thing to fix. And it can make clients very mad if you don't. Also become familiar with track changes. This is on Microsoft Word and is found under Tools. This is especially useful for editing, proofreading and for comparing translations. Also be comfortable with leaving comments, which you can do under Insert a new comment on Microsoft Word. I feel these can be valuable tools. If you want to just note something, say, Oh, I don't think this past translation was done correctly or I'm not sure what you mean here, there, et cetera, et cetera. So Track Changes and leaving comments are quite important things that you should be familiar with. Key bookmarks of useful sites and sites you find yourself using for any translation. Chances are you'll want easy access to these at some point in the future. So you don't want to have to search for them again. Maybe you do many financial translations and you found a great website for a glossary of financial terms and your target language or in both languages, et cetera. So bookmark that and keep your bookmarks they use for translation all in one place so they're easy to find. And one extra tip, although it doesn't necessarily have to do with translation per se, is to always reply to vendors. If someone contacts you and said, Hey, I need this translation done, we'll pay you very little and we need it done in two hours and you definitely totally will not do it. Still reply pretty much every single time that I reply and say sorry, I can't make it hopefully next time or sorry, I can't do it this time. I'm too busy. I always get an e-mail back saying No problem, Thanks for letting us know. They always say thank you for letting us know. And I can say also having hired people, as long as you hear back from them, you really appreciate it because at least you know, you don't want to have to be waiting there wondering if someone else is going to get back to you, like should I accept this expensive translator when someone else might get back to me with something better, et cetera. So always reply and they will appreciate it. And so it can go a long way in terms of goodwill, even if you know you cannot work on the translation that time because you're just way too busy. Still send a quick reply, say sorry, I can't do it this time, hopefully next time, something like that. And they will appreciate it. 34. Tips for the actual translation: now. I wanted to add some points that have come up over the ah over the years and over time regarding translation tips in particular, because these things are things that come up no matter what language your translating into or from, and so they can probably be useful toe all of you. Now the first thing that's come up quite a few times is numbers. Whenever you're doing a word counter whenever you're taking to account any job that you have to do, remember to include the numbers. Numbers aren't always the same, and you'll notice this from almost all different types of languages. If you say, say, 100.2 in English and Italian, you're going to write 100 comma two. And likewise, if you write 1000 it's usually one common 000 But in Italian, it's 1.0 while in Switzerland is actually one apostrophe 000 onda, obviously, then, when you get to East Asia, a lot of the numbers will either have characters or very often, instead of being divided into three, they're divided into four like they're grouped into ah, four rather than 1000 then 1,000,000. They have their own any way numbers can be very different. So you always include those in the word count and in taking to account what you need to do . So if you have a financial statement, you don't only count all the terms on the side. But you have to count all the numbers as well, mainly because you will have to work on the numbers and you will have to change them, depending on what the languages are. The second point is to re recheck your acronyms. I mentioned acronyms before. Now the issue with these is these always have to be the same throughout your text on, even if they're not always exactly the same in the source text. What I mean by this is, say, the U. N Very often you'll see you dot n dot and other times we'll just see you end may be capitalized when you provide your translation. You could if you wanted to do it exactly the same as the source text and say, Well, it's not my fault. That's how the source text was, but usually want to make sure that the translation has it correct. So anything that is you and should be you dot n dot And so that's why you should really check your acronyms. Because a lot of people and usually a source text gets it right, by the way, and what happens is a lot of translators then, because it's quicker they start just type of U N rather than you dot n dot and But you have to pay attention to these things because they are important, even though they might not seem so. I just make sure that they are the same throughout the text. If this you don't end up in one place, then they should be. You dot n dot throughout the entire document or n dot u dot You know, depending on the language. Anyway, rumor to re recheck your acronyms, making sure that they're correct and precise, including the daughter and what's capitalized, etcetera, etcetera. So this brings me on to editing. Editing is a thing that has come up quite a few times, and so I want to get into it. I alluded to this before, but I wanted to get into it a bit. More. Editing can be quite tricky, and their two points of view with editing. The first point of view is when you're an editor. Now, when you're an editor, you are given usually a text. You're giving the original text in the source language and the translated text in the target language, and you have to edit it and make sure was translated correctly. So what you'll do? Is it obviously, if you find egregious mistakes, you find things wrong. You should always mark them down, and you should correct them, etcetera, etcetera. But very often what happens is you'll go through a translation that was don't quite well and ah, you notice that there's hardly any mistakes or maybe no mistakes at all. But you really don't want to send an empty file back to the client. So how can you deal with this? And unfortunately, a lot of editors and tried to find mistakes where mistakes don't exist or they'll change things around just because they can. Maybe it'll change the wording around and to show that they have been doing a lot of edits . But these changes of wording really were not needed in the first place. There just something so the editor can show that they were busy working, and you really should try to avoid this because it can create a lot of problems if you're an editor. First of all, you create a lot more work for the client because the client then has to go through all of your edits to make sure that they're correct and all that. Second of all, you can really make the translator mad because maybe the client will send it back to the translator and say, Hey, look, all these corrections were made. What the hell are you doing? And the translator will go through it and realize that none of them are real corrections, and then they'll get mad. And so you end up having a fight between the translator and the editor, And that never ends well for anyone. And in fact, very often ends with people having to ah, you know, discount the amount that get paid or something. Because as soon as the client realizes that those weren't real mistakes, they sort of become an issue. So my recommendation is usually to, um if you come up with the text that everything seems okay. Uh, you know, if there aren't small things that you'd like to change just stylistically feel free to do it. And then But then when you right back to the client, you should say, Look, the text look great. I just made some stall small changes, their stylistic You can choose to to, ah adopt them or not. But either way, the text is correct. Or if you really don't find anything, any correction to make, you can always right back to the client say I went through the whole thing. It was done really well, and I don't find any mistakes and then give details and say, I really liked the translator's use of this translation because many times it's stunning correctly, and this shows that they know what they're talking about. Or maybe some other sections say, Look, I might have used a different thing, but the term of the translator used works perfectly well as well, you know, So the least they shows that you did go through the whole thing and that you're doing your job. But don't feel the need to find mistakes where there aren't any and complicates complicate everyone's life because that can be a really and you know, and it'll come out at some point if you're making edits where they shouldn't exist, and it can be real trouble. So it's just something to keep in mind when you're an editor. Now the other side of the coin is when you're a translator and if you're a translator in the translation, you performed it sent to an editor, then you might receive something that's completely in red with all these corrections and realize that they aren't needed. And there my recommendation is to patiently go through it and show why they aren't needed and try not to get mad. First of all, maybe some corrections are needed, and there he should admit it. Everyone can make mistakes. And if you're quick to, ah, to accept a mistake you made and ah, and to recognize it, the clients tends to appreciate that because they know you're being honest. And, you know, rather than trying to make a run around or make excuses, you know a couple mistakes here and there. Don't worry about it too much. And just admit to them. If, however, the editor is just trying to basically play games and find mistakes where there aren't any , then I would go through At least you know a page or two with a fine tooth comb and show that, um the corrections either weren't really needed or are completely stylistic and send it back to the client and just let them know and say a Either the editor went through it and the corrections air just stylistic. But they don't really change anything. What I wrote was perfectly correct. Or be say, the editor is trying to find mistakes. And quite frankly, I don't think they're warranted. And if you want, you can check with another editor. Um, obviously, the 2nd 1 is a bit harsher, so be extra Sure, if you have you ever do that because what could happen is declined, then does find another editor. If the other editor sides with the first editor, Well, then, ah, you know, that's bad news for you. So anyway, these are things to keep in mind. The main thing is, keep in mind that there is another person. There is another translator or editor on the other side of this and try to keep in mind how they will react to it, because the client is in the middle and at the end of the day. The client pays both of you so that the client gets to decide what happens. And you definitely don't want to make more work for the client if you don't have to. So, um, anyway, those are just some things I thought should be added to this because they have come up since since I released the course. And in fact, they've come up more than once. And so these are things you should definitely be keeping in mind while you're going through your translations. 35. 80:20 analysis: The 1820 analysis. The 1820 analysis can also be called the Pareto principle. These two can be used interchangeably. So you might have heard of one or the other or maybe not, regardless, I'll get into it now. The 1820 analysis is something that I find particularly useful if you just find yourself too busy. But I still go through this analysis periodically. And so you probably should too. However, when you're busy is when you definitely need to do this 1820 analysis. Now just briefly, according to Wikipedia, states that for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. So how does this apply to what you do? Well, many people in many different walks of life have started using this as a general rule of thumb. More specifically, for your business, let's say you might find out that, say, 80 percent of your profits come from 20 percent of your customers, or possibly that 80 percent of your complaints come from 20 percent of your customers or that 80 percent of your profits come from 20 percent of the time you spend at work. So the ratio doesn't need to be strictly 1820, but more often than not, it will be either 1820 or even more dramatic than that. So like 90, 10 or even 90, 55, at least that's what I've found. So an analysis of this sort can often lead to great gains. For example, if 80 percent of the profits come from 20 percent of the time you spend. And so you're spending 80 percent of the rest of your time for just 20 percent of the profit, it makes sense to drop what you're doing 80 percent of the time. Even if you risk losing that 20 percent of profit, you should still do it because then you can redirect those efforts to what is earning you 80 percent of your profits. And chances are you'll end up earning much more with a lot less effort. This might be a bit more clear if I give you a hypothetical example. So let's do that. And let's say there's client a who is smooth as silk, right? And sense that she assigns your translation where the deadline and then you can accept and deliver and you deliver it on time and then you get paid right away. No problems whatsoever. Then let's say you have client B who assigns a translation and then maybe changes a deadline or needs a rush job, or has to add on a little bit at the end or either way is in constant email communication with you back and forth about this, that and the other, or formatting or whatever it is and then maybe has a tendency to require further changes later on or wants to maybe chat with you on Skype, even and stuff like that. And then when it comes time to pay, ends up delaying payment and you have to chase your money and give them reminders, et cetera, et cetera. So what should you do? Obviously, if you're just looking at this, client a is the better choice. But what about if client B is paying you decently as well, or maybe even more than a, then you might be thinking, well, okay, Client B is a problem client, but, you know, I'm getting more money from Client B then client a. So I should probably stick to Client B. But this is where you should conduct and 1820 analysis. Because once you do, you'll realize that all the time you spend on Klein B will end up paying much less per hour than client a, as in if you're constantly chasing your money, dealing with all their problems and spending most of your day on it, then what you get paid per hour or per your time. It's probably a lot less inclined a where everything is relatively really smooth. So what do you do at this point, because you don't want to lose a chunk of your money if client B is still paying you a chunk of the money you earn. So what should you do? Well, you basically have a couple options. First of all, you could decide to cut out, climb be altogether, and concentrate more on clients that resemble client a. This will mean that you have newfound spare time since you don't have to deal with the client be anymore. And you can use that time to find clients that are more like client a i0 that are very quick and easy to work with, which means that you'll be spending the same amount of time, but hopefully making more money and having an easier life. Or your second option could be to contact climb B and lay down certain ground rules, say new payment terms, the maximum number of changes or the maximum number of Skype conversations, et cetera, et cetera. You don't have to be mean about it, but you can be firm and just specify that your other clients are following these protocols. And the worst-case scenario here is that they decide not to do business anymore, which is a good thing anyway, puts you back and to the first option, which is where you cut out Client B altogether. So it might be worth following either one or two of these. Regardless though aperiodic 1820 analysis are great. And in fact, I recommend doing them not only for your work but for other things in life in general. And you'll find that you'll be spending a lot less time doing a lot less fruitful endeavors and spending more time on things that are more useful and that you get more enjoyment from. 36. Books: Here are my book recommendations. I've mentioned a couple of these books in earlier lessons, but here I thought I should just give a list of books that I recommend in general. Once again, I repeat it for the umpteenth time. These books, no one is paying me to promote these books or anything. These are just books that I have found useful and so I recommend them to people who asked me. The first one is do the work by Steven Pressfield. Now, I recommend this book first because a, it's very short, and so it's a very easy read. And B, it tells you to do your work. I actually reread this every now and then because I find it motivates me to stop dilly dallying to just get work done because there's no reason to quote unquote, wait until I'm ready or anything along those lines. So if you've ever started something but not finished it, or if you've wanted to start something but you haven't started it yet, then this is definitely the book for you. The second book I recommend is called Getting Things Done by David Allen. I know I've mentioned this more than once in the past lessons because it is very useful. I recommend it as a starter book for anyone interested in time management or anything along those lines in productivity, as it says on the cover, et cetera. Because it really helps you a lot. It'll help you visualize what you're trying to achieve, how to divide what your overall goal into smaller, manageable goals. It especially helps you out in dealing with huge time waster. It's like email and small interruptions, et cetera, et cetera. Where I actually think it falls short is that it teaches you to be much more efficient and effective with your time. But if something that used to take you two days now only takes you half a day. You'll be tempted to spend the other half of the day trying to cram and more and more work. After all, if you've been so productive and when you feel so good, why not squeeze in a bit more? Now, this might make sense at the beginning. Say, Well, yeah, if I can get more stuff done in a day than I should, but I find this is a very quick way to achieve burnout. And so I think this is an excellent book, but you should keep this in mind that even if you are more productive, you can easily get burnt out by doing too much work in one day. And in fact, along those lines, I think a good book to deal with this is a four-hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. This book is actually full of great tips and tricks, but it also explains why. For example, you only want to complete those few important tasks during a day rather than crime and more and more. If you've completed what you see as important tasks, then at that point go for a run or do some other activity. And then you'll be able to hit the tasks the next day and be really motivated and well rested. And you'll get a lot more done in the long-term and it'll be a lot more fulfilling. So anyway, this book gets into this and I find it very useful for that sense. There are also some issues with this book. For example, it talks about the 1820 analysis. But I find that in 1820 analysis before you know where your business is coming from isn't very useful. So if you don't know where to spend your time because you don't know who your main clients are going to be yet that in 1820 analysis isn't very useful. And so it's maybe something that should wait till later on. The next book I recommend is called work the system by sam carpenter. The idea behind this is great in that every business needs a system. In fact, every ongoing project and every task needs a system. An ideal system is one that the worst worker, you know, could follow flawlessly. The steps taken should be very simple and very easy to follow. This goes through the simple mechanics of your business and how to make your business into a system that has very simple to follow steps. My next recommendation is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande day. And this follows along the same lines as work the system, but it's simplifies the process even further showing how all these great businesses have been managed via simple checklist. So for example, why doesn't the same airplane crash happened twice? This is because airlines are great at learning from their mistakes and they create simple checklists for pilot to follow, for pilots to follow in any type of emergency. The same as happening in hospitals when saving lives, as well as many smart businesses. And so if these important tasks rely on checklists, then your business ought to as well. This book definitely shows how this can be done. Two other books that I recommend are the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber and built to sell by John where low. Now I mentioned these two together merely because I think that takeaways are similar for both. Namely that you want to create a business as if you want to sell it. Whether or not you really want to sell it. The E-Myth Revisited States said that you want to build your business as if you want to franchise it while built to sell, as you can tell by the name, states that you want to build it as if you want to sell it. I mean, if you do want to sell your business, this makes sense, right? You don't want to have to sell your business to be told that you have to stay in the business in order to make the sale go through because you are so pivotal and important for the business. And so you need to stay there, you know, because this means you would never be able to sell your business. But even if you're just working for yourself, as I assume you are, then it makes sense to create a business that works without you as part of the equation, at least as much as possible. Because this teaches you to find other people and other ways to get a lot of your stuff done. Well, just concentrate on the part that you are best at and they prefer to work on. For example, maybe for your business, you need to do marketing and you need to do sales, and you also need to do invoicing. And you need to do a bunch of admin work, et cetera, et cetera. But what you're really good at is the translation itself, and that's what you got into the business for. Well, these books teach you how to find people who are better than you or who either way let you save time by performing these tasks like marketing, like Administration, et cetera, et cetera. If you can find people to do this and then concentrate your time on what you're good at, then you'll be much further along and in a much better place. And the more you can create a system and find other people to handle the day-to-day activities, the better off you'll be. 37. How to Find Good Translation Companies: so usually where I start off its pros. Yeah, actually, it's the pros dot com blue board. Um, and I've mentioned this before, but first of all, pros dot com is the main translation website for freelance translators, and the blue board is where they list all the companies and they give them a score. In general, the scores should be around five or high fours. If it's anything lower like three and definitely 2.2, then that's that's a red flag. That's a bad sign. Um, for example, will take, you know, we'll take this one and see what it says. This studio erectile group. Um, it has, as you can see lately. So what it has is is Well, actually, it's desk married. It is. It's all a bunch of bad ones. At the beginning, you can see actually start off with a bunch of five. There was just 11 then another one here and then delayed our payment for years. Please cherish your reputation in the translation market. Apparently, they don't cherish it because a bunch of people have problems. And so anyway, let's do this. I want to do this again because I was contacted about a specific group called One Hour Translation, and I've seen this around quite a few times, so I thought it would be worth looking into. Here we go. One hour. Translation right away. We see they have, uh, they're based out of cypress, apparently, and they have a 3.8. This is not very good. And in fact, we see lately they have a debt to pay me since August, opposed to critical comment, including a new hybrid translation and with banned from their website without notice, although my last payment still pending. So it seems like they have issues with payment more than anything. Otherwise, these they're all good now. Usually, most agencies will just have five. Um, you know, that's kind of the standard on this website, and you get a different feel for different websites how they work. But that's how it usually works here again. Didn't receive payment. Um, advise them to redo translation to proof. Read the text was awful. I was blocked. As a vendor, that doesn't seem very nice. Unethical, unprofessional behavior. And so, yeah, these air, the bad things, obviously they're good ones as well. But to me, this is a red flag. When you see 3.8 in the past 12 months 3.2 this is not good once again, you know, usually here they're all five. Someone will give even if one person gives a tour one, you know, the rest of the five. And that's usually how it happened. So this is actually quite bad also, because once you give, once you give this, you can actually change it. So what happens is sometimes people aren't getting paid and they're like, Oh, this company hasn't paid me in three months or six months or whatever they give a one, and then the company does pay them because they want to get rid of that. And so they will raise it, you know, And they'll give it like a three or four and say, Oh, the company finally paid me. So I raised my rate. So the fact that obviously this company one hour translation has even bothered to try to follow up or try to raise these? That's also a red flag to me, Right? Um, so, anyway, and if you're not sure about this when you can also do is check the forums to see if anyone is talking about anything. Pros dot com has its own forums, and here you can search for one hour Translation that go until I did the search for him already. Um, and then you get to see a bit. You know what some people are talking about and, you know, you can just scroll around and see what it says. Here, Let's see what one hour translation that used to start working for low cost translation websites such as one hour translation for the Spanish prevailing blah, blah. So basically a low cost translation website. It seems like one of those websites that don't pay you much. They always lied. Don't seem to care very much if they pay you or not. And uh and yeah, so I don't know, to me, that's a couple of red flags. If you're still not sure, though, because, you know, it was kind of ambiguous. There were quite a few fives and everything like that. Then there are there are definitely other places you can check. Usually for me. The second place that I check is translators cafe dot com. If it would load. And sorry about this lately I've been having some issues, so and actually I should show you here one hour. Translation. I spelt it all cash. Maybe if you do like this, No. Sometimes if you do various different variations off of the company named some other things pop up like, let's try one hour. Translation. But no, these are all obviously different. So yeah, and pros usually does a good job of combining them when they should be combined into, uh, to one company. So here we go. And first of all, this is a very confusing website to me. So you'll forgive me if, but no. First of all, you can check the discussion forums. Um, and I never remember how to do out here. Do search, I guess. One hour. Translation go. Let's see what pops up. Uh, warring scammers pretend to begin. Go. I'm not sure. Maybe they're pretending to be gay. Ankle one hour translation dot com. I've checked a little more on While the two agencies named Genco have more or less the same set up working methods and payment schedule that websites are dissimilar and I may have made a mistake thinking that Genco is also one hour translation. Uh, well, they're not. They're different companies. I know that. And actually there I would head back to here because, as I mentioned, um, the prose is usually very good at combining different websites. You know, even when sometimes they do try to be different, try to come up with a separate name because their first name has a bad reputation. Um, prose dot com is good at combining them, but here it shows it's a different company. Uh, can go. Yeah. I mean, again, go. I've heard it before, so I do know. And anyway, so there you go. There's another place you can go if you want. Under translators Cafe. And if I find it, I think was under community as well. Yeah. Community Hall of Fame and shame. There we go. And this is this functions pretty much just like the blue board under pros on. And here you can see one hour translation, Except as you can see, they don't combine him. And I don't know, so it makes it kind of confusing also, because here we have one star and you have five stars now, actually. What? So I've been going at this for a while so I can notice a certain red flag here. And that said, this is an affiliate link an affiliate link. I mean, someone who gets paid to refer you to this company. So if I click on this and then I use one hour translation and end up doing business with them, this gets tracked. Basically, my, uh, you know, my I s p or something gets tracked, and this guy here gets paid. So any time there's an affiliate, of course, they're going to give it five stars because they want you to click on this website and use it. Um, but here I see two users have rated this one and have both given it apparently one star. So that's what I'm going to trust. I think more than anything, you can click on it. Um, you click on it and you get this. It seems like I haven't paid my dues to translate translators cafes. Actually, it's a free website, but yeah, you don't have access to everything when you don't pay. I thought I had access to the Hall of Fame and shame, but apparently I don't because I'm not a master member. So If you're a mass, remember, you can see more details, but either way you can see the rating they get now before I sign off that usually this is all you need to more or less. Get an idea, because these are both very translation specific pros and translators. Cafe. But if you're still not sure that certain other things you can do, you can just do exactly a search for one hour. Translation and review. That's what I usually do. Andi, you'll have here you have two things you have glass door and yelp, so glass door is, ah, website that rates them from the perspective of employees. So if you're working there and it rates how it is to work there and that's 3.2. So that's what I would trust more than anything. If you're gonna work for, um for one hour. Translation. Yelp, as you know, reviews it from the point of view as a consumer. And here it's 3.5, so you can make what you wish. I don't know if I'm gonna just click on it quickly. Just Teoh show you, uh, more less works. Great company and people currently anonymous employees um so, you know, this person seems to like it used to be a great agency no more. Um, amazing place to start a career quality, but it gives it three stars, so I'm not sure. Good, but she'll be employees inclusive, good service, messy management. So I don't know. You know, here, here it's a bit all over the board. So And actually, this shows you well, because many times I mean, look, if it's a scam, it gets quite obviously since scam when our translation does not seem to be a scam. But it does seem to be quite iffy. And so it goes back to the low cost translations. If it's low cost that maybe you can go for it. But otherwise I don't know. Um, here, there's one other place that I want to share with you. Although I really don't have much luck with this here. BB, This is a better business bureau. So this for companies in the States. It said it was based out of Cyprus, but for some reason they haven't listed here. Although it's not BBB accredited, but it gives it an A plus, and it has one negative. So this literally could not be more confusing. I don't know what's going on here. Composite Score 3.68 um, to customer complaints I really don't know what's happening. Let's click on the customer review to see what it says. Um, and you'll get an idea aware of, I guess, like that The numbers just robbed me. I've been working for Bobo Bobo Blah, and they gave a comment. You're clearly a translator for one hour. Translation is such a service provider suggested you contacted translators. So anyway, so this is precisely a translator working for them that had a problem with them. Let's look at the two customer complaints. Um, one year ago ahead document 150 words translated by them uh, pre estimated for, in her words, still paid bubble block. Anyway, this is the, um this is a client who had a problem with them. I purchase a certificate translation for this business and was given a time frame and and several mistakes that needed correcting and did not. Yes, so, you know, again, here it just seems like a low cost kind of thing. So what's your conclusion? The conclusion is always a judgment call right. If you're desperate for cash and your you know you'll want to work anywhere, then sure. Look up. One hour translation and see. But it seems like they're not very reliable. I would jump ship assumes you can find someone else. Uh, that's better. Here, I want to show you something that is a bit more. And this is a company that I had problems with. And so I'm going to show this just because I, uh I want to give them negative publicity and Retama can I mean, they're not in business anymore, Really? But so here I was working for Inter Tronto, and you can see inter tribals seems to be doing very well, has five and this is out of Spain. But inter Tronto or trade or whatever is, uh this one, based in Italy, has a very low score. And it's run by this lady from just ghajini. And I mean, it was basically a scam, and you can see it has ones, ones, ones. And it does have this five. But this five because then I remember clicking on this guy. One entry. It's obviously that this is a fake account or some friend of hers. Who? Who? You know, uh, wrote it up. But anyway, all the other ones gave one on day say, a terrible experience, such times so vain. That basically means you know, it Z company with no money. Andi. I obviously also gave it a one and eso what you can see here is this Outsource has been banned from posting jobs at pros dot com and that that's what will happen if you get too many bad reviews. And so, anyway, I do think pros dot com does a very good job. And that's why the first place I go is always. I checked the blue board of prose dot com, and so if I were you, that's the first thing I would do. Any time you hear about a new company, enter the name pros dot com slash blue board and enter the name here and see what pops up. Then you can do all the other research if you want to clarify it or what have you. But this is the first place to look 38. Going through Freelancer Emails: Okay, so today I'm going to go through some of my emails that that I get from freelancers. So what happens is, as I mentioned before, a couple of times, I'm a freelancer, but also hire freelancers. I basically have an agency now and hire a lot of freelances. So I've been wanting to do this for a while. I've been wanting to go through the emails that I get from prospective freelancers. These air basically cold emails from freelance translators who would like to be hired or would like to do business with my agency and imagine all agencies get thes and imagine you as a freelancer are probably sending something similar out. And so I kind of want to go through these, um and, ah, and you know, show some good points and bad points. Basically, I'm going to go through and kind of point out all the bad point. So you're gonna hear a mean version of me here, but I think it would be very useful to you guys. I wasn't sure how to do it, because my any thing skills aren't too good, and I didn't want to ah show people's names in the end I just decided to do screenshots of their emails. I figured that's, you know, the next best thing. Eso Yeah, here we go. Let's start off for the first email. So once again, these are emails that I really I receive unsolicited in my email inbox from perspective translators. So these are the emails that if you're emailing translation companies, you know, and trying to get higher if you're emailing, you know, 10 20 companies a day or whatever it is, these are the types of email you're sending out basically. So let me go through this quickly. Um, let's First of all, the thing that stands out is this is all centered. I have no idea why it centered, but that should not be the case. And ah, obviously something like this doesn't leave a good impression. It basically makes me think that, you know, they don't pay much attention to, ah, two composition and lay out, you know, probably not much attention to detail. And, ah, so yeah, you know, and things things like this are very obvious. And, you know, you shouldn't be doing them, but let me go through a bit more in detail after this um well, first of all, here, French freelance translator. I would say that's good, but usually want the language pair so french to English. I'm gonna soon because it's written in English. But, you know, I'm assuming here I don't know for sure. Um and eso is I feel it's always best if you write French to English freelance. Trent. The important thing is a language combination. French to English, English to French. Whatever it ISS, then here. That's going to the emails. Dear sirs and madams should be sir or madam trying. I am. I mean, name was redacted of Born in France 1965 in 1965. I've been working to freelance translators since i things that find I have got a lot of certificates from different universities in countries, masters degree in international relations, blah blah blah. So right off the bat, the English isn't bad. It doesn't sound like someone whose native tongue is English. Um, so I'm going to assume they translate from English into French. Uh, I'm a good computer user can deal with Microsoft Word Baba. My linguistic service offered. This just sounds odd. And plus here, I don't know if This is supposed to be a sad face or dot dot and then everything in parentheses. It seems weird. I mean, but fine. Also, Uh, anyway, uh, it should be services offered or my always translate from English English to France and should be English to French, and vice versa is Miss Belt, Um, for the next fields of specialisation should be for the following fields. So right away, this person, obviously I'm not gonna hire them to translate into English. Now, look, a lot of these mistakes starring big They might not have been caught by someone whose native language is in English, but always assume that whoever you're emailing their native language is whatever language, the 1,000,000 usually English. And so look, it should be in perfect English, if you're if you're more comfortable doing, say English to French translations, even though she says she does both. If you usually only do English to French, that's fine. But have someone look over it, you know, At least it shows that you do pay attention to detail and people don't want to see odd mistakes. And they definitely want to see this. Ah ha duh. Lay out here, then the rates are pretty high here, you know, 90 I mean, 10 euro cents per word. Ah, you know, these are all in the high end for everything. So I would expect Mawr, um, from someone you know who's charging so much. Now, many times when people charge this, it kind of doesn't matter because, you know, I could go back and say, Oh, only pay. You oughta know seven cents per word or something, and many times they'll say yes. Um, at least I've had that because whenever usually whenever I hire someone or go through a test, I tell him right away what my rates are. And then, you know, we we see if it's okay. But I've had it many times when I was sending these emails out that I would give a rate and then they have me, you know, go through all the steps and even go through a test and then tell me Oh, by the way, our rate is like five cents a word, and I'll be like, Oh, great. You know, you wait until now exist only anyway. So you know those air Basically, the issues that I have with this I I Honestly, this doesn't give me too good of a feeling just because the rates are pretty high. But there are a lot of careless mistakes here that I feel are easily fixable. Um And so there we go. Let's go to the 2nd 1 on. Get through these a bit more quickly now. Uh, so, first of all the subject, I have the required skills and ability to work in challenging work environment to fit into this position. I don't know what this is. Just put your language combination. This is really weird. And plus, it's not in fluent English. And so it just sounds odd because right away before even opened this I don't know what your language combination is. So you know, I don't And that's the main thing you want to convey. Because if I'm looking for someone who could do French English, then you know I'll open it right away. Anyway, Dear sir, dear sir or madam anyway, that no, that's fine. Ah, this application reference there where posted requirement posted unemployment for the position of Turkish freelance translator. I never posted anything. So like I mentioned, these are all cold emails. So it's weird to post it like that. I assume he's using some template he made from when there was a posting. And he just keeps that, uh, where he or she? I'm not sure. But anyway, it just sounds awkward. I have their quiet skills and ability, loba, Um, I have sound knowledge and understanding of the ideas and concepts between different languages and have ability to interpret them inappropriate manner. So this is broken English, but it seems like very kind of complicated sentences. I'm not sure why it's doing that. He should just try to keep it simple and not having sound so broken. Um, having said that, my main issue here is have someone who is first of all, change this here English, the Turkish or whatever. It is your language combination. And, um and also, I don't know what Frayer riches, but Oh, sorry. I think that's this. My all right, those This is mark on my screen. This is French, um, So, apart from Turkish, I have expertise in English and French. Um, so there's probably more information on the on the resume, but here, I'm not gonna click on any downloads until I know for sure that your legitimate and I'm interested in you just because you never know what's in the download. And you know I don't want to risk anything. So, you know, you should list here. What, exactly? You dio and too many people just put this Turkish, English and French. That doesn't mean anything. Turkish to English, English, Turkish took us to French, French to Turkish, English to French. Like which language combinations are we talking about? Right away. I don't think English is your native tongue. And so I'm gonna assume it's English to Turkish. But I'm assuming all this, and I don't know. So here, change this. Have someone read through this, Have an English native speaker do it. And, um and yeah, I mean deciding or language combination. Because you can't say that you could do it into English and then not be fluent in English. Let's take the next one. Freelance translator, Japanese English. Okay, that's better. And you have this. This means that in both directions, which always gets me if he But that just might be my issue. I prefer when you have just one direction, or at least you specify that you're better in one direction. Dear Sir. Madame, my name is so and so. And I've been working as a freelance translator for the last six years for the last six years. But fine. I'm very reliable and accurate. I'm very confident can deliver high quality translation. There's an issue with the formatting here, but, you know, that might mean I don't know. This doesn't bother me as much. Also, because it's short and sweet, Native in Japanese and language combination is English, Japanese, Japanese, English. Um, so here he specifies he or she am. I sure specifies, uh, native and Japanese. So actually, this isn't bad. Um, please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. I'll be looking forward to working with you. This, frankly, isn't too bad. Um, I would still have someone read over it and in a native English speaker. But otherwise I would you know, I will go forward. And, you know, you don't specify any race, which is fine, because as a language service provider, I'm gonna have my own rates. And, you know, the important thing is this and ah, and your field of expertise, then if I'm interested, then I'm gonna click on here, and I'll expect to see more information about your background or references I can contact and stuff like that. Um, but otherwise, it's fine just for this. Um, yeah. Like I said, sometimes I'm iffy about clicking on the attachment. So if you want to put your history of references in the body of the email, that won't hurt at all, but, um, but otherwise Yeah, There you go. So let's go to the next one. Ah, here. English to German, freelance translator, English, German, and here, Simplified Mandarin. I have no idea what this means. Ah, so right away, Okay. Any glaring mistake, by the way, in the title usually means I'm gonna delete the email. I get too many of these emails to, you know, notice a glaring mistake in the title, and then continue with it. So, quite frankly, that's a huge No, no, You don't want that. Just like you. Don't you know if you're applying for any job, you don't want spelling mistakes in your resume. I feel like I'm pretty relaxed with a lot of the stuff in the body of the email, but come on, this shouldn't be here because look, I don't you know here? Obviously there's a spacing issue because it's not the same, is there? Um, and then there's too much space here, and, ah, from terror from Germany territory with considerable expertise in different areas of translation fields. This is obviously broken English eso There are quite a few issues. I'm you know, I like a couple of them slide, assuming that this will be German to English. But I don't know what this simplified Mandarin thing is doing here, and so that's definitely a mistake notice. By the way, all these emails, none of them are directly to me. They always say to undisclosed recipients or just nothing. Which means they're sending these emails to, you know, 10 20 different providers at the same time. That's fine. I have no problem with that. You know, if I understand, you can't you know that you have to send it to everyone, especially if it's not for a specific job I'm offering, and that's fine. But, you know, that just means that you're sending this to 10 20 people with broken English and with that simple fucking meandering up there, So, uh, you know, make sure you correct that eso Here we have another one. This one? Yeah. English, Norwegian Polish. Now, this is kind of weird because you have a bunch off odd combinations. And if you go here, I'm excellent in the following parents Conditional region, English pollution, sometimes polish Norwegian, both of these. Both arrows that I don't like. I'm going now. I remember the person's name and it sounded Norwegian. I think it ended with sun or something. And so I'm gonna assume the person's Norwegian, in which case English to Norwegian will be their main combination. Also, the English will sound a bit broken. Eso I'll assume Polish, you know, English to Norwegian is the best. And I'll leave the polish out and ah, but I'm assuming all of this. I have to kind of deduce it. I shouldn't have to. You should be specifying this. Um, I understand you want to include as many language combinations as you can, and that's fine. But then at least put them in order, you know, And you can put my main language combination is Norwegian to English. I also work in blah, blah, blah, and then list them down here. And and then that's it. You know. And if you if you want to charge a higher rate for your main one than for your other ones or something, then you can You can do that as well. And, you know, see what works best for you. But I just for someone who has experience the language, served for provider who has experience dealing with, um, with other. Ah, you know, with a lot of translators. It's just sets off a red flag when you always see these, you know, so many language combinations, both every which way. It just seems odd. Anyway, um, have many notable skills that must be mentioned, such as So, you know, English is fine. It is a bit, um, broken, but yeah, it's fine, But still, that kind of makes me if he about all the language combinations. But, you know, from Norwegian to English, I might think about it, even though I had to do so myself is only if I take the time to go through it, which, you know, you could never guarantee that's the case. Because, like I said, you get a lot of these all the time. I don't know how many of these emails I'm gonna go through, by the way. But I just wanted to ah, you know, do some and see how it went. So we're, let's see, top quality translation into Turkish leave out top quality. Uh, you know, and it's obviously not talk quality if you don't even know how to do spacing here. I don't know what these underscores our and so yeah, don't Don't do that. Dear sir, obviously the spacing here is off. Don't say top quality when it's obviously not, um, so translation into Turkish eso. I'm gonna assume this person's fluent in Turkish, Um, although he or she only mentions it up. Their fields of expertise are all these ones, which again, seems like quite a few. But fine, you know, And here again, actually, what I would do is put them in or in the main order of business in law and state telecom. Telecommunications are your main ones. Put those in the top three and then just say, other areas of specialization, other areas of expertise, you know, something like that, and that's absolutely fine, but at least it's kind of ranked. By today, I can translate more than 2500 words. That's incorrect. English, I assume. You mean you can translate that many per day? I used tried owes will be frame maker And I guess that's the sentence. Okay, raise negotiable. I'm away Will vote for work full time, Boba. Anyway, broken English again. Have someone read over it. Get rid of this cause that sounds weird. And it's definitely not talk quality with them with the on mistakes. And just be more clear about what you're offering. You know, that's that's all you need with his emails. Just to be clear, I offer this in this language combination. These are my specialties. Boom. You can't include more information, you know. But otherwise, you know, just included in your resume. Another Norwegian. We have quite a funeral regions. For some reason, I feel like lately I've been getting quite a few Norwegian. Ah, freelance, freelance emails. I'm not sure why anyway, Norwegian into English. So this Norwegian into English. I like that because this is specified in English. But this also means I'm gonna expect perfect English. Dear Sir, Madame. Great. My name is Boba, and I'm very interested in taking part of your projects. Is a Norwegian linguist I believe I have the qualifications, experience and enthusiasm that you're looking for. Boom. This sounds perfect. This sounds to me like perfect English. And so I like it. Uh, my field of expertise include blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm by the way. I'm saying blah, blah, blah. I obviously read through these when I'm interested in something. Because, you know, if I'm looking for someone who is good at finance, I'll see here accounting and auditing. Okay, That's good business. Commerce. Uh, you know, I don't see finance per se, but I see something that ties along with it. So depending on what I'm looking for, exactly, this could be of interest anyway, So all of this is important. Um, moreover, I'm a hard working person with a strong professional. Okay, Right away there. You. I assume you meant professional something. Ah, but now I assume you don't have that professional something because you didn't include that email. An email that went out to quite a few people, apparently. Ah, so, you know, look over that again. Read over yourself. If you're not fluent, have someone else read over it. But this person apparently is fluent in English. and just neglected Teoh, you know, read through their own email they believe to prior is tasks. What else have very good eye for detail. Apparently, you don't because of that. See? And that's why you put too many odd details like this, and, you know, I can call you out on them. So, uh, anyway, blah, blah, blah. Here it goes. Uh, he hit. Returned one too many times, I guess. I don't know, um, blah, blah, blah. So, anyway, I would be fine, except for those odd things, Which means to me that this person does not have much attention to detail. And And I'm kind of iffy about that, too, because I like someone to be kind of, you know, paranoid about detail. Um, especially with financial translations and stuff like that, because you have a lot of a lot riding on in a lot of numbers. Here's the next one again in Norwegian freelance translation offered. German, Norwegian, English doesn't specify which direction. Once again. Hello. I'm a freelance translator. I'm interested in long term contractual contractual operations. So not native in English. Okay, I'm a native German. Okay, fine. Full time. Professional translator, languages, German English, Norwegian so here against specify English into German, Norwegian into German, you know, because I'm not gonna want to hire you for English into Norwegian. Um, and so you should specify which direction it goes into. Translation proof reading average daily output. That's fine. Now you're everything. The output. A lot of people add that and a lot of people ask for it. So that's fine. Added, if you want, obviously, and you know, it always seems weird to me because that obviously depends. Uh, you know, if you're working just on what I'm assigning you, then that's fine. But if you know two people assigned you something at the same time, Uh, then your daily output is going to be less. You know, this doesn't mean that you can't work like maybe I have something that's only like, 50 words, but it's a certificate that any translator and you get paid well. But, um, you know, if someone else has something that's 200 words, you know you can still do many smaller jobs, but then your average output is less so. I don't know. It really depends also, you know, a daily output. If it can depend if you're trying to type in an Excel sheet or in a word document or trying to, you know, do a balance sheet or something like that Anyway, uh, but yeah, this gives people an idea. So feel free to include I know a lot of people want that depending on the nature of the work. Yes. So that's good, depending on the nature of the work. Obviously, I cannot. No one was saying final type of CSTO Triandos immediately available. Any time you need. Just contact me. I'm we got to meet your request. OK, so, um, that's fine, But I would specify the languages and, um, I would also spent specify your specialization because I don't see that here, you know, finance, legal, whatever might be and have a native. You know, it's a certain theme here. Have someone read through them. It needs to be in perfect English for sending in the English for sending something in Chinese or Norwegian or Spanish. That needs to be perfect in those languages. But this needs to be in perfect English, by the way, even if one of your languages isn't English, um, it still should be in perfect English just, you know, just because ah, just if you want to sound professional, find a way to sound professional and you are a translator. So I'm gonna assume you know how to find a translator. Who can, you know, go over your stuff and edit your English. But, you know, definitely. If you include English there, you need to find a way to have it in perfect English. So anyway, hello. I'm writing to apply for the position of freelance English to Japanese translator. Once again, you can Ah, you can leave out translating job opportunities. I mean, fine, uh, English to Japanese. You don't specify the direction which again I don't like. Here's an extra space, but fine of many qualifications. Um, and many studies. So somewhat awkward English. I'm gonna assume that your expertise from Japanese or English into Japanese nine years of experience, my high qualifications, that skill languages, computer suffer you just kind of awkward English here. Um oh, in here. One of my clients said about me experienced good and reliable translator. Easy to communicate with fast and punctual one. Now, if you want testimonials, that's fine. In fact, that's good. Ideally within s and with the testimonial, you can put the name of the person who said it, or at least what company there in organization or something. Um, but I understand many times people don't want that, so that's fine. If you can't, then at least say, uh, just say, here are what some of my clients said about me. Here is the testimony or something like that. Then hit return, go to the next line and then have this as a quote and then under it you put either the name or put someone in so in so company, or put someone in the financial industry. You know, a client in the financial industry client working for a big bank, whatever it might be under it. Just so it looks cleaner also, because one of my clients said about me experience good and reliable, easy to communicate with fast and punctual one already. This sounds like awkward English, So I'm and that kind of makes me feel, if you like who's who is this one of my clients? I understand, even if you put it and make it look nicer, you know I could feel the same way, but I'm a lot less likely to because it just feels more professional. Eso uh, here. Like, I'm not saying the person invented it, but it still sounds. It just looks weird. You know? Just put it like a real testimonial. Um, big rate on introduce my language for a company. That's fine. Okay, so we'll ah, here. We only have three left. So why don't we just try to race through these? Um uh eso Russian Belarus in Trenton. Native translator here. It doesn't specify. You know this in tow. What? I'm gonna assume it's English because, you know, the they're similar enough that assuming it's not in between these two, but, uh uh, yeah, it's into English again. Doesn't specify wish direction with more than seven years of experience in translating in proof reading that there are several advantages that your company will receive while cooperating with me. Now this English is actually pretty good. It sounds a like a tad awkward, but it could be a native speaker. In a sense, they are as follows competitive racing, good profit for you as a result. A experience translator whose mother languages are both Russia. There. There we go. Mother languages, air both Russian and Belarussian on. And so right away. Um, you know, she should have specified here. Ah, you know, that specified in the beginning and put it even as a list or bullet points. You know, Russian or English into Russian and Belarussian are my native tongue. And then that's it. And, um anyway, ah, she specifies it here. So I guess that's fine. Um and yeah. So otherwise it looks fine. I would try to make it a bit more clear just because once again, so many people get so many of these emails that you really want to make it quick for them to notice. And luckily, this isn't Norwegian, so I haven't been getting a ton of these lately. Eso If I am looking for someone in this language combination, then I will read him more thoroughly. But, you know, you could just make it easier to ah, identify and just say English into Russian and ah, but I also work in the other direction if you want, and I can tell that you know, her English is great here, and it's ah, it's not bad at all. And so, you know, I'd probably trust her for both. I might want to have a quick edit of the English if she does it into English. But obviously, English into Russian is her main combination here. And that's what I'd be seeking her out for. Um, here, let's do Oh, yeah, this one. Just quickly. Right away again. The title Top English Danish German translator. No, you're not top anything. If you can't figure out that in the title, you shouldn't have that, Miss Spelt. So, uh, you know, I'm like I said before. I see that I'm not gonna even read the email, Unfortunately, and eso I'm sorry. Um, you know, try to make that correct. At least in the title, please. Last one Korean to English Quality is my number one priority. Now there's a space here, which again in the title you don't want. But I'm gonna choose to look, you know, overlook that for now. Do you? Seriously advertising for translators in all languages interested me very much now I never put up in advertisements. So again, this is odd. It must be some some, you know, stock email this person has from before since I recognize the new great challenge of my career. um, I will call five for Korean to English and English to Korean localization translation products. Um, as I've handled diverse projects and finance, business, finance, legal, I, T and other high tech fields is representing the attached resume. This English is actually very good, so I'm kind of inclined to believe that probably English is the native tongue here. Um, I don't remember what the name was or where they were based out of, but anyway, a za freelance interpreter translator regularly translate very spits. It's legal technical documents for the years, some good names again. Name dropping is good if you've worked with them. Of course, I might ask for references or something along those lines. So you need to be able to back them up, which I understand is a freelance translator can sometimes be hard, but, you know, if you can definitely name drop. Um, I've used trance capitals for five years, so this to me, seems like someone who knows what they're doing. This is very See how it's spaced out. It's easy to read. It doesn't have to be reading like it s a but each sentence is quick to the point and shows me something new touching on one cover my CB and one copy of a sample translation Boom. I already have a sample of English in the Korean. So now I'm gonna assume if Korean is his main languages, English is extremely good. And so or or, you know, he was smart. Has been doing what I've been saying and got in. Ah, a native speaker to actually edit the whole thing. Regardless, this get leaves a very good impression. I'm ready to tear out any test translation that you require my models. Quality is number one. Priority quality is the number one part, but fine. I can assure you to a very high quality translation and reliable service, so yeah, to me, this looks good. Definitely correct. That one. You want to do that? I mean, don't you don't I don't know. I think taglines I'm not sure what they serve. Maybe for marketing or something. I'm not sure it changes much of anything when I'm looking for a Korean to English translator. I'm not gonna be paying attention to this. I'm gonna be paged tension toe, You know, the business stuff. Um, anyway, but having said that, this is good if I'm looking for for an English to Korean translator, this again is someone that I, uh you know, I'm gonna look into I'm going to look at the sample translation and then, uh, gonna make my decision based on that. 39. Where you can get Translation Experience: Today's video will be about where you can translate to, where you can get experienced translating. And more specifically, where you can get experienced translating and you can get translations that you can then use for either your portfolio or as references and reviews and ratings and stuff like that. In addition to experience, these are places where you can translate. You won't get paid, but you can use it for everything else. You can use it to build up your resume and in order to yeah, exactly build up your profile, stuff like that. So let's go through them quickly because I get asked this question quite a bit and there quite a few sites that are good for this and that can give a lot of experience to translators and help them out when they're starting on their journey of freelance translation. Now the first one that I wanted to mention, it's Ted. Everyone's heard about TED Talks and all of these are translated using volunteers. So they have a website where it's TED.com, participate slash translate. And here you can see to translate as a global community volunteers, so subtitled TED Talks, et cetera, et cetera. So you just go to this page and you apply. Now, I don't know the exact process because I haven't applied, but I know other people who have. Maybe if you have, you can give us some insight. But as you can see, they have a 115 different languages. Chances are they have your language, they have something in your language that you can work on. You can definitely get experience here. You can put in your portfolio and you can use it in order to get future jobs because it shows something on your resume as well. And everyone has heard of Ted Talks. The next one is translators without borders. This is another big one and quite a few people work with translators without borders even after they've already started their career and established, many established translators work with translators without borders. And so this is, as it says, it's a non-profit working towards a world where knowledge knows no language barriers. And in essence, that's pretty much it. What it does is it translates as far as I understand for a bunch of different organizations. So here too, you can become translator. You volunteer to become a translator. And once again, just like with everything else, you can use it for your resume. You can use it for your portfolio, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, by the way, depending on who your point person is for each of these, you may also be able to get a review or rating if the person, if they're allowed to do it and if they're happy with your work, obviously. The next one, this one I actually, I just came across recently is the ancient history encyclopedia. And once again, they need a translator. So especially if you have, if you're interested, let's say in history or have that as a specialization, or want to have that as a specialization, this'll be a great place to go. And once again, they give you all the information here, telling you how to apply, email them, and there you go. So here's another one. So the next one is global voices. So yeah, this basically translates the news into all sorts of languages. As you can see. And that's this mission. And once again, it works with translators. And so you just go to this page and you can become a, you can fill out the form in order to volunteer and be a translator with them. And once again, I'll list everything down below so you can find this one as well. Moving along, this is for women and helping literacy among women around the world. And so here too, you can volunteer to translate and 6,380 volunteers. And once again, it's you can work for them. And I don't know exactly what their translations would entail. But once again, it's a place you can volunteer and you can find out for yourself. This is another website that everyone knows is called translate us. You just go to this website and then you can translate into different languages, including, by the way, this page itself, since it's only in two different languages here, there, which is quite odd. But regardless, the essence, Wikipedia is a definitely a great place to translate because it's full of material and I'm sure you can find some pages I need to be translated into your language somewhere. And once again, everyone knows Wikipedia as well, so you can definitely put it on your resume and everyone will recognize it at once. Kiva. So here's another one, Kiva, the website here is, it's pretty simplistic, but this is where you go to apply for volunteer and these languages is what they have opened now, it probably changes from time to time, so feel free to keep checking with it. But as of now it seems like they need translators in English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and then a team leader which I guess is a project manager. This gives you an idea of all these volunteer places and places where you can find chances to translate and stuff like that. But if you're still looking, even after all of this, you can just choose a website. So this is the website for Lugano region. Once again, that's where I grew up. And this is their tourism website. And as you can see, it's all in English here, but they have, they have it in these other languages as well. However, if you translate into, I don't know, Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Portugese than all of this could be an opportunity because they don't have it in those languages. And my recommendation for stuff like this is basically go through, say this first page and see you have here, you have a couple of sentences here, few sentences here, and here as well. Then you go down here, you just have titles. Here, you have some stuff, but I think it's just for these exhibitions. Anyway, regardless, the whole website here I think will be probably a page, a page and a half max on Microsoft Word. So just translate that for free and then send it to them and say, hey, I translated your frontpage for free. I feel free to use it and it's yours to use for free if you're happy with it, I'd be happy to translate the rest of your website for a fee and or to become your translator or whatever it might be and then see what the answer I'm not saying all of them are going to answer yes. But once again, this could always be a way to get your foot in the door for when they do want the translator, Even if it's not right away. And if you try this with a couple of websites, if you don't if you're not working on jobs right now, then yeah, you can translate a page, page and a half on Microsoft Word. It'll take you an afternoon or however long it takes you. And that way you can establish a relationship as well with various different websites as you do it.