By Leonardo Faig

Translation is a deep and wide area where we have to deal with every kind of information. We have to adapt ourselves and read a lot to be updated with different fields within our world.

There are basically three ways of doing this job. You can work as a teacher, helping other people to develop their translation skills and other kind of information like practical classes of translation; You can work with a company, having a salary and working in a scheduled shift for some kind of corporation; Or you can work as a freelancer. Freelancers don’t have a boss. They work by themselves and they receive 100% of profits. They can do their translations in any time they want (respecting the deadlines), with a lot of clients and inside their homes. The three ways of working with translation have its pros and cons. Now we will focus on the freelance translator.

Freelancers has one tough goal: make a lot of contacts. Normally, they start working for free (or with very low prices) in websites like TranslatorCafe or Proz. You can receive more visibility if you get a lot of work. The first years are always harder. It is difficult to prove to people that you can do a good job (if you actually can). This is an area of connections. It is important to update your LinkedIn regularly as well. You can receive interesting opportunities there.

One very good tool to freelancers are the CAT Tools. And there are specific tools for people who work by themselves. One of those tools are the SmartCAT. SmartCAT is a free-to-use CAT Tool where you can optimize your work, create a TM (Translation Memory) and organize the translations in different fields, for example. But of the best things in CAT Tools are the fact that you can use a option to make contact with your client through a chat. If the client has any doubt, it will be solved instantaneously via chat. You can talk to the person asking for some guidelines if something in the source text seems weird or without coherence. Another interesting feature inside SmartCAT is the fact that you can find jobs for freelancers inside the platform. This is really interesting and a different approach to the job. You don’t need to depend only on Proz or other websites. And they have a lot of linguistic pairs in SmartCAT. With these tips, it is easier to find new clients and start to create a base for your career. Now we have another question: After we get some clients, how do we retain them?

Finding clients is just the step one. It is important to create a relation between translator and client so you can trust in each other and do future arrangements. Firstly, try to treat your client with good manners and respect (but make sure the person also respects you and your job). A lot of people have the problem to depreciate freelancers and their job, trying to pay less than they actually would have to. Secondly, it is important to make a bond between you and them. The are a lot of different ways to do that. The use of chat inside SmartCAT is one of the ways. You can also keep the contact in your LinkedIn profile or even Facebook if you have an account for your profession. Always try to show them they are important and you care about them. Another really important piece of advice: Always respect the deadlines.

The deadlines are the most important thing for a freelancer. If you don’t respect it, you will have problem to gain their trust. Of course that the trust have to be mutual. We can think about the case of receiving the money from the client. Since we don’t know if he/she will pay us for sure (except when we already know the person), the best approach to make a win-win for both of the people involved is to charge half of the price before the translation and the other half after the job is done. You can try to put in the client’s mind that the trust have to be mutual. The secret in every aspect when you deal with people is knowing how to communicate.

When we gain trust from the clients, we start to receive recommendations. This is important to develop a network. You work for some person; this person likes your job a lot and the way you treated him/her; you respected the deadline and charged a reasonable price. It is almost sure that this person will work with you in the future and also tell other people about your work when someone he/she knows need some help. And networking is the most important tool that feeds the freelancer. Having contacts is everything here. Try to invest in a durable relationship between you and them, and you won’t have problems trying to retain your clients.

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