How to become a freelance translator and travel the world

***START OF SELF CENTERED BLABBER***

I was 18 when I decided.

At the end of my first ever assembly chain night shift, 8 hours in rubber parts manufacturing hell, I decided. I was going away, going somewhere far, and different, somewhere where I could learn, grow, feed my hopes for an extraordinary life to come.

And so I went to Dublin, learned a language, got my solo traveler feet wet.

During the past 9 years on the road, I’ve seen so many people having to leave a paradise right when things had started happening for them, right when they fell in love, or found adventure, true friends, and a perfect lifestyle, to go back to rainy England or some boring little hometown to work a shitty job they were hoping to find, probably moving back in with mum and dad, to make enough money to come back to paradise.

I have been incredibly lucky and made it, in less than 2 months, getting established and making a living from freelance translation. Maybe I can help somebody else to hold on to their paradise and find a dream job that will let them be free, live anywhere in the world, stop or stay as they please.

The cons? Honestly, I could bullshit you about tight deadlines, long waits for payments, inconsistent flow of work, endless boring hours typing away while the world is partying right outside your door and you can hear it even through your earplugs. But honestly, there is no cons. This is the best job in the world.

Damn, I think I just found a better one! Check this out!

If you still want to give translation a shot, read on!

***END OF SELF CENTERED BLABBER AND START OF THE REAL USEFUL STUFF***

HOW TO BECOME A FREELANCE TRANSLATOR AND TRAVEL THE WORLD

Choose your language pair.

One thing very few people know is that a real professional only translates from a second language into his own mother tongue. Only this way you can provide the quality expected in the translation market.

I work from English (and rarely from Spanish and French) into Italian. I've spoken English for 9 years straight, but reading through this blog you'll still find mistakes and expressions that give me away as not being English mother tongue.

Visit these websites:

www.proz.com (biggest translation portal in the world, it collects all professionals, agencies and many job offers).

You need to pay 120 Euros a year or so to reply to the job offers. It is well worth it.

Read the Forum “Getting established”. Start answering some Kudoz questions to be known in the industry by colleagues and customers.

Start putting together some contacts searching the highest rated agencies in the Blueboard section (http://www.proz.com/blueboard).

Focus on agencies in the country where your mother tongue is spoken, but also check the big ones from USA, England (they pay very well and are very professional) and Asia (like singapore, big volumes of jobs, mostly electric devices manuals).

www.guru.com (freelancing job offers)

Free to join. Many offers, but not just for translating. Also programming, graphics, writing and editing. Bid for a low price, and you will probably get the job, even with no experience. Usually small projects, very good to start. That’s how I started.

www.translatorsbase.com (translation job offers)

You need to pay (around 100 Euros) but you receive a good number of job offers, and little competition.

Get some online feedback (positive!) from your first customers, it’s gonna help you get new jobs and establish on the market.

Create a good CV in all the languages you work with.

If you have zero experience and no translation degree, it’s going to be harder, but it can be done, I am living proof!

Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise and do not listen to negative people. Some people are just trying to hog all the work for themselves or justify all the years they spent studying making sure no mister nobody without a degree becomes more successful then they are (and rest assured I am not saying that a degree is not the best way to go. If you can, by all means, get one).

Check out this post:

http://www.proz.com/forum/getting_established/254207-volunteer_translation_work_to_gain_more_experience_suggestions_needed.html

I also did some work for this site, I like it a lot:

http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

I know how tempting it can be to pump up your CV to make it more appealing in this digital era of faceless interaction. I am not suggesting you do, mind me, but if you do be ready for the consequences.

If you do exaggerate your experience, be ready to offer big discounts when and if you make mistakes or if you deliver a low standard of quality.

When I started, I learned on the field, and it took a lot of mistakes, discounts, and swallowing up my pride in front of angry emails.

Usually a sincere apology and a big discount or in some cases the waiver of the full rate (if you really messed up) can solve the situation to both parties content. The customer gets a free, if lacking in quality, translation, and you get the experience. Also, a professionally revised translation full of red marks is the most precious gift you can get, at the beginning. It’s still freaking scary when you get it in your inbox, but it’s something we all need to go through at the beginning. One day soon you’ll be able to send out work without any fear of quality issues, and it will feel amazing. But it’s not going to happen on week one.

So, about the CV. You can use this template to get an idea:

 Curriculum Vitae

Name: XXXXXX

Born in : XXXXXX

Date : XXXXXXXX

Address: XXXXXX

XXXXXX XXXXXX XXXXXX

Tax ID XXXXXX

E-Mail: XXXXXX

Native language: Italian

Language pair: English > Italian

Specializations:

• marketing, IT, SAP, videogames, software, poker and online gaming
• medical, medical devices manuals
• contracts and patents, code of conducts
• finance/financial statements
• tourism, multimedia, e-Commerce

 Education:

XXXXXX

Work experience:

XXXXXX

Pro-bono cooperation with ICDLBOOKS (International Children Digital Library)

Availability: Full-Time

Software:

Trados 2006, SDL Trados Studio 2011, Transit Satellite PE, SDLX, Idiom, POedit, XTM, X-Bench, iQube, MemoQ, OmegaT, MemSource, Xara X, Dreamweaver

Sound knowledge of HTML

My Proz profile: XXXXXX

Payment methods accepted:

Bank Wire, PayPal, Skrill

References:

XXXXXXXXX
XXXX
XX

Mr. XXXXXX from Translation Agency XXXX

Link to references on translatorbase: XXXXXX

Link to Proz WWA feedback: XXXXXX

Use a “good boy/good girl” picture. It’s very important they can see your face, as they will probably never meet you. Send out a lot of CVs... the answer rate is around 2 or 3 %, so send at least 100 if you want 2 or 3 answers. I sent 1000 when I began. I got my first 10 customers or so like that.

Find contacts through the Proz blueboard. Try to avoid writing to low rated agencies, you’re gonna have a hard time getting paid.

Make sure you send the CVs out pasting the addresses in the cc: field. Customers don’t like to see a mass email message sent to them and all of their competitors.

Put your source and target languages and the rate in the object of the message. Better be low, to start, they don’t know you and that’s the only thing you can offer to begin. These are all English-speaking agencies, so send the CV in English. Have the CV revised by a mother tongue before sending it out. One spelling mistake in the CV, and you are out of the game ;)

RATES:

Translators get paid from as little as 0,010 to as much as 0,20 euro per source word, depending how good/bad they are, how fast, whom do they work for, experience level and marketing capacities.

I think an average rate today, competitive on the market, goes from 0,04 to 0,06 euro/source word.

I started with 0,02/0,03. Now I have customers that pay 0,10 euro/source word. But I still work for my best and oldest customers at 0,04 euro/source word. I try and raise my rate 0,005 Euro per year, usually, at least when I am marketing for new customers.

For proofreading, I charge half of the translation price. But it’s better to get some experience before proofreading the translation of another pro.

SOFTWARE:

You are going to need these software to start (I know it's expensive, but many agencies will not consider you without this tools):

SDL Trados Studio. This is the Bible of Translation software. You can download the demo here: http://www.translationzone.com/products/sdl-trados-studio/free-trial.html

A good dictionary for every language you work with (I use digital dictionaries).

Microsoft Office, complete with spellchecker in your native language.

Dragon Naturally Speaking, if you want to use dictation to write (speeds you up to three times... three times more money, I would think about it after a while you’ve been working and begin getting established).

Note: when you use Trados, clients ask for a “Trados breakdown”, which is a lower rate for repetitions and fuzzy matches found in the Translation Memory. Many customers will give you a document to translate, and a TM to use in Trados.

My Trados breakdown is as follows:

100% matches and repetitions: 25 % of full rate

99 to 75% fuzzy matches: 75 % of full rate

75 to 0% matches : 100 % of full rate

Tips and tricks that worked for me:

Answer to the emails immediately, possibly within one hour max, at least at the beginning. Be extremely available and polite. Start EVERY TIME with Dear (Surname of the customer) and end up with Kind regards, (Your signature), even if it takes time and you are in a hurry. Answer every time, even just to give a confirmation of receipt.

At the beginning, you’ll have to do a LOT of translation tests for free for new customers. A normal test is no longer that 350 words. You will get feedback, and probably some ass-kicking, at the beginning. Check every single comma, double space, capital letter and punctuation mark in the tests and in the translations you send out. They should be perfect.

If a good customer asks me to translate a sentence from time to time, just a few words in the body of an email, I don’t charge for it.

I occasionally apply discounts, but usually just for big volumes, like above 20000 words.

ALWAYS respect the deadline. I usually deliver at least 12 hours in advance, just in case there is any problem to fix.

Well... this should be it. I know it’s a lot of information and it can feel quite overwhelming, but don’t let this discourage you.

So here is some more encouraging data:

You can make a very good living with this job, an average of 1500-2000 Euros a month, if you work well. Bring that to India, and you are practically a millionaire.

During my most successful month, on the second year as a translator, I worked my a** off for the whole month of August and made enough money to chill on a Thai tropical beach for one year.



Somehow time went really fast... 

You could be making a living and on the road, travelling the world, in 3 months, if you are willing to invest some time and energy into learning this job and don’t let the bumps in the road stop you from succeeding!

Best of all, you can be your own boss, becoming truly free and independent, which is really worth a million dollar.

Best of luck and see you in paradise!