“Nemo
aestimat tempus; utuntur illo laxius quasi gratuito.”
“Nobody takes into
account time, and they use it as if it were a free
good."
(Seneca – De Brevitate Vitae)
What's a freelance translator
A common and widespread assumption
among those who are not familiar with this job is
that being a freelancer implies more freedom of
movement than working as an employee. In practice,
you can work 'when' and 'if' you decide to.
First of all, many people still
do not have a clear picture of what a freelance
translator is and does; when asked about my job,
I simply say 'I am a translator', and most of the
askers reply: “what? And what does a translator
do? and how can you work from home, alone, with
no employer? and so on. It is often discouraging
to hear questions like that, as I have to sing the
same old song every time.
Why time is vital to a freelance
translator?
How difficult it is to start as
a freelance translator depends either from your
experience and the existence/non-existence of help
and support from outside you may trust in. But this
is another story. Let's assume you have already
got your business started and focus on TIME, which
leads us to another crucial word: ORGANISATION.
Unless you pay the required attention
to that magical word, I can tell you from my own
experience that being a freelancer will turn you
into a captive! Working as a freelancer does not
mean, nor it should, that you should have no time-tables
or any schedules to follow. On the contrary, the
more your freedom from any traditional employment,
the better you have to plan your workday and personal
life. Otherwise, the first risk you run is to be
so completely absorbed by your job as to say goodbye
to the rest of your life.
It is very common - and often justified
- for a freelance translator at the beginning of
his/her career to think that the most important
thing is 'working, working and still working'. Right,
we have chosen this kind of job because 'passion
drives us', most of us do not work well with fixed
time-tables, depending on other people to do our
job, going to the office every morning and so on.
BUT you have to set limits even to that freedom,
so you should start considering some kind of opening/closing
hours for your home office. I know it is difficult
to shut down your PC at 6.00 p.m. if you have a
job you are about to complete (only 2 pages!), but
you should follow the rule.
When and how many times
should you check your incoming e-mails?
Checking your e-mails frequently
is important, as your work largely depends on them.
If you have an ADSL connection, you usually have
no problem checking your messages frequently, as
it is often not necessary to establish a new connection
every time - and it is cheaper. Another good idea
would be to set an acoustic mail notifier that informs
you of each incoming e-mail with no need to visually
check the mail icon on the traybar on the bottom
of your desktop.
Of course, as the clients/translation
agencies a freelance works with may be located in
different parts of the world, you should consider
the problem of time zones: a good solution is to
set an auto-responder to your e-mail program stating
you are temporarily unavailable and will reply asap.
That way, if a client sends a message when you are
in bed at 1.00 a.m., he/she will get a reply, even
though not a human one!
Another rule you should follow
is: please, DO NOT WORK ON WEEKENDS: easier said
than done! Well, if sometimes you are obliged to
work on Sunday because you have to complete a very
urgent job, then you should try not to work at least
on Monday morning, in order to rest a while and
restore your profit-and-loss time balance.
In practice, you should establish
a sort of 'time budget' and divide your professional
time into, for instance, self-training (learning
new software programs, attending courses, language
seminars, etc.), dedicating some time to professional
forums1 and (most crucial) to marketing. The rest
of your time should be dedicated to private and
social life and, hopefully, to holidays.
In other words, you should organise
your time as any other business, in which there
are periods of hard work, during which you will
be unable to dedicate yourself to marketing, for
example, but, on the other hand, there will also
be periods of fewer incoming jobs. These are not
to be considered as a waste of time or a negative
thing: rather, you should take advantage of them
to do what you cannot deal with when ‘working’ –
i.e., public relations, marketing, compiling glossaries,
check your databases of agencies, etc.
An important side of planning consists
in setting your future goals: to pass a specific
exam for XX Language Association, to acquire new
customers, to improve your website - if you have
one – or to decide it is time to get your own website,
etc.
The administrative side
of your job
An important issue when working
as a freelance, is to organise the administrative
side of your work – i.e., invoicing, tracking jobs,
etc. If well-organised, it will be a good investment.
Therefore, you should establish an operative protocol
which defines every deadline, expiration dates,
etc. As part of this time-saving operation, you
should also prepare and update on a non-stop basis
a FAQ's list, containing all the issues/fixes you
incurred with. That will prevent you and/or other
people from wasting time while trying to fix problems
which have already been solved in the past.
As a general rule, you should establish
that invoicing is to be done at the end of each
month, so as to group several small and/or large
jobs together. But, of course, this dream does not
always come true, as rules may vary according to
each client and their requirements: one may ask
for the invoice on completion of EACH JOB, another
at the end of the month, a third one on 15th and
30th day of each month (Yes, I swear, it happened
to me!). And finally, client X wants to be invoiced
once reached XXX amount, and so on. And what to
say of those big translation agencies with multiple
Project Managers, each requiring his/her invoice
JUST for the job of their competence? It means that
if, say, in July, as you have done three different
jobs for three different PM's, you will have to
issue three different invoices! OK, still so sure
you want to be a freelancer? If so, let's move on.
Of course, the best thing is to
set a model of standard invoice, or more than one,
e.g. one for international clients and one for domestic
ones, containing the data of each client - name,
address, Project Manager's name, etc. So, you will
not need to prepare a new invoice each time; on
the contrary you will just change the job details.
As invoicing is important, you
should try to simplify the process in order not
to leave out any jobs. To do that, it is useful
to keep all the monthly PO's together, divided per
client, so you can track all the jobs done and add
them to the relevant invoice. Not every client sends
an official PO, so you should supply them with a
model to fill in and return to you. A PO is crucial
not only for tracking purposes, but, most importantly,
the evidence of the job the client is ordering.
So, please bear in mind that you should always ask
for a PO!
Sometimes dealing with invoices,
PO's, databases, etc. may be boring, sure, that's
not quite creative, and yet necessary. To be professional,
you should invest first of all in your time: every
'boring' task you may carry out now is likely to
improve your skills, so do not lose heart and keep
up your good job!
I hope you will find these few
tips useful and I would be grateful to get your
feedback (info@antotranslation.com)
about this article with any suggestion, criticism
and impression about its contents. In the meanwhile,
I wish you all freelancers a prosperous career 1.
1 Among the professional
forums for translators, Proz.com (www.proz.com),
TranslatorsCafè.com (www.translatorscafe.com)
and many others.
