There are several things you need to think about when you start working as a freelance translator.
One of the important things is to reflect on what you know about the world and this has nothing to do with the language degree you have just earned at your university.
Before university study of a language or languages, what were you good at in school? Did you like Maths, Physics or Botany? Or were you better at amateur dramatics or editing the magazine of your school or university. Are you interested in religion or history or in any other non-language subject? Art books often have to be translated and a knowledge of art and also its history is something that can be developed over an entire lifetime.
What are your personal interests now, apart from languages?
It will be no good your advertising yourself as a freelance translator if you cannot tell the translation agencies what are your specialities.
If you have facility in writing, you could fulfill the agencies need for commercial and advertising translation. If you are interested in the environment and ecology, you should study those subjects in your spare time, to keep up with the latest development.
The same applies to technical translation, where changes are occurring at an ever-increasing rate. Technical translators have often worked in a particular industry for some years and have spent some of those years in a foreign country, where they learned a foreign language. They were probably trained as engineers but after ten or twenty years they have decided that working as a freelance translator would be more attractive (no more boss to tell them what to do) and their previous experience and training opens the door to technical translation. They have learnt the correct industrial vocabulary in both languages as a result of their practical working experience.
Other technical translators can be people whose main education was in languages but who have also become interested in technical subjects, perhaps as a hobby, and this can be developed.
Other translators specialize in medical, legal or financial translation. Here again, usually they have worked in the profession concerned, often abroad, but after half a lifetime they have decided to free themselves from organizational constraints. These people are particularly valuable to translation agencies and to end-users, since they are professionally qualified as doctors, accountants, lawyers, etc.
Freelance translation gives you a lot of freedom on the one hand - you can choose at what time of day you are going to work - and you sometimes need to work until 2 o'clock in the morning or at weekends, but the great thing is that you can decide what you are going to do and when you are going to do it.
When starting out as a freelancer, if an end customer or a translation agency sends you a text to be translated which is outside your competence (and don't worry, this happens to translators who have been twenty years or more in the business) you should politely tell the customer that you cannot do it and why. You can send the customer an email in the following week, listing your specialities.
This brings us on to advertising. Almost all freelance translators have to advertise themselves in one way or another. Sometimes registration with one of the big translation institutes is enough to bring in enough work, but that mostly applies to people who have been in the translation business for several years.
For people who are starting out as freelancers, it is usually better to be registered with translation and/or interpreting directories, where customers can find you and from which you can obtain a list of translation agencies to which you can send emails, showing your languages, your specialities and the customers you have worked with.
As translation agency manager, I receive several emails from freelancers every day and I reply to them, often asking for further details. If you send a CV with your email, make sure that your include on the CV your postal address (including the country you live in), telephone number, email address and your price per source word in one of the world currencies (Euro, British pound, US dollar). Of course, don't forget to include your specialities in your CV and a list of customers for any large translations you have done recently.
A translation agency which is interested in your application may ask you to translate a short sample text, about one page of 200 to 300 words. Make sure to send this test translation back to the agency as soon as possible.
Some new freelancers telephone to translation agencies, looking for work, but email is usually better. Agencies prefer something in black and white - it makes it easier to put your details on their databases.
Nobody knows how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of freelance translators there are in the world today, but there is always room for another one. So keep going - send out your emails!
Author Resource:-
Oxford Translation Ltd provides technical translation from and into any language. Our translators have practical working knowledge of the industry or profession concerned.
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