As a freelance language service provider, I collaborate with a mixture of agencies and direct clients. For the past few months I have been working on a very large project for one such direct client: correcting the English in a 100K-word doorstop of a manuscript. Eventually the book will be published in the US. It has probably been the largest project I have done to date, both in terms of its size and the amount of time it has taken to do. I was first approached by the client in July 2011, and we’re still going!
I have always tried to prepare myself and my business processes as fully as possible for the different requirements/questions/challenges that projects may involve. I’ve got rates sheets, quotation and estimate templates, checklists of questions to ask clients, etc. Nevertheless, each project is different. Perhaps because of its size and scope, this particular job has involved a lot of eye-opening moments. I certainly learned a great deal from it, and in this post I would like to share some of the most important points.

• Face-to-face meetings are invaluable
  

Although our profession is conducted mostly through the Internet these days, and quite effectively at that, whenever circumstances allow it is still worth making the effort see the client in person. When someone hands you a large project, such as a manuscript of their book, you can bet that it is important to them. I think one needs to be sensitive to that. By talking through everything involved in the project in a face-to-face meeting, it’s much easier to give the client the feeling that you are on top of things in terms of organisation, that you are well-informed, that you are on their side. In essence, you want to let them know that the project involves teamwork and you’re both part of that team.
Face-to-face meetings are also useful for getting all the details of the project straight. Making clear, extensive notes is helpful, as is sending a summary of the points discussed in the meeting to the client afterwards. The aim is to be unambiguous about every aspect of the job (see next point).

• Certain aspects of your job will be a mystery to the client

Some clients know exactly what is involved in a translation/editing/proofreading project, but many don’t. Unfortunately, they are unlikely to realise that they don’t understand something, and even if they do they may not tell you.
When I worked in a research laboratory, I attended many meetings where researchers proposed new inventions for patenting. 95% of attendees were also research scientists, but they often worked in different fields. On several occasions I overheard people commenting they had not understood this or that aspect of the invention, but always after the meeting and rarely in front of the presenter. People generally don’t like to admit that they don’t understand something. As a result, the presenters who took it down a few levels and did not make too many assumptions about what their audience already knew were usually more successful.
I think the same holds true in this industry, especially if the client is not an agency. Misunderstandings can easily occur if you don’t spell out exactly what your service does or does not involve, how long each task will take you to complete, which aspects incur extra charges, etc.

• You don’t control how your client manages their project

Ideally, the schedule would be clearly defined, deadlines would not change, the draft that lands in your inbox would be the final one, etc. However, how you would prefer to manage a project has absolutely no bearing on what your client does. If they keep amending the project schedule because of other commitments, the best you can do is keep insisting on certain minima (say, at least a week to translate x number of words) and hope the message gets through.
It’s worth bearing in mind that your client (i.e. the person you’re dealing with) might not even control how they manage their project themselves. They could be bound by what their publisher/supervisor/co-workers require. Other people may be revising the text, for example, but you might never deal with them. It certainly makes organising your own schedule interesting...

• You had better love the project, or at least know how to motivate yourself

100K words on one topic is a lot. Really a lot. No matter how interesting the topic, such a long project can make you feel weary at times. Deadlines are deadlines though, so it’s clearly important to find a way to self-motivate and to keep standards consistently high. Personally I prefer to spend a set number of hours on a large project every day, and intersperse those with different, shorter jobs for a bit of variety. Every 4-5 days I take a break from the large project completely to avoid getting stuck in a rut (see below). Obviously, every freelancer has their own way of making sure they stay sharp and on top of their work.

• Extra Quality Assurance steps to ensure consistency are important

When a project takes weeks or months to complete, it is inevitable that you will not approach it with the same mindset every time you take a seat at your desk. What might seem like a monstrously awkward phrase one day might appear perfectly reasonable a week later. Or you might find two different solutions for the same problem. For this project, therefore, I found it helpful to keep a list of recurring issues, and how I solved them. Regularly consulting an appropriate style guide (ask your client, or suggest one if they don’t provide it) is also crucial.
Another potential issue is getting stuck in “language rut”. I’m the first to admit that I have favourite words, expressions and turns of phrase. However, over a long text and with a repetition-averse language such as English, it’s a sure-fire way to send your reader (and possibly yourself) to sleep. The solution for me has always been to read extensively, especially material that is related to the subject I’m working on. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as finding a juicy new word or expression to use!

These are some of the lessons I've learned first-hand from working on a very large project. As part of your own work (or when you've commissioned someone to do a large job for you), have you noticed any other important points?

Essentially, our job in the language services industry is to facilitate international communication. We cross linguistic and cultural boundaries to help our clients get their own ideas across, or understand those of others. This holds true, for example, whether you’re an independent translator or whether you run an agency. However, when it comes to the relationship between the parties involved in the translation process, why is it that the word ‘alienation’ rather than ‘communication’ so often springs to mind?
Negativity seems to abound in this industry, with translators moaning about poor pay and ill treatment, agencies complaining about perpetually late freelancers, and clients despairing they don’t even know where to begin looking for someone who’ll simply get the job done, end of. Clearly something is going wrong and as is so often the case with a soured relationship, I believe a lack of effective communication to be at the root of this.
I’ve already written about why the relationship between independent translators and agencies can be a positive one. In this post I want to keep spreading that positivity and list some suggestions on how freelancers, agencies and direct clients can keep those communicative cogs well-oiled.

Freelancers ♥ Clients

• Provide feedback. Let your freelance suppliers know what you think of their work and services. Good freelancers are highly motivated, so they will use your feedback to help them improve further. Also, do share positive feedback with your colleagues - word of mouth advertising is very valuable to freelancers, who often don’t have a large budget for marketing activities.
  
• Respect the fact that freelancers have multiple clients and commitments. A good freelancer will always do their best to meet your needs, but they also have to stick to previously agreed deadlines. Also bear in mind that freelancers can’t be expected to stay ‘potentially available’ for too long, as the risk they run of losing money is high.

Freelancers ♥ Agencies

• Demonstrate that freelancers are more than a nameless cog in a vast system. They are all pretty strong-minded individuals, but they’re also easily pleased; a personally addressed email rather than a generic round-robin, an indication that you have noted what they specialise in, a thank you upon completion of a job will go a long way.
• Provide detailed instructions, and preferably all in one go rather than in an endless string of emails. Freelancers know that every client is different, so remember to specify what timezone your deadline refers to, what you want the formatting to look like, whether you want comments to be added into the text or written up separately, etc. It’s all in the detail.

Clients ♥ Freelancers

• Be clear. Just because someone asks you for a translation, doesn’t mean they know what it’s involved. Don’t get mad at your client’s ignorance, and don’t bamboozle them with industry-speak. Who cares whether you’ve got this or that CAT tool or you don’t like PDFs? Ask pertinent, practical questions and get the job done.
• Be impeccably, infallibly professional. Even a (very) small business is still expected to meet certain standards in the eyes of a client. Having a good website, a clear pricing structure and robust procedures to deal with every eventuality all make a freelancer appear professional. On the other hand, it only takes one customer service malfunction to appear amateurish and put the client off for good.  

Clients ♥ Agencies

• Remember the personal touch, especially in email communication. Part of providing a good service involves assuring the client there will always be someone available to help them. Make sure your quotes are accompanied by an email addressed to a specific person, and let them know you have considered all aspects of their specific request.
• Take the slack, even if it’s technically not your fault. The client entrusted the job to your agency and your agency only, so if something goes wrong it is your responsibility to fix it. Yes, it may have been the freelancer that submitted the project late, but that’s not the client’s concern. They rely on the your ability to select good suppliers, so pointing the finger of blame elsewhere will appear as though your making excuses.

Agencies ♥ Freelancers

• Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Freelancers are often worried about appearing unprofessional or even incompetent if they admit they’re stuck, but by suffering in silence and turning in something below standard you will truly shoot yourself in foot. Accept that even the best can be stumped sometimes, and be open to discuss problems in a professional, cooperative manner.
• Keep all the agencies you work with updated. Let them know if you are going to be unavailable for a while, what new PC skills or bits of software you acquired, etc. Although I haven’t tried it (yet) myself, you could send them a regular newsletter.

Agencies ♥ Clients
As I have personally never dealt with clients in this capacity, I’m unsure of what to put in this section! If you run an agency, do share your thoughts on what makes you love your clients.

Equally, I’m sure there are lots of points that can be added to the previous sections, so feel free to pitch in!

Translation agencies seem to cop a lot of flak. When I first started telling independent colleagues that I was planning on going freelance too, several warned against working with agencies. In the Patenttranslators’ Blog, Steve Vitek lets few opportunities go by to remind readers that he does not work for agencies. Both Steve and other colleagues cite reasons of unreliability, bad pay and bad conditions.

While I don’t doubt that there are less-than-professional agencies out there, or think that Steve & Co’s choice to only work with direct clients is not a valid one, I do find it unfair to dismiss working with all agencies in one fell swoop. The bad agencies, and the amount of time devoted to berating them on twitter and the blogosphere, give the good ones a bad name by association. For once, therefore, I’d like to do the opposite and point out why I like working with good translation agencies.

1. They do all the running for you
When an assignment lands in your inbox, the agency will already have done the marketing, negotiating, communicating, etc. Some minor issues over details or rates do often remain, but in my experience these are very easy to resolve. My only responsibility is simply to get on with the job.

2. They understand what our work involves
While it’s possible to command higher rates when working with direct clients, they usually don’t have much experience in dealing with the LSP industry. There are always exceptions, but I often find myself putting a lot of time and effort into explaining the ins and outs of commissioning a translation, why I need certain information, why a particular deadline is not realistic, etc. I see this sort of communicative work as being part of my job and I do it gladly, but it’s simply something I don’t need to do with agencies.

3. They take care of the external proofreading
While I obviously proofread my own work very carefully, it is good practice to get a second pair of eyes to look over your translation too. Any agency worth its salt will sort this out themselves, either in-house or by contracting another freelancer. Another time-saver for me.

4. The good agencies are not that hard to find
Although there are literally thousands of translation agencies operating, word gets around fast if an agency is particularly good or bad. I never agree to work with an agency before I’ve checked their Proz Blueboard entry. If I can’t find them on there, I just ask my colleagues. Hence, it never takes very long to get at least some basic info on what an agency is like to work with and whether they tend to pay on time. There’s really no need to work for the bad ones (unless you like having something to moan about).

So, while there are certainly agencies out there who pay silly rates, demand ultra-fast turnover or try to foist the responsibility of proofreading onto the translator, there are also many good ones. Once you’ve found them, stick with them; I go out of my way to maintain a good working relationship with the agencies I like. I hope that, in return, they like working with me.

To put this discussion in context, I felt compelled to write my post after reading GTS Blog's "Translation prices are dropping. How low will they get?" a couple of days ago. 

With alarming regularity I come across articles, blog posts or forum discussions lamenting the fact that translation prices are ‘plummeting’. Advances in Machine Translation, dastardly translation agencies working to ever-narrowing margins and a handful of unscrupulous translators undercutting everyone else are usually cited as the perpetrators of this ‘problem’. Whenever I see these posts, I can’t help but recall a phrase an American friend kindly taught me a few years ago: “Would you like some cheese with that whine?” 
Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting that low translation prices do not exist (a look at www.Proz.com confirms that there are indeed some pitiful ones out there). Nor do I propose that we should all be lowering our rates accordingly. However, I also don’t think that translation prices ‘going down’ is necessarily a problem. I think it could equally be intepreted as progress.

What many translators seem to forget is that the language service provider (LSP) market has to develop like any other. Take the way prices for consumer electronics go down, for example. I own a smartphone, an e-book reader and not one but two LED monitors. Five years ago, however, neither the market nor the technology were sufficiently developed to make these kinds of products generally affordable. But do you now see the electronics companies weeping into their cups of tea over falling prices? Of course not, they’re too busy thinking about how to continue to innovate, bring their next cutting-edge product to market, and stay ahead of the game. By doing so, they shape the market themselves and lower prices do not necessarily mean a lower income.

The LSP industry is no different. Failing to innovate as a translator would be akin to following the example of the music industry in digging in its heels against the online dissemination of music. The only outcome is to be left behind, whine about the unfairness of it all and ultimately go bust.

So what can we, as language service providers, do to make sure we shape our own market and make sure that falling prices do not affect our overall income? 

• Prove your worth - If we truly believe our services are worth more than average, then the onus is on us to prove to our clients that this is indeed the case. We need to be the luxury car, the gourmet burger or the designer dress of the LSP industry. How do we do this? By creating a strong brand, by providing excellent customer service, by getting certified/accredited, etc.
• Embrace change - This includes technological developments like Machine Translation. Rather than fearfully eschewing these tools we need to figure out how to use them to our advantage, lest they become an excuse for our clients to pay us less than we think we’re worth.
• Innovate & diversify - If you call yourself a professional translator, is translation really the only service you’re capable of offering? Surely we all have more linguistic strings to our bow and can provide editing & proofreading, terminology management services, translation teaching, etc. And what about all that background cultural knowledge we have? It has ‘consultancy’ written all over it. We need to make the most of the skills we have, in much the same way as consumer electronics company Sharp has gone from making calculators to LCD TVs to solar panels all on the back of the same expertise in semiconductor technology. 
• Be flexible - When the market/client/sector you've always relied on goes belly-up, change tack and find an alternative. Freelancers especially can take advantage of the fact they don’t need to work their way through multiple corporate strata to make changes to the way they operate.
• Keep calm and carry on - The language service provider market is not about to collapse. Many of my colleagues, including those without particularly rare language pairs or niche specialisations, continue to stick to their guns and charge high rates. They never seem short of work, because they know how to be the best at what they do and more. In the end, then, 'falling prices' don't seem like that much of an issue.

In a past guise as an in-house translator, I was once asked to outsource a job that we couldn’t do ourselves. It provided a very interesting opportunity to see things from the 'Other Side' - that of the client.

The job in question involved the translation of a Chinese electronics patent into English, making it highly specialised. I didn’t know anyone personally who could do it nor did I have any recommendations, so I had to turn to the web and find an agency or independent translator. After getting quotes from two agencies and one freelancer, I ended up placing the job with the latter. Some of the reasons for this decision were personal; I can’t help but be a little biased towards freelancers. Nevertheless, during this outsourcing process I made some interesting discoveries that I think are worth sharing.

1. It was surprisingly difficult to know where to start finding someone 

Googling “Chinese translator” or “Chinese to English” is probably the most obvious way to go about it, but it annoyed me. The first page of results shows only online and machine translation tools, with the first agency not appearing until the bottom of the second page. I did eventually pick two agencies from the results, but I realised that a google search was not the way to find a freelancer. Instead, I found someone through the Institute of Linguists’ Find-a-Linguist service, where one can search based on language pair, specialisation and location.

What struck me, however, is that this is quite worrying from a freelancer’s point of view. Freelancers can rarely afford the Search Engine Optimisation that would get them higher up on the Google search results, but how many corporate clients outside of the translation industry really know about the Find-a-Linguist service, Proz.com, etc.? Not so many, methinks, which strongly suggests that the onus is on freelancers to be incredibly inventive and proactive in marketing their services to direct clients.

2. Few freelancers have a website that is actually helpful

This really surprised me. Whenever I want to buy a product or service, the first thing I do is Google for a provider. Their site has to be nicely laid-out, easy to navigate and full of the information I need in order to get my custom. This all sounds very obvious, but in my search for a freelancer I came across sites that were full of lengthy text and theory on why it was important to use a properly qualified translator but which failed to tell me what was actually involved in commissioning a translation from them. 

As a potential client who’d never commissioned a translation before, I wanted the practical stuff: what exactly they specialised in, what their modus operandi was, and how much they would charge me. Agencies are much better at explaining what the client can expect when they place a job. This is definitely something freelancers can learn from.

3. You never really know who you are getting with an agency

As I mentioned, the translation was highly specialised in that it required someone who was familiar with both electronics and patent legalese. I expected to have to pay a premium for this. However, one of the agencies gave me a quote that worked out to a dismally low rate of about £60 per 1000 words. It made me wonder what on earth would the translator end up with?! More importantly, what translator qualified and experienced enough to deal with a Chinese electronics patent would accept such a rate? I decided that I simply couldn’t trust the job to be done to a high enough standard for such a price, and refused their quote. 

One thing that works to a freelancer’s advantage then, is that we can use the more personal nature of our business in combination with our demonstrable qualifications to prove to a client exactly how suitable we are for a job instead of asking them to take this on trust. In addition, daring to charge a premium rate for a premium service rather than always trying to undercut our rivals in the way many agencies do can also work in our favour.