Do freelance translators, like blondes, really have more fun?
More fun, say, than those toiling away in an agency office, punching time clocks and picking up a paycheck? More fun than translation agency project managers, juggling a raft of clients, translators, proofreaders, editors and such?
Working from home, setting one’s own hours, not having to report to a grumpy boss – all part of the universal dream of being self-employed. Even better, being self-employed in one’s own field, providing language services on your own terms and at your own price.
Like everything else in the working – and non-working – world, there are always choices to be made and advantages and disadvantages to be weighed. While the advantages to being a freelance translator are obvious, and there are many more than the ones noted above, there are also many disadvantages. Unfortunately one often does not become aware of them until that nice regular paycheck is no longer coming in.
Five Things No One Ever Told You Before You Quit Your Day Job:
- The vast majority of your time, at least in the beginning of your new career, will be spent trying to secure work. And this time spent will be frustrating, trying and depressing.
- Most of the translation work you do get early on will be at shockingly low rates. Despite the usual advice you’ll be getting from other, “established” translators: take the job! You need to build up your portfolio and, even more importantly, to start learning the nuts and bolts of the industry. You can, and will (assuming the current economic situation turns around) raise your rates as you gain more experience and references.
- You will soon discover how much more demanding a home-based business will be. This is true not only because you will now have to be handing all your own administrative chores (invoicing, phone and email work, banking, taxes, etc.), but people – and this includes your family – tend to take your work, time and professionalism not quite seriously.
- Believe it or not, you really will miss the camaraderie with your co-workers. While you will certainly develop online relationships through the translation portals, your clients and translation agency project managers, there are some things they cannot provide. Gossip, for example. Seriously. The ability to interact with colleagues on a social, as well as professional, level provides us with valuable reinforcement, community and pleasure.
- You will be working much longer hours. Your marketing time is a part of that, but, once you do start getting translation jobs, you will most certainly learn the mantra of every new freelance translator: Never Say No. Since you quite literally don’t know when your next project, and payment, will be turning up, you will, from time to time, accept jobs which overlap or have ridiculous deadlines, turning your previous 8-hour workday into one that may, from time to time, run to 24 hours.
Despite all these caveats, for some of us there really is no choice. We would trade all the above negatives for the joy of working with the language we love and, yes, the joy of being independent.