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The Five Pillars of a Rock-Solid Freelance Career in Translation

March 27, 2024

The very first goal of any aspiring freelance translator is to land a paying client. The second is to earn enough income to get by without the support of family or an additional job. Most translators get stuck in the second stage, operating in survival mode until they burn out or change careers. Because they’re too exhausted (or disheartened), only a handful will step back and consider the good and bad about their jobs. Even when they do, they might not know how to turn awareness into action. This is what paves the way for a sustainable long-term career.

A common piece of advice is to ‘find your ideal client.’ Although well-intentioned, that kind of vague counsel has no practical use. What expectations can you realistically have for an ‘ideal’ client? How do you find them? How do you get them to work with you? Also, chasing the ‘ideal client’ holy grail can make you resent your existing partners if you’re too focused on why they are not ideal.

Every client has their strengths and weaknesses. What you need is a framework to assess them according to your career goals. Objectively.

Enter the Five Pillars of a Rock-Solid Freelance Career in Translation:

• Compensation: The hourly or per-word rate a client pays you.
• Portfolio: Referrals, testimonials, or public credits you’ll receive to help land more clients.
• Growth: Opportunity to learn from colleagues and managers or to progress within a company.
• Environment: Your relationship with your coworkers.
• Workload: How much work you can reliably get from a client per month.

Each pillar will be more or less relevant depending on your unique circumstances. Let’s take a closer look at them.

Compensation

No matter how passionate we are about translation, no one stays in the industry for long unless they can make ends meet. You’ll also need a healthy income to invest in Continuous Professional Development and, well, live a comfortable life.

While Compensation is—quite literally—the bread and butter of your career, it’s not everything. Never dismiss a client who pays slightly below-average rates without first considering what else they bring to the table. Another common mistake is to keep a fairly high-paying customer who offers uninteresting projects or prevents you from mentioning their name in your CV.

Instead of looking at rates as an absolute benchmark, examine your financial situation:

• Do you have financial backing from family or other income sources?
• How much do you need to cover your basic expenses?
• How much should you save per month for retirement?
• What kind of life do you envision in 10 years’ time?

For example, a $0.04/word rate in higher cost-of-living countries won’t be enough to pay rent, day-to-day expenses, and social security. In a country like Brazil, however, that’s a perfectly fine rate for most entry-level translators.

Portfolio

Let’s face it: anyone can claim ‘10 years of professional translation experience’ in their resumé. And what does ‘experience’ really mean? That’s why we have translation tests in the first place. However, considering that test assessments cost time and money, companies will look for clues that an applicant is a promising prospect. That’s where a strong portfolio comes in.

For the purposes of this article, ‘portfolio’ is understood as any proven work experience. That could be:

• Direct referrals, i.e. when a client personally recommends your work to another client;
• Testimonials, i.e. when a customer publishes a recommendation to your website or social media profiles;
• Credits, i.e. when you have screenshots or pictures of your name in books (for technical and literary specialisms) or credit rolls (for the audiovisual industry, including video games).

Examine each of your clients and consider whether they are able or willing to provide this. Otherwise, they should ideally score higher in the other pillars.

Growth

A freelance career is not a race to the highest-paying client but a marathon to keep yourself relevant as job market conditions change. New tools, technologies, business practices, and language usage constantly emerge, and you want to be around people who can enable your growth, not hinder it.

Growth is key in your early career when you must evolve as a language professional, learning translation strategies, grammar rules, business communication, research skills, and more. Failing too many tests might be a telltale sign that your language skills aren’t up to par with peers charging similar rates.

When analyzing growth opportunities from a client, consider the following factors:

• Constructive feedback culture: Do you regularly receive comments from reviewers or your agency’s clients? Are they generally well-based and an improvement over your original translation?
• New tools to learn: Are you required to master tools you aren’t familiar with? Are these tools relevant to unlocking new opportunities?
• Challenging projects: Are you assigned engaging projects that help you grow as a language professional?
• Career advancement: Can the company recruit you as an Editor, Language Lead, or Project Manager in the future if you’re interested in these full-time roles?

Environment

As remote freelancers, we tend to place too much emphasis on payment, deadlines, and workload and forget how people can make our jobs a lot easier (or harder). Respect is the very least you should expect from a working relationship. Don’t settle for clients who lash out at you over minor issues or give feedback from a place of arrogance.

Other than that, you may want to find places that allow for genuine exchanges with managers and peers, avoiding large agencies that have fully automated project handoff and delivery systems. You might also welcome the chance to connect with your colleagues in messenger apps like Slack, Discord, or Skype to discuss ideas and share memes.

Or not.

Maybe you’re distracted by constant pings and prefer to communicate through e-mail at your own pace. There’s no right answer. The trick is to identify the environments where you’re most comfortable and look for other clients that offer similar conditions.

Workload

While you definitely want higher compensation, a bigger portfolio, stronger growth, and a healthier work environment, the Workload pillar is a special case in that ‘more’ doesn’t always mean ‘better.’ In fact, you should use it as a balancing tool based on your assessment of a client’s other pillars.

For example, let’s say you love hanging out with your teammates, working for a prestigious client who offers plenty of projects and an attractive portfolio but below-market translation rates. Instead of entirely cutting ties with that client, you can negotiate a lighter workload that gives you enough time to pursue higher-paying customers. Establish a maximum number of words per week and see if they’re OK with that.

number of words per week and see if they’re OK with that. The Workload pillar can easily lead to a bottleneck that chokes the life out of your career. Many translators overwork themselves to meet a monthly income goal and don’t have the time or energy to secure more profitable business partners who enable shorter work hours. Ideally, you should spend a maximum of 6 hours a day translating or editing, with the remaining time dedicated to self-promotion and professional development.

What’s Next?

The next logical step is to locate clients who offer a better deal under the pillars you need. There are two ways you can go about this: trial-and-error and networking. In the first method, you’ll keep prospecting, assessing, and swapping clients until you find a sweet spot. With networking, you’ll reach out to people who have or are working with your prospective clients and ask relevant questions for your goals. Just keep in mind that small agencies with great working conditions typically have fewer available projects and more translators waiting in line for an opening.

Striking the Balance

I’m sorry to break it to you, but… you’ll never find the perfect balance. That’s because our needs constantly evolve, both personally and professionally. The Growth pillar may weigh less in your consideration as your skills advance. Portfolio might not be as critical when you’re known within your niche. Or maybe you have a kid on the way, making higher compensation and a lighter workload non-negotiable.

Rather than providing a ‘secret recipe’ to success, this article brings a structured toolset to pinpoint blind spots in your current clientele. Hopefully, it will enable you to make more informed decisions and navigate your freelance career with intent.