The market is always changing – get over it. We put this point first because it has to be accepted from day one. All of us started our way in freelancing and we can say with certainty that if we work for cheap, there won’t be enough to live on, and if it’s expensive, we’ll have to deal with competitors. According to the experts in our ILC Progress translation courses, low stakes in the beginning will continue to push translators to cooperate with specialized translation agencies, to work directly with clients, and to engage in activities that machine translation is unlikely to replace. More and more people are working in translation. If you go into this field, you can’t beat the market, so accept this fact from the start.
If you’re planning to work with a translation agency (ever), read translation agency ratings, or find a way to check out potential clients and agencies. It often happens that a beginner translator tells our teachers of online courses for translators that a client has not paid for their work, and we show this company in a few minutes in a “black list” of non-payers. Never start working with a translation company without checking their ratings.
Assess whether you can work with direct clients. Some newcomers successfully cooperate with clients directly, but make sure that you do a really good job, do not worry about translation, and keep all the related processes under control. For example, if you’ve been on staff for years, you’ll quickly achieve success by going freelance. Some industry translators (Buddhism, skiing, musical instrument making) have to work directly with clients for lack of work in their field from a translation agency. Therefore, according to our online translation course experts, assess your strengths and make the right decisions.