Tag Archives: translator

Translator Charges, Rates and Fees Poll

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I made the below poll because many new translators applying to my translation agency were asking what they should charge. I drew the rates data from my database of more than 15,000 translators who had already applied (until Sept. 4 2014), the remaining data submitted to this poll directly from this website (since May of 2009).

Note that rates charged to direct customers are generally higher than fees charged to translation companies. The % is a wild card, so chin% would yield both “chinese mandarin” and “chinese traditional”.



Here is some more info and tips on translator fees, charges and rates in general (where this poll was originally posted), as well links to other sites that offer similar information.
Here you may add your own rate to the poll.

Cover letter samples – 9

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Good Day,

Kindly find hereby attached a copy of my most updated Resume. I am an experienced language specialist and I would like to offer my translation and editing services to you.

Here is my professional profile:

Language Combinations:

English-Italian, French-Italian and Dutch-Italian
English-Swiss Italian, French-Swiss Italian and Dutch-Swiss Italian

Specialisms: Legal, Business, IT, SAP, Computers, Logistics, Environment, Tourism and Marketing;
Qualified to translate at professional level by SSML University Institute of Linguistic Mediation in Varese, Italy;

Fields translated: business and SAP documents, contracts, patents, financial and corporate literature, employee communications, presentations, invoices, e-mails, travel agency leaflets, marketing documents, birth certificates, university degrees / diplomas and equivalences, CVs, websites, books, vessel technical documents, religious articles and books, cosmetics, and so forth;

I work with translation agencies and direct customers all over the world.
I have SDL Trados Studio 2014 Freelance Plus and Deja VU X2 Professional.
Possibility to use Easyling software (http://www.easyling.com/website-translators-agencies/) to translate websites. Easyling can give an instant quote by doing a quick word and repetition count for any website with a single click.

For the rest, I was born in Varese (where I lived for 26 years), which is a small town 7 km from the Swiss border, in which case I am also familiar with Swiss Italian, which is the Italian spoken in “Canton Ticino” Switzerland.

As I am really passionate about translating, and that for me high quality and accuracy are the keys, I am sure you will be very satisfied with my work for you.

Looking forward to starting business with you,
Kind Regards,

Susanna
PROZ PROFILE: http://www.proz.com/profile/1362125
LINKED IN: http://nl.linkedin.com/pub/susanna-castaldini/5/12/669

Fields of Expertise:

Legal (specialized in Contracts)
Business (documents, general, financial, corporate literature and documentation, employee communications, presentations, invoices, e-mails)
Logistics
Marketing
Communication Technology
Politics
Environment
Finance
EU
Electrical Industry
Technical
Food Industry
Mechanical / Devise Engineering
Sport & Tourism
Social Sciences
Arts and Humanities (biography, short stories, novels, literary and arts extracts, comics, books)
Official Documents, certificates, university degrees / diplomas, equivalences
Websites
Manuals
Education & Trainings
Psychology
Demurrage
Naval / Maritime
Religion
Cosmetics
Patents

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Dear Recruitment Manager,

I am seeking freelance work as a translator or interpreter between Mandarin (Traditional or Simplified), Cantonese and English.  I am a native speaker of these Asian languages, and English is our family’s primary language, as I am married to an American citizen.

Due to my 18 years of on-the-job experience with international trade companies in the U.K, U.S.A and countries in the Far East, I am highly experienced in business communications and have carried out numerous commercial and legal interpretations and translations in my work.  I am also an extremely hard-working, responsible and mature worker, who enjoys working in a team as well as autonomously.  If you are looking for someone who can deliver excellent work to your commercial clients, then you need not look further.

I would love the opportunity to contribute to your translation success.  Please find attach my resume, I look forward to discuss further with you.

GIA

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Dear Sir/Madam,

I am a foreign correspondent by trade and have graduated with good grades, passing the State Exam with the German Chamber of Commerce in 1985. I managed to complete the four-semester course in only one year.

I then worked for many years either employed or self-employed in the administrative, translation or  foreign correspondence sectors and built myself a successful business after the birth of my son in 1990, when I translated nearly exclusively for the German Police and Magistrates Courts.
In 1996, I emigrated to the UK and managed an equally successful career abroad, learning the Welsh language as well. Even more so, I passed my Welsh O and A Levels at University with exceptionally good grades. I climbed up the ladder from a Sales Representative to Deputy Manager in Social Services and finally to Registered Manager of a Children’s Home. I felt very honoured when I, as a German national, was entrusted with the post of Representative for the Conservation of the Welsh Language.

However, when the economic crisis took hold of Great Britain I had to return to Germany to help my son continue his studies at University.

I possess a natural talent for languages and certainly succeed to express myself precisely and eloquently within all levels, including writing correspondence, minutes, reports and contributions to newsletters, websites and other areas. I worked in different settings throughout my life and acquired a lot of knowledge necessary for a perfect translator.

I always work efficiently, am target-orientated and certainly adhere to confidentiality.
Looking forward to hearing from you I remain with

kind regards,

Nicole

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Dear Agency Manager,

I would like to offer my services as a highly motivated freelance translator. I am a native Czech speaker, have passed the English language state exam in 1998, and have worked for several foreign companies, polishing my level of English to near fluent. I have more than 12 years of experience as an English/Czech translator. I have acquired translation experience in the following fields: trade marketing, marketing, history, prose fiction, religion, tourism, recreation, ecology, psychology, sociology, life style and many more. My areas of specialization have always been marketing, sales and history. Thanks to my university studies I am also experienced in psychology, sociology, anthropology and religion.

I am currently looking to expand my list of clients and I would be pleased if you could consider me for translations from English into Czech. I am highly responsible, goal-oriented and stress-resistant. My daily capacity is 2500 words and my rate is 0.04EUR/0.06USD per source word, but we can always negotiate on the price. In cooperation with an experienced graphic designer, I can also put all the text into the required layout.

For more information please refer to my attached CV. If you need any additional information, please let me know. References available on request. I am also willing to take a test to prove my qualification.

Thank you for your time.

Yours sincerely

Sarka

How to deal with an unreasonable customer

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[Sometimes it happens that it is better to be polite and turn down a job. This customer had a strict deadline he had to meet, yet was a stickler about quality and price. If he went elsewhere he probably ended up paying a lot more, otherwise he missed his own deadline and ended up paying for it. Sometimes it is best to turn down work from someone who demands for the moon.]
just received the following response from the translator. Perhaps your customer should not have been so demanding and not tried to whittle down the price. Slovenian translators are generally not cheap, located next to Austria, and I have very few Slovenian translators. Not to mention the time zone difference.
Nevertheless I suggested that your client would prefer she tried her best and kept her price, but I guess that will now depend on a confirmation from your client and not sure if its deadline will now be met, considering that the translator just lost an entire day. [Translator comments following:]
I’ve just checked my email. Honestly, I think it is better if you give this to another translator.
a) I cannot make the text read fluently as these are balance sheets, I can translate individual terms and entries, but cannot make a summary of it as I do not know accounting.
b) putting everything into another doc also includes quite a bit of DTP, also I would need to recheck all the terms, so for me it’s quite a bit of work, maybe a different translator would either have less work with it or would be willing to do it for a lower price.
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below is the translators final response, so I hope everything will be okay. I would just like to say it is generally not good for your client to threaten non-payment, because it can easily scare away a translator, which is not good when there is such a tight deadline and so few translators to choose from. Considering the circumstances, I hope your client will not be unreasonable. I will proofread it as well.
Ok. I will do my best to deliver it at least by 2pm GMT tomorrow so that I am still available for potential clarifications for a few hours.
below is the customer’s latest response. I believe if you are careful and then I proofread it after you, the final outcome will be sufficiently high quality, but I will leave the decision up to you. But I will need to receive the translation by about 5pm Thursday GMT time in order to have time to proofread it. I told them that they should have mentioned these quality conditions at the beginning. I’ve already spent enough time bouncing these emails back and forth and it would be nice to earn some money from it.
The client has asked the translator to proceed – as long as your translator can guarantee delivery by 7 am (morning) UK time on Friday – he indicated that if it is any later than that – he would not be able to accept the translation – of course, the translation must be to a very high standard
I look forwad to your reply
ASAP please
I believe she didn’t start because of the clients stringent requirements stated at the very end of yesterday, so I guess it scared her a bit. I have proofread her work once before and it was overall good, but she is not native English, so it certainly is not perfect. Even after I proofread it, it may have a slight foreign feel. I do not think it was good for your client to impose these conditions at the very end of the day and it should have been brought up earlier, considering the time zone difference.
I know that the translation is required for the client’s meeting on Friday morning – they need it by Thursday afternoon – can this delivery be guaranteed? Please confirm ASAP – thanks

Fake translator applications spamming the industry

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Sometime around 2012 I noticed a massive spike in my daily emails from translators applying to work for my translation agency, from about 4-10 to 30-50 or more a day. I diligently responded to each email, but eventually determined that these new additions were not from real translators.

Below you will find information on the source of these emails and what you can do to protect yourself.

1)  What is the source of these fake email applications.

The fake applications come from at least one company masquerading itself as a translation agency but which collects resumes of real translators from the internet and sends emails in their name using newly created gmail, hotmail or yahoo email addresses (sometimes outlook.com or outlook.sa). If you try to give work to any of these fake translators, you can expect to receive a poor quality, google/machine translation.

2)  What measures you can take to protect yourself.

You can set up a free filter to block out existing and known fake applicants, or use our filter system to block out existing and new ones, since the scammer companies are creating new accounts on a constant basis.

Not only are these fake applications a headache, but they make it more difficult for real translators to enter the industry and for us to accept new ones.

To expose these email addresses to spam, you may find them posted below.

3)  CVs sent through this service, about three a month, use a particular template (although custom is also possible) whose subject always begins with a special code to instruct the 15,000+ recipients that they are from real translators. Read some testimonials to see that this is truly an effective way how to expand your translation client base.

Work at Home Translation Jobs

Below is some correspondence concerning this matter and which may shed further light on it.

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I just came across your website. I am getting quite bombarded with these translator CVs. Have you tried discussing this with such organizations as spamcop? A lot of email services base their spam filters on this database. How do you confirm that the email addresses are actually spammers? If this process could be expedited we could nip them in the bud. If they are using their own servers to send out all these emails, as I doubt gmail etc would allow so much messages, their IP address could also be marked as a spammer, and save all of our inboxes in the process. Or gmail etc could close down those email accounts.

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And, what could spamcop (or any other organization) do?
Please send me those CVs for proper exposure. If you could check if they are already in my Directory, that would expedite the posting of their data.
Of particular interest are messages, email addresses, attachments and PayPal addresses used by the scammers themselves (Languagemet, Translator Secrets, etc.) 

A lot of email services base their spam filters on this database. How do you confirm that the email addresses are actually spammers?

All these scammers emails are posted on hijacked CVs. 

If this process could be expedited we could nip them in the bud. If they are using their own servers to send out all these emails, as I doubt gmail etc would allow so much messages, their IP address could also be marked as spammer, and save all of our inboxes in the process.

Gmail addresses always locate back to Google IP addresses.

Or gmail etc could close down those email accounts.

Then what? It takes 3 minutes to scam someone’s CV and open another Gmail address.

This sort of activity can only be prevented (on the translators/companies side) by a proper risk management attitude.
And by exposing scammers IDs and emails used. They live off people not being aware of their operation.
The more they are exposed, the less chance they’ll have to continue their scamming operation in the open.

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If spamcop and others cooperated they could blacklist these email addresses. That means that any future mailouts from their addresses would end in the spambox of recipients. If google cooperated they could close down the accounts. Or they could go a step further by preventing those people from creating new accounts, but I guess the spammers could just makeup another IP address. But if their outgoing mail ended in the recipient’s spambox, or better their accounts were cancelled by gmail, they’d have to start all over again, for it is usually a timely process to get work from an agency (application forms to fill in, email correspondence and so on). I also probably have the list they are sending to (about 16,000 email addresses), so I can send them an email, such as to inform them they should carefully consider giving work to anyone whose email ended in their spambox (at least check more). More below.

Really, I do not expect any cooperation from Google or any other organization. Really. One of the purposes of having these emails in the open is to make them available to spambots. I even publish a TXT file with other addresses used by scammers.

I do not know which ones are the spammers. How do you find that out before adding an address to your dbase?

If you read the copy of my Directory you’ll get a clear idea of what to look for:
1. Gmail / Hotmail address (a good indication is to have an email from Hotmail that was actually sent by a Gmail address, look at the email header).
3. DOC authored/saved by someone different from the scammer’s name… Look at some of the most common names used by scammers in my Directory.
Or by having Arabic words in the File properties, in CVs not belonging to Arabic translators.
2. Funny CVs: Italian name, female, born in France, educated in Cameroon, worked as a “removal man”??? Would you believe it that a translation company in the USA has been tricked by a CV like that?

I don’t believe there is a solution, or a silver bullet for this.
Exposure, awareness and, above all, good risk management from translators and companies.

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To help with the cause I used to post the email addresses found on this site below.

translation CV campaign