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You may be feeling that you’re done-and-dusted with this client; however, you don’t really want to burn your bridges with them. So, take the firm-but-kind approach and say something like: ‘Thank you so much for the work you’ve sent my way over the past months/years: I’ve really enjoyed working with you. However, I’ve recently started working with higher paying clients, which means that I won’t be accepting translation work that pays less than XX cents. Please keep me in mind should you ever have projects that allow for this type of budget’.

We’ve talked in the past about marketing your translation services to higher paying clients with a view to finally getting rid of (firing or parting ways with) low-paying clients. So, once you’ve achieved this (through your great marketing efforts!) and you’re now attracting better clients, what’s the right way to fire the clients you no longer need?

This year, the winner in the fiction category was Signs Preceding the End of the World, written in Spanish by Yuri Herrera and translated into English by Lisa Dillman, and the winner in the poetry category was Rilke Shake, written in Portuguese by Angélica Freitas and translated into English by Hilary Kaplan.

It all began in 2008 when the first annual Best Translated Book Award was held. The University of Rochester runs a book translation press known as Open Letter Books, which in turn runs an online literary magazine known as Three Percent. Back in 2008, Three Percent conferred the first inaugural Best Translated Book Award and shortlisted a selection of fiction books and books of poetry that had been translated into English.

If you continue searching for work in the same areas where thousands of other translators are searching for work, you’re going to break your heart. When a translation client has such a wide choice – let’s say between you and 500 other translators - the decision is obviously going to boil down to ‘Who can do this work the cheapest and quickest’? Unless you’re translating a very unusual language or you have an unusual specialization, forget about translation job boards. What you need is an attractive, professional website! It only needs to be very basic, and you can create your website yourself on SquareSpace or WordPress.

Many beginner translators take on low-rate translation work, basically accepting whatever work they’re offered, because, let’s face it, translators like to eat and they have bills to pay too! But then they find they’re stuck in a rut, working long hours every day trying to earn a basic living. They can’t afford to be sick and they certainly can’t afford to take a day off.

Generally, there are three steps involved in the translation process, and these are translation, editing, and proofreading processes. We say generally, because it’s often wise with high word volume translation projects to add an additional step just to ensure that the final product is of the highest quality. This final step is known in the translation industry as QA or Quality Assessment.

Generally, languages seem to be named after a certain culture or the people or inhabitants of a country. But there are cases where this results in a generalization, meaning that other native languages from the same country are excluded; languages that are still valid, even though they may be spoken by fewer people.

In-person marketing is a great investment for your freelance translation business, particularly if you’re the type of translator who presents well in person. You never know when an opening will present itself – perhaps the regular translator has suddenly raised their rates, and this is unacceptable to the agency or direct client, so now they’re looking for a translator to fill that position. So, why not you?

So often we hear from freelancers with varying levels of experience saying that they’re struggling to find clients. While agencies can be an excellent option, they’re still looking to find direct clients. They’re stuck and don’t know what to do. If you’re a translator, and you find yourself this situation, let’s have a closer look at some solutions.

Self-publishing is a topic that many people are interested in: so many people have a story to tell, while others are looking to have their book translated and wonder how much it will cost, how long it takes, and basically, how does the whole process work?