Your first year working as a freelance translator can be both stressful and exciting, and of course, there are mistakes to make.

We’ll use today’s post to offer advice for people starting out in their first year of freelancing, but that doesn’t mean that experienced translation experts may not pick up something new as well. Your first year working as a freelance translator can be both stressful and exciting, and of course, there are mistakes to make. We trust that this article may prevent you from making some of the mistakes we made, and make your journey just a little easier.

Our First Tip Is to Keep a Record of All Your Contacts

During your first year as a freelance translation services provider you’ll be doing a lot of marketing, but if you don’t have a good tracking system for who you’ve contacted, and when; what response you received (if any), and how you responded if you did receive a response, all your marketing efforts could be in vain. Because you probably won’t have many clients to begin with, you could be marketing up to 80% of your time, so you must record your efforts during this very important stage of your career. This information might be recorded by way of a spreadsheet or a computerized contact management system - just make sure it’s saved somewhere!

Don’t Accept Work That You Know Is a Bad Fit for You, Even Though You Need the Work.

This is such an easy mistake to make, and many translators make it. Don’t accept tasks that are not in your specific language pair or in your specialization, no matter how badly you need to work.

Ask Prospective Clients in Your Local Area for an In-Person Interview

Don’t we all like to know who we’re working with? And of course, this goes both ways because the agency or direct client would also like to know who you are too. Once you’ve made initial contact with prospective clients in your area, tell them you’d like to learn a little more about their business and ask if you can come in for an in-person interview. Your approach will be appreciated, especially when you say that you’re hoping at some point in time to be able to work with them. Because you’re not aggressively pushing for work it takes the pressure off the agency or the client, and if you believe that you present better in person than you do on paper, you can only make a very positive impression. You may be quite surprised at just how successful this approach to prospective clients can be!