| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | We can't accept your new rate, because... Thread poster: Anna Sarah Krämer
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| Introducing higher rates | Jan 13, 2016 |
Michael Wetzel wrote:
When repeat clients come back after a long time, I do the first project at the old rate and then inform them of the rate increase when I send them the invoice. When I raise rates with an existing client, then I notify them several months in advance so that they have time to look for someone else.
When I send an offer for a project, I also do my best to give the potential client enough time to gather and compare other offers.
I had several clients come back after about a year, they asked for the price of the job they wanted done and I gave them my current rate, which is higher than it was a year ago, on average by GBP 0.02. Neither of them made any mention of my old rate and accepted then new rate.
I have only announced a rise to regular clients when I didn't mind losing them.
| | | | Adrian MM. (X)
Local time: 01:22
French to English
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| The right timing | Jan 13, 2016 |
Anna Sarah Krämer Fazendeiro wrote:
I don't see why I would hurt someone's religious and/or calendary feelings by raising my rates in January. I might hurt some people's financial feelings, though.
By the same token, it might be fraught and deemed irreverent - but not irrelevant - for Arab & Hebrew translators and interpreters to hike their rates on the 3rd of October, plus Mandarin & Cantonese translators to 'bless' their I&T clients with a Chinese take-away in high-altitude charges on the 8th February.
Agency clients on a fixed-rates translators' & interpreters' portal billing system, usually at the low end of the scale, are oft intransigent over their locked-rates scale agreed years ago and, even when branded pagans, heretics and blasphemers, refuse to pay extra for work done over religious and public/bank holidays.
[Edited at 2016-01-13 19:33 GMT]
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Because a religious holiday is actually not a reason to be paid extra. Either you celebrate and hence you don't work, or you work and hence you don't celebrate, so what's the reason to pay more? There is a lot of merit in that line of thinking.
| | | | | On year-end holidays | Jan 13, 2016 |
Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz wrote:
Because a religious holiday is actually not a reason to be paid extra. Either you celebrate and hence you don't work, or you work and hence you don't celebrate, so what's the reason to pay more? There is a lot of merit in that line of thinking.
I don't think it has anything to do with Christmas.
Most governments set the nationwide corporate income-taxable year from January 1st through December 31st. Likewise, most companies in these countries set their fiscal year to coincide with it. As a result, their annual budget is planned for that very same period.
In these countries, individual income tax is also limited to this same period. So a fly-by-nite lonely operator who has no budgeting, no planning whatsoever, will not be able to elude some closure at the year end.
That's why the fourth quarter of a civil year is a good time for a translator to analyze his/her rates and, if a change is justified, to advise their clients with at least 30 days' advance.
Nothing to do with religious celebrations/holidays, merely a fact of contemporary life.
See http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Fiscal-year
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jyuan_us 
United States
Local time: 19:22
Member (2005)
English to Chinese
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| As a Chinese I don't understand this | Jan 13, 2016 |
Adrian MM. wrote:
plus Mandarin & Cantonese translators to 'bless' their I&T clients with a Chinese take-away in high-altitude charges on the 8th February.
[Edited at 2016-01-13 19:33 GMT]
Can you elaborate it?
| | | | Adrian MM. (X)
Local time: 01:22
French to English
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| Chinese New Year on the 8th Feb. | Jan 13, 2016 |
jyuan_us wrote: Adrian MM. wrote:
plus Mandarin & Cantonese translators to 'bless' their I&T clients with a Chinese take-away in high (-altitude) charges on the 8th February.
Can you elaborate it?
I'll elaborate on the date, but not on the take-away joke as that would 'spoil' the effect. The Chinese New Year falls on the 8th February this year as you must know: www.travelchinaguide.com
You will also know that the celebrations in local Chinatowns throughout the world are magnificent pageants.
| | | | | the right clients | Jan 14, 2016 |
I sent an offer to what is turning into a regular client of mine the other day. I do what I can to maintain transparency so, while I always list the total fee for the project, I also generally explain how I arrived at it in terms of my fee per word and per hour. In this case, my explanation was a little wordy and the client was presumably a little quick in reading through my e-mail, so she gave me the go-ahead to get started at a fee that was double my actual offer.
I informed her o... See more I sent an offer to what is turning into a regular client of mine the other day. I do what I can to maintain transparency so, while I always list the total fee for the project, I also generally explain how I arrived at it in terms of my fee per word and per hour. In this case, my explanation was a little wordy and the client was presumably a little quick in reading through my e-mail, so she gave me the go-ahead to get started at a fee that was double my actual offer.
I informed her of the problem, because I would rather invest 50 EUR (which I didn't earn anyway) in a greatly increased likelihood of making 5000 EUR with this client over the coming years (and in maintaining my peace of mind) than to take advantage of a client for a little quick cash.
My point is this:
For most potential clients in the world, translation costs are peanuts in terms of their overall budget. That is, they may need an adequate, good or very good translation, but price is not much of a factor, because there is no significant amount of money to be saved on translations anyway. A bad translation or a late translation might cause them significant problems, but the fact that one good translator charges 25% less than another is basically a non-factor. The main thing is that their translators are dependable, good enough and easy to work with (that they do their job well as a small cog in a big wheel).
The situation is reversed with mega-agencies: Freelance translators and editors make up a large portion of their costs. While the agencies need adequate translators, they probably have little to gain from good or very good translators, because an agency can only convert their work into higher prices if the agency consistently delivers at that level of quality, which is incredibly unlikely.
Specialized agencies, colleagues in your language pair working in related but distinct fields or who translate your language pair in the opposite direction, established colleauges in your direction and field who have too much work to handle on their own, professional contacts from our former lives before translating: Those are clients whom we have something special to offer.
And fluently speaking and writing our source language is also a gigantic advantage in dealing with clients, and it is relatively unusual among native speakers of English.
When I started out, I read a business textbook and I can still remember two things very distinctly, although I've forgotten the terms:
If someone purchases something from you, then it is possible that you charged exactly the right amount (the maximum amount they were willing to pay), but it is more likely that you (from your perspective) undercharged them, that is, you charged them less than the maximum price that they would have been willing to pay you.
There was also a table of different types of service providers and one group was described as delivering services that were essential and quality-sensitive, but also low-cost in terms of the client's overall budget: Those are the clients that we need and that need us.
I also agree with the main point of what José is saying: The key is not to hit the jackpot every now and then but to secure consistent demand at the highest fee possible. But I think most of us still have a ways to go before we've really reached that level. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 00:22
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Michael Wetzel wrote:
And fluently speaking and writing our source language is also a gigantic advantage in dealing with clients, and it is relatively unusual among native speakers of English.
That surprises me, although I must say that I don't know many translators so my experience is limited to the JP-EN pair, where the level seems to me to be fairly high.
I know that the English are generally perceived to be poor at languages but I would have thought that a professional translator would be expected to be fluent, especially in European languages which are, after all, only a stone's throw away?
To put it another way, the standard path to fluency is time spent living in the primary country of the source language. Wouldn't a lack of time in-country be an automatic red flag for a client assessing candidates?
Regards
Dan
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| active vs. passive fluency | Jan 14, 2016 |
I think it is not at all uncommon for people to have a very advanced passive understanding of a language without being able to actively speak or write it.
Particularly in an academic environment, it is extremely important to be able to read foreign languages, but it is rarely important to be able to use them. My French is probably more or less worthless now, but there was a time when I could read texts from my field precisely and reasonably quickly, although I wouldn't have been abl... See more I think it is not at all uncommon for people to have a very advanced passive understanding of a language without being able to actively speak or write it.
Particularly in an academic environment, it is extremely important to be able to read foreign languages, but it is rarely important to be able to use them. My French is probably more or less worthless now, but there was a time when I could read texts from my field precisely and reasonably quickly, although I wouldn't have been able to put two sentences together if I had wanted to talk to someone.
And I can also remember watching my fellow students try not to doze off as I gave a presentation during my first semester studying in Germany, and I can remember other foreign students' presentations. Even if the content is interesting and the speaker has a reasonable level of proficiency, it is often literally exhausting to listen to them.
And then there is all of the potential for substantial misunderstandings in quick telephone calls or e-mails. ▲ Collapse
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