Rate mal! What’s in a rate? — Part 4
- 27/02/2025
- BlogRate mal!
Table of Contents
Marketing your rates
Throughout my studies and setting up my business, I’ve come across various little tidbits about how you can market yourself more effectively, both as a freelancer and translator.
Exposure, of course, is one such avenue and something I am actively working on—furthering my LinkedIn presence (the translator bubble is one of the nicer sides of the app), refining my website, making sure my CV is in the hands of as many vendors as possible and expanding my portfolio so my expertise is more easily on display—it’s a long road to travel.
One important piece of advice I’ve noticed throughout several group conversations that not all my peers necessarily think about is how to discount and mark-up your rates, not only to attract business but to dissuade being treated in bad-faith.
So this concluding article in the Rate Mal! What’s in a rate? series will briefly look at how you might augment your rates to do both.
Special Rates
You may have noticed that most businesses utilise discounts at some point.
There are a lot of different reasons based on the market you’re selling in. It might be to attract business during your down periods, it might be to make best use of your busiest periods, it could be to attract new and old buyers so that they’re then made aware of new products as they pass through.
For a translator, offering discounts is a good way to make a first impression—to grab work from a new client and show off the quality of your work while also establishing your actual worth.
You can also build good will, especially with vendor managers that know you tend to offer new clients discounted rates. That way, you’re the first person they turn to when a new project comes in (if that is a strategy you want to use).
The key is to make absolutely clear that you’re doing them a favour.
Establish what your rates actually are so the client is aware of your worth, then use the discount to establish good relationships with them.
If they return with a new project, quote your usual rates and reaffirm the worth of the work you’ve previously done for them. Maybe offer a different kind of discount or throw in additional services as an extra hook.
There are a lot of different options for attracting and retaining clients (as well as just being damned good at your job). Just make sure you’re not underselling yourself.
Pitfalls
What you don’t do is give a discount without clarifying your actual rates. Let me provide an example based on a translator’s real experience:
A client contacts you with a large project. You haven’t worked with them before, so you give them favourable rates. You don’t properly establish that you’re doing them a favour, assuming that they already understand that.
The client is happy with your work and contacts you with further projects but insists on receiving a discount for being a repeat customer as well as the volume of work they’re offering.
Whether that client actually knows you gave them favourable rates or not is unknown, but either way, they quote your previous prices which they have saved as your go-to rates.
If you refuse to give them further discounts, they threaten to take the work to another provider and you’re not in a position to refuse that volume of work and don’t want to lose the hard-won client…
Of course, that’s not the kind of client you really want to work for anyway, but hearing it from the translator in question, that particular tactic of constantly trying to push down their providers’ rates was pretty common in the sphere they worked in (mostly Chinese agencies, from memory).
My point is, establishing your worth is so, so important.
Discounts can be very useful, for both attracting new and returning clients, but make sure they’re clear and visible in both the quote and the invoice, and that you’re communicating properly what kind of discount you’re offering and why, as an unscrupulous client—and even some that aren’t—will be happy to put words in your mouth and hear what they want.
Extra Services
Translation isn’t just translation, there are a lot of other things involved in the discipline than swapping words.
You have to work with term glossaries and translation memories; you might have to dabble in desktop-publishing; there are various quality assurance and control procedures you can implement and a whole lot of organisational tasks to boot.
In short, there’s a lot of extra stuff and quite a bit of it is optional too, so if even a client is wondering just why they’re hiring you and not someone else, perhaps it’s time to do a little extra to show you appreciate the working relationship.
Maybe offer to give them your Translation Memory that you’ve built for their projects (for free or for a discount), perhaps draw up a Term Base for them and offer to review it every year, maybe throw in some extra quality assurance procedures so they know you’re striving to make their content as perfect as it can be.
A little extra effort can go a long way, even if it’s only an extra 30 minutes of your time. Realistically, people’s expectations are often quite low and many things that you do without being asked because you’re a skilled and dedicated worker will be the exact reason a client keeps coming back.
Like everything, there is always a way for someone to abuse this, so make sure to clarify when you’re doing a one-off extra otherwise that might become expected the next time, unless of course you’re aiming for that.
“Asshole Taxes”
Yep, you read that right, and that’s what it’s called.
If a client is being unreasonable, wrack up your price.
Sometimes though, it’s not someone’s ego you’re battling with, it’s the demands of the project and everyone is in the same, decrepit boat.
That doesn’t mean you get to throw your worth down the drain just because you’re in a pinch: if someone is wanting you to work during your off-hours, through the night or over the weekend (or whenever you take a break), increase your prices.
Like always, be clear with it:
+10% because you’re making we work on a Sunday evening?
+25% because I’m moving plans for this?
+50% because I’ll have to work 16 hour days for this?
+100% because you’re being horrible and deserve it?
There are lots of different options.
Of course, pushing this too far can lose you clients, so act with as much good faith as possible.
The idea, like with discounts, is establishing your worth and sticking to it. You’re standing up for yourself and setting standards for how you want to be treated and your time and skills respected.
Conclusion
A lot of the material I’ve studied and the bubble I move around in is typically translator focussed. It’s us against the world!
But good clients are as precious as good translators. The best way to be treated right, have your time respected and your worth acknowledged is to treat others with the same good faith you demand from them, regardless of whether you are giving or demanding that bit extra.
Let planting our feet and sticking to our guns find us good working partners and raise the bar for all of us!
Final Thoughts
This concludes the Rate mal! What’s in a rate? mini-series.
Hopefully I’ve successfully outlined just how murky rates in the translation industry can be compared to how they seem on the surface.
The industry is very competitive and while demand for language services are higher than ever, people are also reluctant to pay professionals for their skills, bloating the bottom end of the pool with low-paying jobs.
Rather than planning budgets appropriately to account for modern service delivery standards, many focus instead on quick fixes and cheap cheats.
The money saved here is offset by the money lost later, as consumers get more and more used to language diversity in their products, reducing their overall patience with poor communication in a rapid consumption market.
This puts everyone in a tough spot and although the individual translator’s needs differ based on their circumstances, it is also often true that by giving an inch, we all lose a mile.
Striving to keep rates above a certain point (certainly, away from the ranges of minimum wage in the countries of the languages you work in) is all our responsibility, so that none of us are taken for granted.
This is of course easier said than done, especially if you’re working with a harried vendor manager who is just as stuck as you are or you’re struggling to drum up business, despite the tips and tricks you make use of.
Exploitative practices however should not be given the time of day and, in the end, it all comes down to this:
Know and believe in your own worth, and demand that others do the same.
That’s all from me, folks. See you in the next one. 以上です!
Interested in hearing more about rates in the translation industry? Check out the rest of the Rate mal! What’s in a rate? mini-series:
Image credit: me
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