As a freelance translator,working for translation agencies or your direct clients, you need to
demonstrate certain skills to successfully lead your professional
life. Here are some tips inspired by the success of freelance developers.
1. Basics in Marketing
The freelance translator is above all an
entrepreneur. Your talents and knowledge are your product. And to
sell his product, a freelancer must know how to sell himself and enhance his
CV. Marketing techniques such as personal
branding and mastering your online presence will be
not negligible assets.
A good online
presence almost systematically involves building its own site. It is
common for a customer to quickly search by typing your name into Google to
check your references.
A blog or a
showcase site will allow you to put yourself forward, it will be a very good
marketing tool. Your site may be very light and not as complete as an
agency's, but it must be clean and return a professional image.
2. Some developer skills
Several ready-made and free solutions exist, the best one
currently being Certainly Medium.But if you decide
to build your blog yourself, it's worth having basics in HTML and
CSS. These programming languages will help you improve the presentation of
your pages.
Fortunately
improving the free resources to build a professional blog make it very simple
to create your own blog. This without touching a line of HTML or CSS
code. However, these languages are easy to handle (one day for both) and
can be useful to you.
On the other hand, you don't have to learn PHP,
Javascript and other Ruby on Rails, unless you decide to give up your career in
favor of the (lucrative) freelance developer. Besides speaking of
these freelance developers,go visit their blogs. You'll find great examples of how these
programmers are putting themselves forward, and they are perfectly profuse in
the digital tool.
In fact, they
don't go through web agencies. Perhaps translators could follow the
example of developers?
3. Translation Agency References
A client who works directly with a freelance translator
without going through a translation agency needs
reassurance. You are self-employed but you have references. Highlight
them on your website and CV or profile on a professional social network.
Beyond the mention
of the firm that used your services, indicate the type of translation you have
done (word number, technical field...).
If you are just
starting out as a translator and have not yet collaborated with an agency,
indicate your translation services carried out on a voluntary basis, for
example for an association.
4. Autonomy, essential for freelance translators
As an independent,
you must be absolutely self-reliant. You need to be able to handle a
translation without asking your client any redundant questions. If this
client is not a translation agency, keep in mind that he expects you to solve a
lot of the problems yourself.
However, he will be
grateful if you ask him for confirmation on certain points (always offer him a
solution). It is independently that you must decide when to ask a question
to the customer or not.
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