Do you want to stay relevant as a translator?
Provide proof of your quality.
Ping. A new request in your inbox: 4,370 words, 30% of which are fuzzy matches. Can you deliver it today? And here’s the price: 180 euros.
You’re not even surprised anymore. In your mind, you go back to the post on LinkedIn you read this week. A fellow translator is railing against these practices and insists that nobody should accept this. But then again, you’ve got bills to pay. So simply turning down 75% of your work? That’s just not possible.
“Rates are falling, turnaround times are getting shorter and shorter, but clients still expect top quality”
You don’t know in advance what text you will receive. Has it been pre-translated using a translation memory, a machine translation engine or AI? The quality of that output is often assessed by the client: ‘AI quality has improved so much that we’ll pay 40% of your word rate.’ The industry is under pressure. Because every translator knows: quality hasn’t actually improved, and it’s going to cost you a fair bit of time to improve the output.
“Clients want TEP quality and think that can be achieved using AI”
Keep on dreaming, of course; you know that very well. How do you proceed? This is your profession and you love it. Fortunately, you also seek out and find several new clients. Clients who still genuinely value linguistic expertise. That isn’t easily achieved and doesn’t yet yield sufficient returns, so you also accept the assignment sitting in your inbox.
“What you cannot demonstrably prove falls behind on speed and price.”
Here’s the golden opportunity: you can stay relevant by shifting your focus to the first and final stages of your work. Work out exactly how much time you can realistically dedicate to the assignment (using your own standard rate). Then split that time between an initial round of editing and a half-hour QA check using Qangaroo. Set your alarm! As a professional, you simply must not work for free.
Once you’ve done the editing, you can hop through your work with Qangaroo. Qangaroo’s checks ensure guaranteed quality. And, this is very important, that quality is verifiable.
Remember: quality isn’t a feeling, even though we may perceive it that way as language professionals and enthusiasts. Quality wins: make sure you can showcase and justify it.