tranfree issue 5 - 7 August 1999

Senior Staff Column - Considering the agency as a whole

This senior agency staff column comes from SM who works for a leading London translation agency mailto:SM@translatortips.com (forwarding address)

There are certain things that should be borne in mind when working with translation agencies - things which greatly facilitate the lives of all involved. Below is a set of bullet points which I hope will help you in your work with agencies – a simple list of dos and don'ts that should ensure you end up as the translator of choice for several agencies for your language combination.

• Discuss all the details of a job before it's placed with you. If a client doesn't volunteer the information, check which software you'll need to use, check whether you'll be billing on source or target word count (or other, e.g. per line), check your deadline. If there are any potential problems, be honest! Far better to be honest at this stage than to run into difficulties later. And if you agree a price with a client, it's far better to admit to under-quoting and to quote a more realistic price for the next job than it is to try and move the goal-posts mid-job.
  
  
• If you have any queries on the job, save them up until you've got a few, or – better still – save them until near the end of the job if at all possible. Then send them to the client by fax or e-mail: it's unlikely they'll be able to answer anything but the most basic of queries, and things usually need to be passed on to the end client. Anything which saves that extra five minutes will be most welcome. If the client gives you a queries deadline, stick to it! It's there for a reason.
  
  
• If you have basic queries which aren't specific to the end client, try your best to sort them out without involving the agency. Huge lists of queries make translators look conscientious if these lists contain lots of abbreviations, client-specific stuff, but if they contain only basic issues, they just make it look like you're not very familiar with your source language.
  
  
• Read Purchase Orders carefully. If you can see your deadline is 10:00 and you know the night before that this is going to be very difficult to meet, call the agency and tell them: don't just take the attitude "oh well, what's a couple of hours?". If clients know in advance that a job's going to be delayed they can do something about it – but they won't thank you if they have angry end clients chasing after them because you failed to keep them informed.
  
  
• When phoning clients and your contact is busy, always ask the person who answered the 'phone if they can help. There really is nothing more annoying when you're really busy to be told "Translator X called, please call him back", then finding out that all the translator wanted was to tell you he'd sent an e-mail containing his job!
  
  
• When calling clients, never assume that they'll have your job sitting on the desk in front of them. 99 times out of 100 they won't. Always tell them which job you're calling about (refer to it by number if at all possible), then say you've got a couple of things to ask and give them a minute to go and get the job – don't just launch into "on page 17 it says this…"!
  
  
• If a client asks you to overtype a file, make sure you have compatible software. Having spent half-an-hour sitting waiting to upload a PowerPoint file to an e-mail server (and presumably the translator has spent another half-hour downloading it), no-one wants to hear "sorry, I can't open the file. Can you save it as PowerPoint 4 and send it again?"
  
  
• When invoicing your clients, please try to do so promptly, at least within a week of completing the job. Invoices referring to jobs which took place several months ago cause accounting problems.
  
  
• If there is text in graphics which you can't edit, check with the agency to find out whether it should be translated or not, don't just assume!
  
  
• When sending e-mails to a client, it's always a good idea to confirm via telephone or fax that you've sent it. Sometimes files do go astray and the sooner we know there's a problem, the better.
  
  
• Unless you need to speak to someone urgently, try not to call the office first thing in the morning or last thing in the evening. (This is aimed directly at people pitching for work as opposed to those who already have it!!)

The thing you will notice all the above have in common is that they end up saving time for the project managers involved. Time...

... is a precious commodity in translation agencies, and anything you can do to make yourself a "low-maintenance translator" will endear you to the hearts of the people giving you work, which can be no bad thing. That's not to say that you should never send in queries or telephone to chase payment of invoices, for instance – if you need help, project managers are only too willing to give it. But a little consideration can go a long way.