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tranfree issue 40 - 18 September 2001

 

Payment Poll Results

By Alex Eames

Payment is an issue close to all our hearts. You work hard, do the best you can, as quickly as possible to meet the demands of the client. You send your invoice and then you wait.

Sometimes you wait a long time and occasionally you wait forever.

We wanted to see what the translator community in general feels about this issue. Mainly, how worried people are about it when taking on new clients.

The results are embedded in the questions. For full graphical results see...

http://translatortips.net/clientspp.html

 

Questions and Results

When you are offered work from a new client...

1) How much do you worry that they might not pay? (561 votes)
Not at all4.46%
Not much 25.31%
A bit 44.92%
Quite a lot 18.18%
A lot 7.13%

2) Where do you check out new clients? (558 votes)
Nowhere 35.48%
PP - Payment Practices 12.90%
TCR - Translation Client Review 8.42%
Zahlungsmoral 0.54%
A combination of these 21.86%
Other 20.79%

3) Do you reject jobs if you hear bad reports about a new client? (551 votes)
Yes - I do not work for people with a bad reputation 83.30%
No - I take the work anyway and take my chances 16.70%

 

Interpretation of Results

Three things jump out at me from these results.

Around 30% of translators are not very worried about the fact that clients might not pay. If you look at the graphical results you will see that the answers to this question look a lot like a normal distribution. The bell-shaped curve is slightly skewed towards less worried.

35.5% of translators do not check out client payment habits before accepting work from a new client.

But, 83.3% of translators will not work for someone who they know to have a bad reputation.

I am very glad that people do not seem to be desperately worried about non-payment. As I said in tranfree 37, non-payment has not been a significant problem for our translation business.

If you follow the procedure outlined on page 42 of...

How to Earn $80,000+ per Year as a Freelance Translator
http://www.translatortips.net/ht50.html

...you will minimise your chances of getting...

...burned.

There's an interesting 'gap' here...

If 83.3% of translators will not work for someone they heard is dodgy. But 35.5% of translators do not check new clients, it means that a large percentage of translators are 'firing blind' - taking their chances without having information.

OK, the risks aren't enormous, but for large projects I recommend you always check out clients before you start.

There are two major places to check out translation clients...

  1. TCR - Translation Client Review (8.42%) To subscribe to this group, send an email to: TCR-subscribe@yahoogroups.com (no free email accounts allowed) Membership is free.

  2. PP - Payment Practices (12.90%) http://tranfree.com/t/t.pl?40mc
    Membership costs $30 per year

Happy hunting

Alex Eames is the founder of translatortips.com,
editor of tranfree and author of the eBook...

How to Earn $80,000+ Per Year as a Freelance Translator
http://www.translatortips.net/ht50.html

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