Collection

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

The objective of this article is to improve communication between freelance translators and translation agencies on various payment issues.

It is based on my first-hand experience in freelance translation from English to Russian and vice-versa for 45 translation agencies in 12 countries (USA - 11, UK - 7, Russia - 5, Japan - 4, Belgium - 3, Czech Republic - 3, France - 3, Germany - 2, Hong Kong - 2, Israel - 1, Netherlands - 3, Sweden - 1) and 20 direct clients from four countries (Russia - 14, France - 1, Israel - 1, USA - 3) from July 1999 to July 2003, with an approximate total word count of 2 million source words.

Practically all freelance translators are familiar with the frustration of spending too much time and effort collecting fees for translation. The optimization of this process may therefore be of interest to many of my colleagues.

This problem can be approached in two ways:

1. Thoroughly check the client's payment practices BEFORE accepting a job

2. Professional debt collection AFTER the job has been completed and delivered to the client.

If the first step is implemented well enough, the second step will be unnecessary. See Fig.1.

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Fig. 1


Let's focus on the first step.

When you are approached by a new agency, the first thing you need to do is check its payment practices on all current payment practice databases. I know of five of them: www.proz.com/blueboard, www.tcrlist.com, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pp_dist, and the lists regularly e-mailed to subscribers by www.translationdirectory.com and http://www.topica.com/lists/transpayment/. The last three information sources are free. The first two charge a little bit, but the information is well worth it.

Then you should visit the agency's website and see if it provides all necessary contact info (full street address, phone, fax, e-fax, mobile, e-mail address) and a list of the agency's clients and client testimonials, preferably with contact info. If the agency has no website, this is a bad sign (for example, the notoriously non-paying Polylingua from the Czech Republic). Another bad sign is a free e-mail address.

Pay attention to the agency's memberships in professional associations, such as ATA for USA agencies and ITI for UK agencies. An agency should be registered with its national chamber of commerce and have a registration number.

You can ask the potential client to provide you with this information if it is not published on its website. A client with good intentions and a first-class reputation will be happy to cooperate. I recommend asking for this information immediately after receiving a P.O. or contract. Some other important pieces of information to be collected include: How long has the client been in business? How long have they been at their current location? Who owns the business?

If the agency has positive payment practice records in the above databases and willingly provides the information you need, you can accept the job without worry. Most probably you will have no problems with collection.

Now let's focus on the second part of your task—professional debt collection from problem clients. It is most important to learn to differentiate between "non-malicious" and "malicious" delays of payment. The typical reasons for "non-malicious" delay are usually as follows:

1. Poor organization at the translation agency. Usually one person is responsible for placing translation assignments, another for approving payments, and a third for executing payments via a bank. In most cases you will never contact persons #2 and #3, but they are key figures in the payment process. It often turns out, as the Russian saying goes, that "the right hand does not know what the left is doing."

2. Poor communication: You send a reminder to your translation manager. He forwards your reminder to the accountant. You receive no response from either one (the translation manager thinks payment is not his area of responsibility; the accountant never communicates with freelance translators because this is the translation manager's responsibility). Poor communication undermines trust and robs time from both parties. In fact, poor communication is a result of poor organization.

3. Mistakes in the bank application for a wire transfer. For example, several of my direct clients and some of the agencies I've worked with have been confused by such terms as "correspondent bank" and "beneficiary's bank," and sent the funds to the wrong bank. This resulted in time lost for both parties and delay in payment.

In my four years' practice, non-malicious delays for periods exceeding one month were caused by five agencies; mistakes in banking details accounted for five further cases; receipt of a smaller amount than promised without explanation occurred in only one case (World Link Technologies, USA).

Do not mistake poor communication and organization and banking mistakes for an attempt at non-payment. Never be too harsh on non-malicious non-payers. They are probably working as well as they can and a harsh tone will not help the situation. In fact, you may offend someone and lose a good client. Late payment is better than no job at all. If you cannot differentiate between non-malicious late payers and malicious non-payers, you could lose a valuable client by being too harsh during the collection process. The trick is to collect the debt in such a way that your professional relationship is not damaged, so you can remain partners for many years to come.

"Malicious" delay means the agency is seeing if it can get away without paying you. The agency may be testing how far you are ready to go to collect the payment and how professional you are in debt collection. This situation is typical in uncivilized business environments such as Russia and Eastern Europe, but there are malicious non-payers among USA and UK agencies, as well. This is exactly how STB (UK) operates.

The key words here are "politeness" and "persistent." You should make the client understand that they have no chance of getting away with non-payment. I use the following practices:

1) after a 3 day delay of payment—a polite reminder by e-mail

2) 10 day delay—a polite reminder by fax

3) 20 days—a telephone call

4) 30 days—a fax/snail-mail with a polite promise of exposure on the worldwide translation scene and legal procedures.

Signs indicating an attempt at malicious non-payment include:

1. The agency does not respond to your repeated e-mail or fax reminders

2. The agency suddenly stops answering your phone calls

3. The agency says the payment was made, but does not provide banking confirmation of the fund transfer when you request it (this is a standard banking document containing fund transfer details, with a unique reference number. Depending on the country, it is called a SWIFT copy or an advice of funds transfer).

When you are sure you are facing a case of non-payment (usually confirmed by complaints of other translators published in some of the above-mentioned payment practice databases), you should send a politely worded list of further actions you will take for collection. This list is a very effective collection tool, but you should use it only if you are 100% sure of the malicious nature of the problem. This is your ultimate weapon, so use it discreetly.

This list of collection actions can include very polite assurances (not threats!) to expose the non-payer before:

1. its clients

2. its national chamber of commerce

3. its national association of translators/translation agencies

4. the ITI or ATA

5. The five payment practice databases.

You should also assure them you will file a lawsuit through a local lawyer, hire a local debt collection agency, and contact the local chapter of the Better Business Bureau, if the problem occurs in the USA.

If the agency does not react, start to implement your exposure plan—one action a week, with notifications sent to the debtor.

My statistics after four years of active freelance translation are as follows. Among 45 translation agencies in 12 countries, and 20 direct clients from 4 countries, I met only one malicious (and notorious) non-payer—Polylingua (Prague, Czech Republic), which is managed by Marta Cettlova. I accepted two small jobs from Polylingua during my second year of work without properly researching the agency. Only after completing the jobs and encountering a payment problem did I discover that the agency had been exposed by my colleagues on the aforementioned databases! Luckily, the lost amount totaled only 0.4% of the fees I earned during these years.

Conclusions:

1. Concentrate your efforts on checking the reliability of a client (AFTER receipt of a contract or PO, but before doing the job), not on collection after problems begin.

2. When collecting your debts, be polite, flexible and persistent. To preserve your share of the market, do not call in the big guns unless absolutely necessary.

3. Poor communication and organization of the payment process are much more common problems in translation agencies than malicious attempts at non-payment.

From:Andrei Gerasimov, Ph.D.

Wordfast

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）
The main functions of numerous translation database tools available on the international market are segmentation of source text, preservation of the original typesetting and layout, and the translation database proper.

Segmentation means that a translator does not need to look for the beginning of the next source sentence to be translated. The software offers this next sentence automatically. Deja Vu uses a table; TRADOS, a highlighted colored background. This keeps the translator from skipping a sentence or even a paragraph — a rather common problem.

Using a translation database, you translate a sentence, phrase or word once. The next time you come across the same element, a program suggests that you use your previous translation. This may be edited if the context demands it. This is important primarily, but not exclusively, for technical translators, because technical documents tend to have many repetitions. For example, when working with one of my long-term clients, Volvo Cars International, about 60% of the sentences in the brochure on the Volvo S60 were sentences I had already translated working on the Volvo S/V70, S80 and S/V40 brochures. In such cases, which are not at all rare, a database saves time and ensures perfect consistency of terminology, which the client appreciates.

Preservation of the original typesetting and layout means that the translator no longer needs to think about this requirement.

In my opinion, when choosing a tool, a translator should first of all pay attention to the factors of price, user-friendliness and the amount of time necessary to learn to use it.

I am a freelance Russian translator who depends greatly on the Internet as a source of work, dictionaries, reference materials and translation software. I came across Wordfast in January 2001, and this program immediately became my favorite tool. I had extensive experience with Deja Vu 2.3.78 and TRADOS Workbench 2.0. Now I use Wordfast 3.34 every day, and it boosts my productivity even when there are no repetitions in the source text.

Wordfast is actually a set of macros, a template compatible with any version of Microsoft Word. It builds on the standard Microsoft Word window, adding 13 special Wordfast buttons and implements for functions such as segmentation; creating, using, importing and exporting translation databases and glossaries; exact/fuzzy matches; pretranslation and context search (concordance). Alignment — creating a database from previously translated materials — is performed by an additional tool (template), Walign.

Wordfast2.jpg (15127 bytes)" border="0" height="184" width="400">

The green field shows an exact match in the database

It took me only a few seconds to download Wordfast. This is a great advantage for freelance translators with low-speed phone-line Internet connection. Installation also took only a few seconds to copy the file wordfast.dot in the Template folder of Microsoft Word. It took me a couple of hours to become familiar with all Wordfast’s functions. The Wordfast manual is 18 pages.

I tested Wordfast in versions 3.30, 3.32 and 3.34 for more than half a year, using it in many translation projects. In one of them, I translated articles into Russian for www.balkan-info.com for the US Department of Defense via a translation agency on a daily basis. Wordcount was 1,000 to 2,500 words daily, a total of about 220,000 words from March 22 to September 30, with tight deadlines, strict preservation of original layout and hyperlinks, consistency of political and military terminology and transliteration of foreign names.

Wordfast never let me down. I want to emphasize its reliability — this factor is most important when you have to meet tight deadlines each day. And Wordfast operated with Cyrillic fonts without any difficulties.

Sometimes the translation agency re-sent a revised copy of an article without indicating what had been changed — in some cases almost at deadline. It was easy to translate a revised text using the previously created database.

Another project with a wordcount of about 22,000 words, with a lot of exact and fuzzy matches, proved to be a test of compatibility between Wordfast and TRADOS. When asked if I could provide translation databases in TRADOS format, I replied positively and was hired for the project. I submitted my databases created by Wordfast. The manager may still think I have TRADOS installed on my PC!

In these two cases, I used Wordfast on three different PCs — Pentium 233, Intel Celeron 466 and AMD 1100. The operating systems were Windows 98 and Windows Millenium. The text editor was MS Word from MS Office 97 and 2000. Wordfast demonstrated the ultimate reliability in all these combinations of hardware and software.

No translation database tool I have tested was free of bugs. At least, I came across bugs running them on my two PCs, both of which operate perfectly when I run many other applications and games. This is the case despite the fact that these products were developed years ago and have been debugged for all this time. I noticed several bugs when testing Wordfast in February and reported them to the developer. They soon disappeared.

Of course, being much more complex and “heavy,” TRADOS and Deja Vu perform functions beyond those of Wordfast. For example, they process files of “exotic” types such as QuarkXpress and PageMaker without forcing a translator to convert them to the .doc format beforehand. Deja Vu and TRADOS also offer a lot of windows and functions that are basically meant for translation managers and translators who are also advanced PC users.

In my opinion, Wordfast is a cost-efficient, user-friendly and reliable segmentation/translation database tool that may be useful and/or helpful to translation professionals and to people who translate only now and then. Wordfast will also find a market among those translators who are allergic to any software that they feel complicates their lives instead of facilitating their work.

My golden rules for quality assurance

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

In the highly competitive global translation market quality may be the main differentiator- a factor that makes the difference between success and failure.

Quality assurance (QA) in translation may be defined as the act of maintaining translation services to ensure conformance to customer requirements or other specifications. QA is implemented by the translation service provider. Don't confuse QA with QC, which is implemented by your customer after the translation is completed and delivered.

Below I suggest some methods that help me to meet the quality requirements of the most demanding customers from various countries and areas of business, both translation agencies and direct customers, such as Ford Motor, Volvo Cars, Philips and more.

1. Accept jobs only within your areas of knowledge/specialization and translate only into your native language.

Some customers try to make you accept a job before you see the source text. This is a very wrong approach. In such cases I always respond that I need to see the source text to determine whether it is within my areas of knowledge.

This is also applicable to editing jobs. I often receive Russian translations for editing and see that the target text is so poor that it can't be improved by editing. It is easier to translate the source text from scratch than to edit. If you accept such a job before seeing the translation, you will actually have to translate it from scratch at much lower editing rates.

Even though my customers say that my English is "near native", in most cases I do not accept texts to be translated from Russian into English. In rare cases when I have to help out my long term customers, I do translate into English, but in such cases I always hire a native US or UK editor for proofreading.

2. Always use TM software such as Trados, Wordfast or SDLX to avoid omissions and eye mistakes.

Besides using the main TM function (leverage of your old translations), such software breaks the source text into segments (usually sentences), so you will never miss a sentence or paragraph, which is a rather common mistake. If a sentence contains untranslatable parts (numbers, codes, trademarks, company names, designations etc), use Alt+Ins to copy the source segment into the target text box and overwrite the translatable parts only. Alternatively, you may use the buttons to copy the untranslatable elements into the target segment.

However, the TM software has an inherent defect - the segmentation makes you perceive the text as a sequence of individual sentences. At each step you are a bit out of context. Therefore it is necessary to proofread the cleaned-up target language text in MS Word - to improve the integrity and wholeness of the translation. The result is a smoother text with consecutive sentences stitched to each other. This is important not only for creative translation - e.g. ads, but for other types of translation too.

3. Never hesitate to contact your customer for clarifications.

Some source texts are sloppy, contain mistakes, an overly short-handed style, omissions, and sometimes the author means one thing and writes quite another. As they said in the Soviet Union: Говорим "партия" - подразумеваем "Ленин" (We say the Party - and we mean Lenin). Without clarifications of such parts your translation will be as poor as the source text. When I hire another translator to make a complex job for me, and he does not ask any questions, this cocks me.

4. Co-operate with another good translator - hire him/her for second proofreading.

As the Russian saying goes, one head is good, but two are better. You can provide the same service to your colleague in return - this is a win-win solution.

5. To ensure the use of corporate-specific terminology, use references materials and specialists/consultants from the local representative office which will use your translation.

When a French translation agency asked me to translate a Philips mobile phone manual, I got the agency’s permission and contacted the Moscow Philips office for reference materials, terminology and consultation. This was important because all Russian representative offices and dealers of western mobile phone manufacturers use various terminology. The TM and glossary created as a result of this initial consultation have helped me to translate Philips manuals since 2000.

6. Know the target audience of each translation project and translate for this audience.

When you translate into Russian (or any other language), you need to know where your target audience (potential readers) reside. This info determines the terminology you should use. Several years ago my long-term customer, CPLI (NY, USA), asked me to change my translation of the term "library card" from "читательский билет" to "библиотечная карточка". I was sure that my initial version - "читательский билет" - was correct. I took one of several "library cards" given to me by various Moscow libraries, scanned it and sent the picture to the CPLI manager to prove that my translation was OK. However, the manager explained that this translation was meant for NY-based Russians (this info was not provided to me beforehand), who had got used to the literal translation - "библиотечная карточка". I had no other choice than to agree that the use of the Brighton-Beach-Russian term (even if it differs from the term used all over Russia) is absolutely appropriate in this situation.

7. Understand clearly the objectives of each translation project.

You need to understand what this or that text is meant for, i.e. what task it will fulfill. Some texts are designed just to inform the target audience about something, some texts (ad copies) stimulate the desire to buy a service or product, some (PR texts) are designed to create or improve brand identity, some (manuals) to help users operate a device. Your translation must be "honed" to fulfill the particular task most efficiently. This determines the language register that should be used.

8. Arrange close and direct co-operation with the end customer specialists.

Some translation agencies do not allow the translators to contact directly end customer specialists for clarifications and terminology. These agencies are afraid that next time the customer may contact the translator directly, not via the agency, and the agency will lose a part of its business. IMHO opinion, this fear is unreasonable, because translators usually sign a non-compete agreement safeguarding the agency's business. The best way to keep your business is to provide top quality translation, and in many cases this is possible only through close and direct co-operation of the linguist and end customer specialists.

Two year ago a well-known Belgian translation agency sent me a big project – the translation of 3 Alpine car audio catalogs from English into Russian. To use correct company specific terminology, I contacted the Moscow Alpine office, whose expert (just imagine - my alumni) was very friendly and helpful. I used the terminology provided by him and delivered my translation to the Belgian agency. Some days later I received my translation back after it was edited by another freelance translator hired by the agency. I noticed that the editor had changed the corporate specific Alpine terminology and added quite a number of spelling mistakes. Then the agency sent the "edited" translation to the end customer - Alpine. Later I found out that the Moscow Alpine office had to re-work the edited translation to restore the company specific terminology used by me initially.

Next year I explained this absurd situation and asked the agency to 1) eliminate the "editing" and 2) permit me to hire the local Alpine expert to proofread my translation at my expense. I received the permission, and the job was completed to the complete satisfaction of all parties concerned (except maybe the editor, who lost the assignment). The by-product of this approach - we created a TM and project glossary, which will be very useful for the translation of next year’s catalogs.

9. Use "test readers" representing the target audience of your translation

The price of mistakes in medical translation may be very high. This is why special expensive QA methods such as back-translation and the use of test-readers may be justified in this area.

This year I translated a medical questionnaire created by a well-known pharmaceutical company. The questionnaire was designed for patients with urinary incontinence. The budget was rather high, and first of all I hired a medical translator, MD, who created his own translation independently of me. Then we met and created a reconciled version. MD’s input was correct medical terminology and mine was readability and smooth easily understood Russian.

Then I went to a Moscow clinic, found a urologist and asked him to help me contact 5 patients with this disease (typical representatives of the project specific target audience) to proofread our reconciled translation. On the next day, I met these patients and asked them to provide their comments regarding readability and easiness/correctness of understanding. I checked that they understood each item of the questionnaire correctly. They also confirmed that the translation reads not like a translation but like a document originally written in the Russian language. As a result of this approach, when my translation was proofread by a specialist from the customer's Russian office, he suggested no revisions.

Remember that you translate not for the translation manager or editor or proofreader - you translate for your target audience. This audience has the last word on whether you are good at your job or not, and it is the target audience that pays for your work in the final analysis.

I called these rules golden because my first hand experience shows that nothing improves the translator's bottom line as effectively as the high quality of his/her translation services.

From: Andrei Gerasimov, Ph.D.

English to Chinese translation sample 3

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

Source:

March 21, 2007 (SmartPros) -- Certified financial planner earnings are higher and job satisfaction remains solid, according to The College for Financial Planning's 2007 Survey of Trends in the Financial Planning Industry.

Survey respondents reported mean gross earnings of $283,079 in 2006, compared to the $232,995 reported in last year's survey. Longevity in the profession was a factor in reported earnings, as those professionals with five to nine years of experience reported earning an average of $111,730, while those with 30-plus years of experience averaged $476,464 in earnings.

Professional designations also moved income levels upward, and rapidly. As an example, those holding the College for Financial Planning asset management designation, Accredited Asset Management Specialist, reported increases in earnings from 18 percent to 29 percent, with an annual income of $109,000-188,000. Those holding the retirement counseling designation, Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor, reported earnings increases of 12 to 15 percent, and annual incomes greater than $140,000.

Financial planners surveyed were likely to hold more than one license or designation, in addition to the CFP certification. Life and Health licenses, NASD, RIA, and CPA were among the most widely held designations reported on the Survey. Financial planners are also well educated, with 89 percent holding bachelor's degrees, and 42 percent with graduate degrees.

The survey found that the typical client of financial planners is a two-income couple, 50 to 59 years old, with gross income of $100,000 to 149,999, discretionary income of $10,000 to 20,000, and a net worth of $1 million to 1.5 million. Clients were considered most knowledgeable about basic budgeting and financial goal setting, and least knowledgeable about estate planning. Clients were most concerned about health care costs, and least concerned about losing their jobs.

The survey found a cause of concern for planners and their clients in questions about retirement expectations. Fully 88 percent of clients expect to be able to maintain their current standard of living in retirement, while only 70 percent of financial planners expect clients to be able to maintain current living standards.

Target(by wordfast after clean-up):

2007年3月21日（SmartProsSmartPros）

根据财务规划大学对2007年财务规划产业的调查，认证财务规划业者收入水平较高，依然有很强的工作满足感。

2006年受访者的平均总收入是$283,079，而2005年这一数字是$232,995。资历是收入水平的影响因素。有5至10年工作经验的，平均年收入是$111,730，而那些有30多年工作经验的，平均年收入是$476,464。

专业头衔也会迅速提高收入水平。 例如，具有财务规划大学资产管理专业头衔（合格的资产管理专家）的，年收入$109,000至$188,000，增长18%至29%。 那些具有退休咨询服务专业头衔（特许退休计划顾问）的，年收入超过$140,000，增长12%至15%。

被调查的财务规划业者，除CFP证书之外，还拥有不止一个执照或专业头衔。 调查显示，生命与健康执照，NASD, RIA和CPA被广泛持有。 财务规划业者们受过良好教育，89%具有学士学位，42%具有研究生学位。

调查发现，财务规划业者的客户通常是双收入夫妇，50岁至59岁，总收入为$100,000至$149,999,可自由支配收入为$10,000至$20,000，资产净值为$1,000,000至$1,500,000。 他们被认为熟悉基本预算和财务目标制定，而对于不动产计划知之甚少。 客户们非常关心健康支出，而很少考虑失业问题。

调查发现，需要注意业者和客户们在退休后生活预期方面的差距。88%的客户预期在退休后能够保持现有的生活水平，而只有70%的财务规划从业者预期客户们能够保持现有的生活水平。

Ways to Keep yourself Motivated during Freelance Translation Jobs

（Edited by freelance Chinese translator li – English to Chinese or Chinese to English translation services）

Any type of work requires self-discipline. But when you are doing freelance translation jobs from home, self-discipline is not sufficient. You need to know how to sustain motivation since it is an essential element in enhancing productivity. You will instantly know that you are lacking in motivation when you lose enthusiasm to work on translation. To regain it back and improve the situation, you must first identify the reasons for your lack of motivation.

If the reason is that the translation work is distasteful, then you can try to offer a reward to yourself on its successful completion. You can fit in small breaks of songs and music in between your work schedule and break the task into smaller work fragments. By inserting exciting tasks in between the fragmented work, you will be motivated to continue working on translation.

Often in freelance translation jobs, you may come across situations when you become overwhelmed by difficult projects. Moreover, the fact that you are not working in an office where you have colleagues to encourage you does not help either. In such situations, try looking for online resources, bookstores and libraries. If that doesn’t help, contact people who are familiar with such projects since brainstorming for ideas can provide new ways.

It is best to set goals for freelance translation works. If your focus is not clear, you may risk losing enthusiasm and direction of work. Maintain a daily work schedule. This will keep you in a routine and will enhance motivation. Lack of proper exercise and food can make you become lethargic and steal away motivation. Thus, you should increase intake of essential vitamins and minerals, and re-vitalize yourself through physical workout. Try out the following tips to sustain motivation and improve productivity and efficiency.

From:http://getdirectclient.blogspot.com/