“Thoughts on Freelance Translation: Internal Affairs”
The past five years have hit the international markets hard. The economic crisis has led numerous linguists to go with the flow and adjust their business practices to match the shrinking economy. What is the truth behind the new state of affairs?
There are multiple questions regarding the reason translators and interpreters have been forced to lower their rates, to forego charging for additional services and to accept unfavourable payment and practice terms. The pressure major agencies and direct clients put on linguists is surprisingly more of an internal issue amongst our own profession, rather than an external force that influences the flow of work.
As we’ve discussed, the need to stand our ground and match up to the broader field of entrepreneurs – be they lawyers, electricians or civil engineers – is paramount in the ever-shifting plateau of emerging and recessing economies.
According to the recent experiment we’ve conducted, the market is still craving for the product that we offer, and we are too few to cover the growing needs. Agencies and direct clients are more than willing to fully compensate us for excellent services, and examples of companies that try to apply a cheap, low quality business model show that they’re shunned by both linguists and the public. We just need to be aware of the facts and work our way out of the problems we’re currently facing.
Konstantinos Stardelis is a freelance medical translator in the language pair English to Greek, based in Athens, Greece. Over the past few years, he has been working actively to encourage young linguists to fight for higher rates and prompt payment, through social media exposure and his personal blog (www.greek-translator.com/blog/). Apart from working as a translator, Konstantinos has been teaching a series of seminars regarding medical translations and standard protocols and is currently working on setting up a platform of experts in the field of medicine and pharmaceutics, to promote high quality in healthcare.