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Joint SWET/JAT Kansai meeting 6 April 2002, Kobe
The meeting started with self-introductions in a room of about 18 people with a good mix of nationalities. The plan was to cover three areas: work environment, time management, and doing business as a freelancer, but topics were allowed to drift and jump around until all the time was used up. All in all, the discussions were quite fruitful. Here is a sampling/amalgamation of the points covered and comments offered.
With a strong contingent of participants at the "getting started" level, the nitty-gritty focus of discussion was immediately turned to getting work, particularly how to start out after retirement, an area perhaps not given enough attention in translation circles. Is working in-house recommended over the age of 60? Is it even possible? Certainly, but smaller companies may be more flexible than large ones, was one comment. To start out, you might try editing or proofreading; or work in-house part of the week while making the move to freelance.
In that case, how do you get jobs as a freelancer? Answer Monday Japan Times classifieds, do trial translations, answer job offers on Honyaku, even register with agencies. Be listed in the JAT open directory. These are all possibilities, but the best is through personal contact--word of mouth--so network with others to get a reliable connection to an agency. For E-J it might be better to contact overseas agencies directly. A discussion of the website ProZ was thrown into the mix (http://www.proz.com/), with some positive comments. Create your own web page, perhaps do volunteering to start out, but some held the opinion that to be professional, you need to have the attitude that your services are worth money and that volunteering is not the direction you want to go.
When you do make first contact, the question arises--can you trust agencies? Sometimes a trial job will be a scam to get 10 people to do 10 parts for free, so the translator must also try out the company to see if it pays properly. Confirming details by telephone is vital. Negotiation on the phone is one the hardest things, as you don't know what to say. Perhaps it is best to wait for their offer before telling your rates.
Speaking of rates, what are the going rates? Naturally it depends on the field. Technical translation and patents are much higher paying than general. At the low end for general translation might be 8.8 yen/Japanese character or around 17 yen/word English output. If you work directly it can be 1.5-2 times that. Agency rates are generally 3,000-4,000/page.
What about Bill Lise's claim that you can earn 1.2 million yen per month? Well, that would mean earning 60,000 yen per day, 5 days a week, or 20 days a month. The assumed output is 4,000 words a day. That's fine if you want to burn out. More reasonable is half that output--2,000 words a day/10 pages. (Double your word rate and it's possible.) But ask yourself how much would you be happy with? How about working 15 days a month, earning 30,000 yen a day? That would be 450,000 yen per month and 5 million yen per year. It sure is difficult to keep up the pace of earning one million yen a month, but not impossible if you are motivated. Being freelance means having a fluctuating income. Are you able to manage with that? There are always times when you have to make difficult decisions, juggle clients, and turn down projects, especially when you are putting a lot of time on the line with a big project.
How about the freelance lifestyle? Certainly self-discipline is needed if you are working freelance to meet deadlines, but it might be more painful to work Monday to Friday in-house. When you are always at home, you are always at work, and you might feel guilty if you're not working. That is why it is nice to have an office away from home. Some people will make a corner of their home an office, dress for the office, etc. Others merely need to roll out of bed. One person works two hours at the computer at a stretch, while another works 40-50 minutes if it is a concentrated work session, and 20-30 minutes if the concentration level is low, then goes out to hug a tree, weed the garden, or whatever. Question: how often will freelancers give up events like sports team practice because of a rush job? It depends, but one freelancer likes to keep evenings free, which is more difficult when doing business with clients in Japan while living on the West coast of the U.S., where 6:00 p.m. PDT is 10:00 a.m. JST.
How about trying to get more work or turning down work? One way to advertise is to e-mail agencies and tell them you're going to be away and can't take any work. That shows you're successful enough to be able to turn work down. You might ask for a 30% premium for weekend or overnight work. Like hitchhiking, it is difficult to turn down an offer, or to ask for more money. So raising rates is one way of turning down work, referring the job to someone else is another.
What about signing liability contracts? Don't sign anything you don't want to. Put "liable only for cost of translation" in the contract, or cross out clauses in the contract that you don't agree with. Still, no one has heard of a translator being sued.
Back to work environment. Home or office? If you work alone in isolation and have nagging questions, mailing lists can be a big help. This, however, begs several questions: How important is the Internet in freelance work? Is it necessary to have as fast a connection as possible? Have you gone to the trouble of getting it? ADSL or Cable may not be available where one lives, but even FLET'S ISDN at 64K is enough, being "always on" when one needs to hit Google to get background information or check terminology to improve a translation.
What do you do when you don't have work? Do you sit by the phone hoping it will ring? Here is where "tethering tools" come in handy and allow you to be in your office when you're not. First is the cordless phone with LCD readout and number display. Next is a cell phone and a call forwarding service such as NTT's "Voice Warp." With these tools, you can be around the house, or virtually anywhere, and when a phone call comes in, you can pick up right away. In the States, however, voice mail is considered standard for being professional. If you want someone to answer the phone for you, a virtual office will cost about 20,000 yen/month in Japan.
The cell phone is enough for just accepting work. But if you have to work and be mobile, having a laptop as your main machine is ideal. A show of hands in the room for desktop versus laptop as one's main machine? Desktops outnumber laptops by 2:1. A laptop allows you to make use of spare minutes during the day. The freelance life allows you this freedom to move around with a mobile office, so why not take advantage of it?
Another topic: Receiving 原稿 in electronic format versus hard copy. Do you go to the trouble of using e-Typist for OCR to convert to electronic format? How about using voice recognition software to do your translation? If you receive a poor fax copy, you might want to tack on a surcharge. That is one of the extra charges listed on one freelancer's 請求書. A bad 原稿 spoils your attitude and ruins your motivation, so instead of complaining to the agency, just raise your rate.
Other tools: Enlarge hard copy using the copy machine at your local convenience store, then use a copy holder to bring it closer to your face. What about losing your place? If you have the data try something like Wordfast, which is a translation memory tool for both Windows and Mac. (http://www.geocities.com/wordfast/cat.html) Feed it a text file and it puts it up line by line on the screen. If no data? Use a copy holder with sliding ruler.
Last nitty gritty: Who really compares final English version with Japanese original with such tight deadlines? How do you catch mistakes you've made--mistyped or misread? It depends on your style of work--if you work slowly and surely to avoid making those mistakes, or if you do a quick, first draft and then rewrite. In any case a thorough proofread at the end is always in order before running the document through a spelling checker. If you proofread on screen, a large, legible font such as Times 18 can be an immense help.
Richard Sadowsky is constantly working to realize freedom in his life as a freelance translator.