Speaker 1: Prices, proofreading, translation degrees, this and more in this month's Q&A. Coming up. Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse. Another two months have gone by since the last Q&A that I made on this channel, so it's time for a new one. Once again I took questions especially from the last video, so if you want to be involved in the next Q&A in two months, make sure to ask your questions under this video, it's the most chance that you will be featured. As always I took screenshots of your questions here on my phone, about six or seven, I will see if I get through all of them. Thanks so much for always asking questions, I try to answer them as soon as I can. If it once takes a bit longer, please excuse, but you will definitely get an answer if you ask a comment down below. So yeah, let's get straight into it with episode four already of Q&A for freelancers. So the first question of today is from Christelle once again, she's always active in the comments asking questions. Hi Adrian, excellent video again. How did you decide what your prices would be for your services? Did you match other translators prices based on their websites or other data? Did the fact that you mainly work for LSBs make you lower your prices? Have your prices changed over time? Okay, a couple of questions in here. Now prices in general and just rates for translation will be one of my topics coming up in a future video. I'm not sure when, I haven't planned anything yet. Like in the beginning, of course, you ask yourself, should you charge by the word, by the hour, etc. You have to figure it out a bit for yourself. In the end, the hourly price should always be in the back of your head, even if you charge by the word, because you should adapt your rate per word, so that it reflects what you want to earn by the hour. So my prices developed over the years, of course, in the beginning they were probably a bit lower. I mean, I always had the goal to not go under 10 cents per word. That's kind of a benchmark for me for German, which is achievable. You will always get offered lower prices, but I'm just trying to always ask like minimum of 10 cents per word. Now this is no problem anymore, this is all fine. But in the beginning, of course, with less experience, it's tougher to charge more. She also asks, did you match other translators prices based on their website? Not based on their websites, but it's just once you are a bit in the scene and you read Facebook posts, you will kind of know what you can charge more or less in your language pair. There's also a great page on pros I mentioned before, I think I can link it down below, where there are kind of the average prices of every language pair is on there. So that's a good indication if you look at for your language pair and what people actually charge in general on average. That's usually for agencies, so of course, for direct clients, you can charge much more because there is no middleman, right? Have your prices changed over time? Yes, definitely. I try to adapt my changes, my changes, I try to adapt my prices every two years. Last I've done this at the end of last year in December, and then I just contact all my clients and I say, you know, through to to inflation due to my gained experience now working with you, I can offer you more, right? If you are really working with a client for several years, you're more valuable to them than a newbie. So I've done this now two times in my career. I raised my prices twice, and it's really important to do that because you want to progress, right? And of course, you can always raise your prices by finding better clients. That's another way. Either you raise your your prices with existing clients or you find new ones that pay more. Next one is from a kind of a random name. Hi Adrian, can translation students start freelancing at their first year? In their first year, I guess. Translating easy general essays, for example. Yes, definitely. You even should start in your first year. That's that's one regret I have during my whole translation studies. I never actually started working and in the end I had no experience, not even volunteering work, not even any other student stuff. I proofread nothing. My number one advice if you are in a translation studies right now, start. Just look, watch my videos about finding jobs. There's the main one is here. You can click here. Sign up with all the platforms because if you do this now and you work like even if it's just a couple of jobs now and then, you will still have already years of experience when you finish, right? Of course, not a lot of work actually, but if you've always done something a bit along the way, you can count this as experience. So definitely start as early as possible. Next up, we have a question from Moises. Hi there, I've been enjoying the content for a while now and I just wanted to know, does it matter particularly where you decide to do a master's in translation? For instance, I found a course titled international communication, translation and interpretation with very in-depth classes touching on automation versus assisted translation in business and other specializations like legal and technical translations. Sounds very good. However, it's from a less reputable university. Very interesting question. Yeah, I didn't see that one coming. I guess in other disciplines like in law, for example, or in business administration, you would always have these very highly prestigious, like if you went to Harvard Law School, you're probably one of the top law person in the world, right? In translation, I don't think that's the case. I don't think it matters for translation, honestly. It's all about the titles in the end. I mean, when an agency hires you, they just want to see that you have some kind of degree, right? It doesn't matter from what university it is. So this one that you mentioned, Moises, it sounds amazing. The title, I really like it. I mean, you can always just say, mention the title that you have, right? It's amazing. You don't even need to say where it's from. Of course, it will be in your CV, but I don't think it matters in languages. Just go for the courses that interest you and that you find might benefit you for your future. Next up, we have Valdast once again. Hi, my question is related to what you said in the video about proofreading. I followed your advice and started working while still studying to get some experience. Very good. They told me that my translation will be proofread by another person. So here's my question. How much time should I dedicate to proofreading my own translations? I usually read them twice, once bilingually to check that I've translated everything correctly and once monolingually to spellcheck everything. Nice terminology that you use. Is that too much, too little? Thanks in advance. Very good question, Valdast. I actually made a video. You've probably seen it. If not, you can go back about proofreading. It basically answers exactly this. I still wanted to take it in because it's, especially in the beginning, you're probably doing too much proofreading of your own stuff because you want to make sure that it's good, right? You want to deliver your baby in perfect form and that's probably the best thing to do in the beginning, to be honest. I also answered him. I think it depends on what position you are in your career. In the beginning, you should probably over-prepare, even if you make a loss in your first few jobs because you proofread it three, four times, right? But after that, I think what he says here sounds about right. Once bilingually to check that I've translated everything correctly and once monolingually to spellcheck everything. That sounds about right. If you deliver to a direct client, you should have more proofreading workflows implemented, probably also work with an independent person next to it that you send your translation to. If you work with agencies, that's usually their job, right? You just send a translation. So what I do when I work with agencies, I translate it and then I proofread it once to make sure it's okay, preferably the next day, and then I send it. Okay, we have a couple more. Let's see. Chen Tao asks, if you have a high working knowledge of a second language but are not fluent in it, as you were mentioning in French, what resources can you use to translate and can you still offer a translation service? So you can definitely offer a translation service. Most, if not all, translators have a less dominant foreign language. That's usually the second language, right? For me, that's French. Yes, my English is much better than my French, at least the spoken version, like my spoken French. I just don't practice it enough. I live here in Brussels where people speak French, so when I'm out and about, I speak French. But of course, the vocabulary that you use in your everyday life is very limited, right? That's maybe a thousand words maximum. In translation texts, there is much more vocabulary use, of course. So yeah, you can definitely, don't worry about your source language. It doesn't need to be perfect. Your target language matters much more. So I'm translating into German, so I'm consistently working on my German abilities, that they are on point. I keep up with new grammar rules, new spelling rules, newer words that are formed even, you know. What resources you can use? Resources are exactly the same as with your dominant foreign language. The resources don't change. You work with CAT tools, you work with dictionaries. You probably need to research a bit more than you do in your dominant language. There are a lot of expressions from English that I just know what they mean, and I can translate them without a dictionary. Whereas in French, I need to look up more things, of course. But the resources stay the same. Next up, a question from Isabel. When looking for clients, do you consider important to list all your current clients on your CV? I'm not sure if it's more important to name your clients or just name the areas of expertise without naming the agency clients. I don't personally include any of my clients in my CV, besides that I don't actually use the CV that often. This year, for example, I've never used the CV, because yeah, I just have the impression that I guess in the beginning, when you really actively look for clients, you use the CV more. But now, where I am, that most of it works through connections, recommendations, people contacting me. So I very rarely send out a CV, but I wouldn't recommend to include the clients there. Your areas of specialization definitely include them. And then when the client really wants to know more, they can ask you back for references. Then just make sure that you didn't sign any NDA, that you're not allowed to mention the clients. You can even ask the other clients, you know, can I use you as a reference? That's usually a good approach. And you don't need to feel weird about that, because it's very common practice in business. So don't feel, yeah, you can just ask, and they usually say yes. So it's probably better than just using someone's name and then get into trouble later. Same goes with LinkedIn, actually. And the last question for today is from Olga, I think is the name. Sorry if it's not true, but I think it's Olga. Thank you very much for your video. Did you have a mentor in the beginning of your career? Where can I find a mentor? No, I never had a mentor, but I think it's a great idea. I was just not aware of this concept when I started. I mentioned in her, in the response to her comment, that there is a pros page. It's actually made for mentorships. I'm going to link it down below. It's great. I only recently, like a year ago, found this page. There are mentors that are actually offering to be mentors, and there are mentorees that look for mentors on there. So you can sign up there if you want. I think you need a membership. I'm not actually sure. You can check it out in the link below. Type in your language pair, and then if there are mentors available, you can just contact them and say, hey, I would like to ask about this mentorship that you offer. It's a great program. I've never used it before, but you should definitely check it out if you're at the beginning of your career. And that's how you can find a mentor. And then another approach is on LinkedIn. As I always mention, just look up people that are in your language pair. Preferably people that post a lot on LinkedIn and are very active in the community. They are probably more likely to do something like a mentorship. And then just connect with them. Send a connection request and add a little note, just very informally, you know, saying that you really enjoy their content. You're impressed by what they do. You would like to get in touch and maybe ask, like, yeah, set up a mentorship or a collaboration. These are the best ways to find mentors. There you go. Seven questions. I hope you're still in the time frame. I think so. Very informative, very interesting questions as always. Make sure to ask them down below for the next video, which will be in June already. Oh my God. Yeah, time flies, but it's still a lot of fun and we're still going strong. If you would like to support the channel, make sure to like this video and subscribe. If you're not subscribed yet, it means so much and it helps a lot actually to get the channel going and keep growing. Yeah, that's all I have. Thanks for being here and I see you next week with another video. Bye-bye.