Managing projects: tips for freelance translators

When you decide to be a freelance translator it is probably because you feel that you translate well, you have a good language knowledge and expertise on one or more working areas. But when projects start arriving faster than anticipated you immediately think: “How can I manage all this and also do I really perform a good job?”

The first thing is to relax and take a deep breath. After that we reach the very first stage: initiating. For a translator this means a request for quote from a client, hopefully a new client, checking all the conditions and elaborating the quote.

The second stage is the most important of all: planning. In this stage the translator will collect reference material, prepare the text and translation memories, if needed, and plan the time he/she will need to do the translation, taking into account that unpleasant surprises may occur. “Those who fail to plan plan to fail.” – Churchill

The third stage – executing – is doing the translation, with or without a CAT Tool.

The Monitoring & Controlling stages occur when a translator asks his/her client any queries he/she may have in order to ensure maximum quality. In this stage a final revision before delivery is executed, that is a quality assurance procedure to check if everything was translated, if there are any typos, if the format is exactly the same as the original text.

The last stage is the conclusion of the project, when all previous stages are dully completed and the translation is delivered to the client and an invoice is issued.

Bearing these stages in mind will be very helpful for any translator who wishes to improve his/her work without missing what is really important: customer loyalty!