| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13] > | Off topic: In my craft or sullen art: JA-EN financial translation Thread poster: Dan Lucas
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Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
In a recent thread Rachel made the following comment:
I think most people earning 50k while working part time from the comfort of their own home would be reluctant to give that up and I think you're entirely correct that it will be hard to match that anywhere else.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I was contacted by a recruiter on behalf of a large Japanese securities company. They're looking for a permanent in-house JA-EN translator, hybrid, but going into the office on an "as-needed" basis. The office is, of course, in London.
Could I do the job? With my eyes closed. I tick all the (many) boxes in the job description I was sent, other than the FINRA Series 16 SA qualification, but because I had to write research that would pass supervisory analyst scrutiny I know very well what it entails and I could obtain it without a problem.
But let's think how this would play out. Assume I were to get the job.
Withering
I would have to travel six hours or so to get to London, maybe once or twice a month, so that's a fair amount of inconvenience and would require overnight stays as it isn't feasible to do a return trip in a single day. As I mentioned in a recent post, last time I travelled from London to West Wales I didn't arrive back home until 2 a.m. I traveled around the world an awful lot for about 15 years, and I'm not sure I like the process much anymore.
Then there's the impact on my business. I would be unable to do much if any freelance work once I began to work full-time for a conventional employer. So the freelance business I have carefully built over the past nine years would wither and die due to me becoming almost completely unavailable, overnight.
In such a role I would also be exposed to all the bureaucracy of modern corporate life that make it so stressful. My experience was that time spent generating value, in whatever form, accounted for a smaller and smaller fraction of my time at the office as the years went by, and that's not good for the soul. Conversely, freelancing is entirely about the work.
Finally, while I understand that many freelancers would like greater income stability, I suspect most of them don't realize that there is very little stability in a traditional corporate role. The company in question might fire me with very little notice and very little compensation, as indeed could any other company. If you want security, you want to work for the NHS, where even its defenders would acknowledge that firing someone takes real determination, or a similar public organization.
In the private sector, there is no loyalty, there is no mercy, there is only the inexorable logic of profit. You can work your socks off for a company, and management will not hesitate to pull the trigger on you if they need to cut costs to hit their quarterly targets. "Security" is a chimera.
Justifiable ruthlessness
At a philosophical level, I think that is not necessarily wrong or unfair. It is that kind of ruthlessness that drives resource allocation and ensures that capital flows to more or less the right places in the economy. But still, it's the kind of ruthlessness to which I have no intention of exposing myself (or my dependents) unless I have no other choice.
What kind of compensation would I need to work for this securities company? I really don't think they could pay me enough, but in theory if I were to be paid well into six figures with a 12-month guarantee, I might think about it. Who gets packages like that? A valuable client-facing asset like an analyst with a good reputation for generating primary business probably would, and on top of that they'd get a bonus larger than their base salary in a good year, many times larger for big hitters. Do support staff like translators get packages like that? Hah. You must be kidding.
So that's that. Back to my freelancing work.
Oh, speaking of freelance work there was something else: I was approached by a potential Asian-based client wanting to know if I could do a few hundred characters of translation every weekday in a specialized area.
Initially I wondered casually if I should drop my rate to encourage them to give me the work, which is interesting, but then I looked again at the description of what they wanted, and realized that it involves being at my desk first thing in the morning (GMT), every day, to get the translation done.
Time zone issues
As it happens I am up at that time without fail to walk the horrible dog, so the timing is feasible on the face of it, but I suspect it wouldn't work for many people in this hemisphere. It would probably be even more restrictive for somebody working in an Asian time zone, because they would have to set aside some time in the mid-afternoon, every day.
While afternoon may impose more constraints than early morning, early morning is still quite a tie. What happens if I want to stay at a friend's house overnight? Do I get up with the dawn, boot my laptop and pound out 500 characters of translation before breakfast? I guess it's possible, but it's far from ideal. So what they're asking is more onerous than it might appear at first glance.
In the end, I notified them of my rate in the first bullet point of my reply, outlined my experience in the area in question and my ability to deal with the timing, made it clear that I would not be offended if they went for somebody else, and left it at that. I got a polite acknowledgment this morning, so let's see where that goes.
My prediction: it will go nowhere. I think they'll conclude that I am too expensive and if they do use a human translator they will opt for somebody much, much cheaper, quite possibly a non-native speaker who is going to mangle the colloquial speech required for this kind of report. Their choice - that's the wonderful thing about a free market. I don't get to interfere in their business, and they don't get to interfere in mine, unless there is mutual agreement.
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I got about 4000 characters of the long-term job completed yesterday, putting me well on the way to achieving the next 14,000 character submission on Monday morning. And I got the smaller 1000-character project completed and submitted.
The provisional 3000-character document about which the client enquired yesterday never became reality; the PM sent me an email cancelling it an hour or so after yesterday's post. In such circumstances I'm never sure whether it has actually been canceled or whether they have just given it to another freelancer, but it's no bother either way.
Today I'm doing some technology for a change, yippee! I promised to submit this particular 4000-character piece by Saturday (tomorrow) morning, although the PM also said that Monday morning would be fine. I'm guessing she will not be working over the weekend.
I would like to get a few thousand characters of the long-term job completed as well.
Dan
| | | | TonyTK
German to English
+ ...
| Remember when you thought ... | Mar 8 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
... the horrible dog ...
... you had a hole in your wellies?
Biscuit
[Bearbeitet am 2024-03-08 08:50 GMT]
[Bearbeitet am 2024-03-09 08:20 GMT]
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
The clematis armandii is flowering. It climbs over everything and has more or less killed the honeysuckle next to it. A few years ago it managed to grab a branch of the neighboring oak tree and was doing its level best to throttle it before I got in there and calmed it down with the secateurs.
Admittedly this may look as if it has nothing to do with financial translation, but actually the honeysuckle next to it (the one that it has nearly extinguished) is Lonicera japonica Halliana,... See more
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
TonyTK wrote:
... you had a hole in your wellies?
Ginger
He steals my slippers and gnaws away at them under the table, so sabotage of wellies is not inconceivable.
Well, not entirely inconceivable...
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MollyRose
United States
Local time: 07:10
English to Spanish
+ ...
Biscuit must not be that horrible if you let him live inside!
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Not a great day for work yesterday, as I only translated around 3000 characters in all. The PM for the project I was supposed to deliver on Saturday morning suggested (unprompted) that I submit it on Monday, so I had a slow day. Must do better today. It is 7:15 a.m. here, and I am about to get to work. I intend to finish the 1800 characters remaining on the technology job today, and hopefully do a few thousand on the long-term job.
---------------------------------------------------... See more Not a great day for work yesterday, as I only translated around 3000 characters in all. The PM for the project I was supposed to deliver on Saturday morning suggested (unprompted) that I submit it on Monday, so I had a slow day. Must do better today. It is 7:15 a.m. here, and I am about to get to work. I intend to finish the 1800 characters remaining on the technology job today, and hopefully do a few thousand on the long-term job.
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One thing that used to affect me at this time of the year was interruptions from passing strangers. Pembrokeshire has a couple of thousand miles of footpaths, and it is bordered on the west by the 186-mile Pembrokeshire Coast Path. We get ramblers, hikers and walkers at all times of the year, but naturally March to October is the busiest period. I'm expecting a gradual increase in traffic over the next few weeks.
The house is located right next to a major node on this network. The bottom of the garden is literally five yards from Pentre Ifan wood, and only a few hundred yards from Ty Canol, an ancient woodland that has a slightly unnerving sense of the mystical to it, the feeling of an Arthur Rackham fairy tale illustration come to life.
I created the sign below a year or so back, with the aim of stemming the flow of walkers going the wrong way and walking through the bottom gate into our fields. This used to be a common occurrence, involving me leaving my desk to trot out of the house, down to the bottom of the garden, out of the gate and round to the left to help them. The sign (which has been very successful at redirecting waifs and strays) was printed on bonded aluminium sheet for me by my helpful local printer, and has resisted the weather pretty well despite its exposed position on the gate. On the other hand, the air is so clean round here that lichens and mosses grow on everything. "Could do with a wipe" as they say.
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| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Yesterday I managed to finish the short job (that was around 2000 characters' worth), but only translated 3000 or so of the long-term job. This is disappointing, and leaves me with a lot of work to do today. I seem to remember saying the same thing yesterday...
If you are involved in Japanese to English financial translation, or indeed legal translation, you may sometimes have difficulty following documents with complex bulleting or numbering schemes. I'm currently translating a yuh... See more Yesterday I managed to finish the short job (that was around 2000 characters' worth), but only translated 3000 or so of the long-term job. This is disappointing, and leaves me with a lot of work to do today. I seem to remember saying the same thing yesterday...
If you are involved in Japanese to English financial translation, or indeed legal translation, you may sometimes have difficulty following documents with complex bulleting or numbering schemes. I'm currently translating a yuho (有価証券報告書) or annual securities report, and it is loaded with different sections and numbers.
It is easy to get lost in the sequences. "Now, hang on, was this a Roman numeral with parentheses on both sides, or did it just have a '.' after it and no parentheses?" I find myself muttering. If you want a bird's eye view of the document with just the numbering and bullets, try switching on regular expressions in the source column of your CAT tool and using the following string as a filter.
^(①|②|③|④|⑤|⑥|⑦|⑧|⑨|（ア）|（イ）|（ウ）|（エ）|（オ）|（カ）|（キ）|（ク）|（ケ）|（コ）|（１）|（２）|（３）|（４）|（５）|（６）|（７）|（８）|（９）|（1）|（2）|（3）|（4）|（5）|（6）|（7）|（8）|（9）|●|■|★|い\.|ろ\.|は\.|に\.|ほ\.|へ\.|と\.|イ\.|ロ\.|ハ\.|ニ\.|ホ\.|ヘ\.|ト).?
It's not perfect, but it will get many of the things that Japanese writers like to use in their numbering, including the Iroha (not that I see that very often in finance). Obviously it could be extended a little bit further by using things like "ア." in addition to "ア", but remember that you will have to escape the "." with a "\" like this: "ア\.".
Now, back to work.
Dan ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | Text expansion for Japanese to English financial translation (works in other pairs as well) | Mar 11 |
Yesterday I completed around 6000 characters of translation, hitting my target for the number of segments for the large, long-term project, and I also proofread and submitted the other short project. Given that I managed to fit this in around a visit to my mother (yesterday was Mothering Sunday here in the UK) and a pleasant walk around the village with her, I'm not displeased with that.
Today I have the previously mentioned press release project of just over 3000 characters, and a ... See more Yesterday I completed around 6000 characters of translation, hitting my target for the number of segments for the large, long-term project, and I also proofread and submitted the other short project. Given that I managed to fit this in around a visit to my mother (yesterday was Mothering Sunday here in the UK) and a pleasant walk around the village with her, I'm not displeased with that.
Today I have the previously mentioned press release project of just over 3000 characters, and a different client has just come in with a request for me to do less than 1000 characters for tomorrow, a message to employees from the CEO of a company. I also want to do a couple of thousand on the long-term project, so my target for today is going to be about 6000 characters. I will have to make sure I get it all done by early evening, because I have singing at 7 p.m.
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One thing I find with financial translation is that it tends to get quite fragmented if you have a presentation (not surprisingly) or tables in a Word document. This sort of thing slows you down a good deal compared to a paragraph of running text. One segment with 100 characters is usually an awful lot quicker than five segments with 20 characters each, especially if I have to check the content of each for precedent. Yesterday I was also checking frequently for bullet points and numbering, as noted in the previous post here.
On the subject of the string I suggested using for a regular expression yesterday, there is no point in using this kind of regex if you type it out each time. Ideally you need to store it somewhere, and if you are not already using a text expander on either Windows, MacOS, or Linux, I suggest you look into it. It's the usual situation with such tools: invest a little time upfront, save a lot of time in the future.
Why might you want to use a text expander? A text expander does exactly what it says: you enter a certain string of text (the trigger text) and it takes that string and expands it to (replaces it with) a different, usually longer piece of text. For example, if I enter "tyfc" it will magically remove the "tyfc" and paste the string "thank you for coming to me with this offer" where the cursor is. Note how the "tyfc" is just a contraction of the first "thank you for coming". You can change the trigger text and the output text into anything you like, but you should be careful not to use a trigger text that you are likely to type in everyday life.
If you are a good typist you may wonder why anybody would use a text expander, in financial translation or any other kind of application. I can think of several reasons.
1) Reducing the physical burden. I have been using PCs for work for nearly 30 years, and I have RSI and various other physical issues caused by the impact of typing. Anything that reduces the load helps me. If your hands, wrists, and shoulders are still in good shape, you should consider anything you can to keep them that way. The effects of typing on the body are cumulative.
2) Outputting unusual symbols. On my keyboard the symbol for the Japanese yen (¥) is not easily accessible. What I've done is set up the trigger text "yy" to to generate "¥". This is a small and simple example.
3) Outputting text that is not easily remembered.
This last is the situation for the regular expression I mentioned yesterday, which I have set up to appear when I type "iirgjpnumbers". In reality, what happens is that when I type "iirg" my text expansion software (PhraseExpress) pops up a list of potential candidates that narrows as I type, so I just hit the arrow key a couple of times and the right text is selected. This is the screenshot at the top of this post. PhraseExpress then pastes that text, which in this case happens to be a regular expression, into whatever software I am using (Notepad, my CAT tool, my browser, whatever). What this means is that I never have to remember or type out these fairly complex expressions in full.
To go back to the trigger text I just mentioned, why "iirg"? The first "ii" is just a key sequence that I know is seldom going to be used in English, at least in the English that I type. So, I have a lot of expansions that begin with "ii". For the sake of consistency, all my regular expression strings begin with "iirg" so that this trigger will pop up a menu.
There are many such text expansion apps, free or paid, on every operating system. I personally use PhraseExpress because although it is not free it is well-maintained by the developer, has a polished interface and is quite powerful. At the other end of the scale you can use something like Autohotkey (on Windows) to create your own shortcuts without any other software, but that has basically no interface at all and is therefore completely DIY. Many of these utilities can also be configured to launch a website, or run an application and so on. For example, "iita" will open the website of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures in my browser (the TCFD gets mentioned quite a lot in my work, as do the SDGs).
If you want to try text expansion, there is a list of potential candidates here, although it is not exhaustive. For confident users, Espanso is free and looks like it has most of what I would want from a text expander, though I haven't used it myself, but really you have to have a poke about and see what you like. Over the long term it saves you an awful lot of typing.
Dan ▲ Collapse
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MollyRose
United States
Local time: 07:10
English to Spanish
+ ...
I have been using my termbase as a sort of text expander, saving terms I know just to reduce the amount of typing. I used to do the same sort of thing with word processors (remember memory typewriters and the Wang?) But I have not been able to find a way to simply type 2-3 characters and let it propagate stored text, so I always end up typing every time (, por sus inicales en inglés), which means, for example (ESL, for its initials in English) when translating an acronym or initials and then p... See more I have been using my termbase as a sort of text expander, saving terms I know just to reduce the amount of typing. I used to do the same sort of thing with word processors (remember memory typewriters and the Wang?) But I have not been able to find a way to simply type 2-3 characters and let it propagate stored text, so I always end up typing every time (, por sus inicales en inglés), which means, for example (ESL, for its initials in English) when translating an acronym or initials and then putting the English initials and that statement in parentheses afterwards. I will check that list that you included in your last post. A free one might be ok. It wouldn´t be worth it for me to buy one, since that is about the only phrase that I´m not able to generate from term base or translation memory.
[Edited at 2024-03-11 17:42 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
MollyRose wrote:
I will check that list that you included in your last post. A free one might be ok. It wouldn´t be worth it for me to buy one, since that is about the only phrase that I´m not able to generate from term base or translation memory.
I'll do a follow-up over the next few days with a free app.
Text expansion is so handy that I find myself using it to store all kinds of things, such as my own mobile phone number (yes, sad I know), or long email addresses.
Dan
[Edited at 2024-03-11 18:17 GMT]
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | Text expansion: multilingual examples using a free Windows application | Mar 12 |
For people wishing to try text expansion under Windows, I suggest Beeftext, which can be downloaded from here. This is a free and open-source application.
After downloading and installing, run the application and you should see a window like this.
"Groups" on the left is just a means of organizing your text expansions. On the right you have "Combos", which is what Beeftext calls text expansions. To create one, click on the Combos menu then on "New". A window will pop up looking like this.
The two crucial areas are the Snippet field at the top, and the Keyword field below that. In the Snippet field, insert this text:
por sus inicales en inglés
In the Keyword field, insert this text:
;psi
Then you can optionally put something like "Insert Spanish for ESL" in the Name field. It should end up looking like this.
Click the OK button and you should be ready. Now go to Word or Notepad or your browser, and type this:
;psi
You should see that text immediately and automatically replaced with "por sus inicales en inglés". If you would prefer the replacement not to be immediate, then you can go to the File menu, click on Preferences, then on Combos, and change the options in "Combo triggering" so that the combo is only performed after the spacebar is pressed.
You can of course change the keyword to something different. I have used a semicolon because, unless you are doing a lot of coding, you probably will not type any words in English that begin with a semicolon and are followed immediately by another letter. However, some people use ":", or any other piece of text.
For example, "jj" in English is a letter combination that occurs so rarely (I can't actually think of any such occurrences) that you could use this as a prefix for such combos. E.g. "jjpsi" to expand to "por sus inicales en inglés" and so on. I also use "ii" as a prefix.
One thing I use many times a day is ";d" for dates formatted like this: 2024-03-12.
To do this, create a new combo, and put this in the Snippet field:
#{dateTime:yyyy-MM-dd}
Then this in the Keyword field:
;d
As a reminder, you could put the following in the Name or the Descriptions:
Date in ISO 8601 format
The end result should look like this:
Beeftext might warn you that the keyword is very short, but in this case it should be okay, so just click on Yes and proceed. Obviously, you can change the format of the date as you see fit.
Finally, one for those working in Japanese to English, like me, even if they are not specialists in financial translation. The result of typing "jjren" should be that ご連絡お待ちしております。 magically appears ("I await your response.")
From my brief acquaintance with Beeftext it has all the basics one wants from text expansion. There are no doubt similar free applications for the Apple ecosystem, and for Linux. Have at it!
Dan
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Yesterday I completed two translations, one being the CEO message, and the other being the press release for a specific series of products.
I found both of them slightly awkward because on the face of it the more descriptive or emotive language requires creativity and flexibility, but I find that my clients tend not to like me to diverge very far from the source. This is definitely still translation rather than transcreation, so there is a certain tension between what I think is nee... See more Yesterday I completed two translations, one being the CEO message, and the other being the press release for a specific series of products.
I found both of them slightly awkward because on the face of it the more descriptive or emotive language requires creativity and flexibility, but I find that my clients tend not to like me to diverge very far from the source. This is definitely still translation rather than transcreation, so there is a certain tension between what I think is needed to convey the original and what the people who are paying me want to see.
On the other hand, I didn't even attempt any of the long-term job, so that is my focus for today.
I have nothing else in my schedule, except a vague inquiry from a regular client regarding a project that I submitted back in October 2023 (!) and for which there may be a small 2000-character follow-up.
However, the prospective client who enquired a week or so ago about the possibility of me taking on a series of small financial jobs every day, under tight time constraints, has somewhat surprisingly come back and expressed a desire to go ahead. Okay. We will thrash something out, no doubt.
Singing last night included the Unst boat song and old favorite Bread and Roses. One of my fellow singers mentioned that she had recently seen Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" animated film. Some aspects of Japanese culture have significantly broadened their reach over the past 30 years, and animation and manga is one of them. I think I'd probably find translating subtitles for movies and other programs quite frustrating, but nobody is asking, so it's not a problem.
Dan ▲ Collapse
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MollyRose
United States
Local time: 07:10
English to Spanish
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Thanks, Dan. I think this will be helpful for other people besides me, too.
I use Windows at work and Mac at home (and freelancing), so I will look at the list you sent and see if there is a program I can use for both.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
On MacOS I suspect either Alfred (which seems to have a free version) or Keyboard Maestro would do the trick, but not sure about pricing for the latter. TextExpander seems just too expensive to me (I don't like subscriptions).
Espanso is available for free both Windows and Apple, but is slightly more complex to set up than Beeftext on Windows.
Maybe Hans... See more On MacOS I suspect either Alfred (which seems to have a free version) or Keyboard Maestro would do the trick, but not sure about pricing for the latter. TextExpander seems just too expensive to me (I don't like subscriptions).
Espanso is available for free both Windows and Apple, but is slightly more complex to set up than Beeftext on Windows.
Maybe Hans or one of the other Apple users will have some ideas.
Dan ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:10
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | Volume and allocation | Mar 13 |
The client to whom I sent the technology job sends some comments back and asks me to look at them. In one case she has inserted a proper noun that I left out, but the remainder (there are not many) are all subjective changes.
A couple of the proposed changes would materially alter the document for the worse. I frown, then politely explain my objections. I send my own comments back, and this morning I come into an email saying that she has rolled back the problematic changes. All ver... See more The client to whom I sent the technology job sends some comments back and asks me to look at them. In one case she has inserted a proper noun that I left out, but the remainder (there are not many) are all subjective changes.
A couple of the proposed changes would materially alter the document for the worse. I frown, then politely explain my objections. I send my own comments back, and this morning I come into an email saying that she has rolled back the problematic changes. All very collegiate.
I have a very long day ahead of me after shirking somewhat yesterday. A separate client has just asked me to do a small job by tomorrow, but I have no free time today, so I counteroffer with Friday. We'll see how that goes. The end client is a "regular" of mine, so I would like to be able to deal with it.
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A few days ago a client sent me a list of several dozen projects they would like me to take on between late April and late May, the busiest period of the entire year for those involved in financial translation of Japanese to English. It looks quite impressive until you consider that this is not a promise of any kind, and that everything is subject to change.
Moreover, after looking at it for a few minutes I confirm my suspicion that they have just taken the initial list of the projects that they offered to me for the same period last year and used that as the base. It's a copy and paste job without even any adjustments made for the final volume.
I amuse myself for half an hour by taking the initial "estimated volume" for each project from March 2023, adding the actual volume for April or May 2023 (extracted from the invoice), and working out the divergence between the two in absolute and percentage terms. The final, actual figure was about 80% of the initial, estimated figure.
Falling short
This comparison gives me some basis, albeit shaky, to suggest changes to the estimated aggregate volume for 2024, i.e. to argue that it will come in under forecasts. I have sent an email to this effect to the client, together with the spreadsheet with my calculations.
This is a real issue for me because once I have promised capacity to a client I cannot reallocate that capacity to another client without the express permission of the first client, which obviously I will not get.
If that job never materializes, I have lost an equivalent amount of work that I could have got from another client. During financial busy season, I am inundated with work, mostly kessan tanshin (決算短信) but also presentation materials (決算説明会資料) and the like, so there is a real opportunity cost involved.
Uncertainty for everybody
To be fair to them, all my clients are keenly aware of this dynamic and there is only so much they can do when the end client themselves doesn't know how large the text will be. The staff at the end client who are trying to put these documents together have to work with dozens of other people within their company, from the C-suite on down, in multiple departments. I know from observation and anecdote that it is a difficult and highly unpredictable time for them as well. These people (typically mid-level managers) used to come into earnings briefings in Tokyo looking exhausted, with bags under their eyes.
My clients also make an effort to "compensate" me for jobs that do not appear, or that are significantly short of the initial estimate. That is, if a job of 4000 characters is canceled, they will look around and try to find something to replace it. Nevertheless, actual volumes from this client for kessan season last year were substantially below the initial forecast. That is work that I could have allocated to other clients.
So why do I bother, given that this client is not really to blame and can't really do anything about it? Well, they may not be able to change the volume that end clients hand off to them, but they can change relative allocation to freelancers.
Preferential allocation
The squeaky wheel gets the oil, and I have no scruples about putting gentle pressure on regular clients to allocate to me some of the volume they have earmarked for other freelancers, some of whom will have, in effect, been drafted in on a temporary basis for earnings season to deal with the surge in demand. I, on the other hand, am available to this particular client all year round, and we do a good amount of business, and I expect my allocation in earnings season to reflect that. (Which, to be fair, is usually the case.)
Interestingly, I have another client who only ever contacts me during earnings season, and then only for a small number of jobs. This client is not a specialist in financial translation, and the rest of the year I get nothing from them, even though they are a decent-sized agency. They are clearly allocating projects preferentially to other freelancers. So it cuts both ways.
Dan
[Edited at 2024-03-13 08:14 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13] > | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » In my craft or sullen art: JA-EN financial translation | TM-Town | Manage your TMs and Terms ... and boost your translation business
Are you ready for something fresh in the industry? TM-Town is a unique new site for you -- the freelance translator -- to store, manage and share translation memories (TMs) and glossaries...and potentially meet new clients on the basis of your prior work.
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