Collaborate on Translation Invoice Template for Personnel with Ease Using airSlate SignNow

Translation invoice template for Personnel

How do you start your own translation  agency as a freelancer? Coming up. Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse.  Today we tackle a very interesting topic that   I'm also thinking about all the time. It's about  how to start your own translation agency as   a freelance translator. How to make this  transition to the next level. We have a very   special guest on the channel, many of you will know  him. It's Robert Gebhardt from the YouTube channel   Freelance Translator Tips. A channel that I've been  watching and following for years and has been a   big inspiration for me. We also made a video on  his channel, I'm not sure which one goes out first,   I think mine is out first and then his the same  week. Definitely check out his channel, subscribe   if you haven't yet and watch also the other video.  Without further ado, let's head into the interview   with Robert. We are joined today by Robert  to talk about how to start a translation agency.   Thanks so much Robert for taking the time to come on the channel. Thank you for having me. A lot of people know who you are through YouTube.  People who watch my videos probably have seen   yours but for the other people could you introduce  yourself? Who are you, what is it you do? sure i'm   I'm Robert Gephardt and I'm a freelance translator  turned translation agency owner. I started off   as an Italian-English freelance translator and  gradually over time set up my own agency, Lugano   Translations. That's what I do now full-time.  Like Adrian mentioned, I also have videos   where I talk about the freelance translation world more than anything   and just share thoughts, tidbits, tricks, etc.   Awesome. When did you turn your business into an agency? When did that happen? It was a slow, gradual process, it didn't happen overnight.  It had been in the back  of my mind and I've been wondering as a freelance   translator where can I take this, what can I do with it, could I   possibly be in a situation where rather  than just translating one language, I have   a number of different languages and I can handle  all that and would that be worth it?  So, it just gradually happened over time, the  thing that pushed me into it was actually one of   my clients. One of my clients needed a translation  done and not only in my language combination but   another language combination. They needed something in French, as well   and they asked, 'Do you know anyone who  can handle that translation?' I said, 'Yes, I do.'   'If we send you everything can  you handle it?' I remember thinking   this is a sign that I should accept this, see if I can actually do it   and see how far I can take it. But after that it probably took a number of years   before I was a real full-fledged  agency. So, it was a very slow, organic process.  Interesting, that was also one of my questions, if you only offer projects or jobs in your  own language pair or if you are a multilingual   agency? That would announce it that you work  with many different languages, I assume.   We specialize mostly in what are called the  FIGS languages, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and the East-Asian languages, CJK, Chinese, Japanese, Korean. We have a number of languages.   I assume if people are watching this, they might   be interested in maybe setting up an agency  or doing something along those lines.   What will likely happen is that you find your niche.  And whatever your niche might be, it might   be your language combination, it might be your  specialization, it might be some variation thereof.   The translation world in terms of agencies is very fragmented,   so it's very common for each place to have their own niche that they do.   Ours is to go between those languages without  using English as an intermediary language, which   is actually quite rare. Most agencies if you want  something translated from say Italian to Chinese,  they'll translate it into English first and then  into Chinese. We're able to do it directly,   that's our niche.  Again, it took years to get into that really.   I guess it becomes much more cost  effective if you don't have the step to   translate it first into English. It's basically  one step you can alleviate then.  Right, also you can lose a lot if you have to use English as an intermediary   language, depending on the industry and on the precise translation, etc. Okay, one thing that  is very fascinating about you is that   people hear your accent, you sound American  but then you have a business called Lugano   Translations which is close to my heart of course  from Switzerland. And I know you are in Taiwan   at the moment. Talk to us a little bit,   what's happening in your life and how do you   manage to own a business and always find yourself in different locations? First of all, I grew up in Switzerland, in Lugano, that's where I'm from. My father's American, that's why I sound like this. I grew up speaking both   Italian and English, we speak Italian in Lugano,  where I'm from. We're both from Switzerland but   Switzerland has a French, a German,  and an Italian part. I'm from the Italian part.   That's how I got into freelance  translation as well because I could perform   those translations and it always  came naturally to me. So, obviously that's   why I went into it. And I live in Taiwan  right now and we operate in a lot of   Asian languages. My wife's Taiwanese and that helped with the move here but for a long time when I was  a freelance translator mostly and also setting up   the agency, I was doing what's now called  being a digital nomad. I was kind of just   working from wherever I could and  just going all over the place.   That took me to many different  places, to Taiwan, I lived in Shanghai, I lived   in Korea, I lived in the US in a bunch of places,  I lived in Italy and Switzerland. I got a flavor of the different  places and I really like Taiwan, too.   Nice but where is your business set  up then now? Is it still in Switzerland?   It is originally set up in Switzerland and when we were in the US, I set up an office there and now  I'm in Taiwan. The head office is now in   the US with branches in Switzerland and in Taiwan.  This is sort of arbitrary, there's no real   set business reason for this but the  way things turned out that's how it is right now.   Nice, interesting. All right, one thing I really want to   understand a bit is do you think that  building an agency is really the next step   as a freelance translator? To build your business,  to grow your business. Is it a logical step for   you to do that or do you think one can  build a business without becoming an agency?   Absolutely. Like I said I got very  curious about becoming an agency and seeing if   I could do it. And like I said it took a while  and there were a lot of fits and starts,   ups and downs. It's kind of a roller  coaster ride and I realized there were a lot of   issues with it, as well. If you can be a freelance  translator and you can earn a comfortable living   and you work with the clients you  like and earn enough to make a living and   then some, that's great. Like I said you can then be a digital   nomad or I know freelance translators that like it because they have more flexibility, they can spend time with their children or their family. There's no obligation   to want to set up an agency, because it  does add a lot more work, it's very different work   as opposed to translation.  So, you have to change all that.   There is no obligation or feeling that you have  to do that. I think a lot of times people   feel like, 'I should be pushing for that or going  toward that'. I just wanted to mention,   don't feel that that's necessarily the  case. It doesn't necessarily make your life better,   becoming an agency. But some  other people might be curious.  I was curious, I wanted to see how far I could go and see if I would be able to handle it. It did take away quite a bit of flexibility. Rather than being a digital nomad,  I had to actually set up a company  and create more of a local network where I was living and work  more like a brick-and-mortar company if you will.   In the beginning you still did your translation business   while also trying to start up an agency but  now I assume that you yourself don't   offer language services anymore, right? You are  now completely in the project distribution   and managing side?  Right, exactly. And that was a conscious effort because for a while that was one of the things. I received a request for  an Intalian to English translation, and I'll be like I'll just do it myself. That way I can keep  100% of the money and I don't have to   worry about project managing someone else. But at a certain point I needed to concentrate   on my agency and I needed to actually build it up. The time I spent doing that translation   is time that I couldn't spend on the agency.  I consciously decided to cut out translations. Having said that, I do perform  some translations myself but that's by choice.   I have one client that I've started out  with and they got grandfathered in,  so once every six months I do a report for them that I've been doing now for 12 years probably.   Every now and then something that looks  interesting will come across my radar  and I'll just want to do it. I like doing  that because it gives me one foot still   in the trenches. I get to still  be in the translation world and not lose touch   with that world if you will.  Do you have employed translators in your agency or you work exclusively with freelancers? They're all freelancers, everyone I work with. Whether it's translators, whether it's for marketing purposes, admin stuff, website design or whatever it might be. - Everything, it's all freelancers. - Really? Okay, nice. So you don't have any employees? No, I don't. Moving place to place was part of it but I just prefer it. It's more flexible and  I've come to be comfortable   working with freelance professionals, identifying them and working with them, making sure we can work with  each other. And I just prefer it.  That's interesting because I was also faced  with that recently. I was starting to think about   hiring my first person and when  you want to hire, especially here in Belgium   you can't just hire as a freelancer, you would need to change your legal status. But then it gets very complicated, so it's much easier to just commission them as a contractor. Good to hear that you do that as well. What I try do, just to get a bit more into it, is I try to have the benefits   of the freelance world. But there are  also some drawbacks, for example   people aren't there for you all the time,  they will work on their own thing.   Also they don't feel maybe as  loyal to you and as part of the team but rather just on a case-by-case basis. For a while, this is pre-Covid, I just started   doing this and then Covid hit, I would  visit my main regular freelance translators that   I worked with on the regular jobs. I tried to  visit them face to face at least once a year.   Wherever they are in the world at least for a coffee.  My reasoning was that's still cheaper than hiring  them but at least it maintains that rapport   and that way I can talk to them  and get a feel for if they're satisfied or not etc.   I should start doing that again soon. but yeah yeah that's really important yeah and   Yeah, that's really important, you can put a face to it and a personality rather than just an email address. That helps a lot for sure.  If you hire someone as a freelancer then you are   effectively their client rather than their  employer. So, there is a different   relationship and so it's important that you  keep this connection with them.   How do you go about finding these  freelancers that work for you? I was wondering whether you would have now just an  unlimited capacity? If you just find   a new big job, you just go out and find new  freelancers. Your basket is   never full in that sense, is that true? - Yes and no. There are a couple things.  First of all, the way I feel now when I find a  good translator, they're worth their weight in gold, so I try to keep them happy, which falls along the lines of   keeping in touch with them. But even now if I can't  meet them face to face, I like to keep touch and   on whatever it might be, life in general, just to maintain that rapport. So I do have a Rolodex of good translators in my languages that I have access to. So, if I get a new job tomorrow that requires whatever it requires I can always talk to these and hopefully  work something out with my current translators.  If I need a new translator for a new job for whatever reason, then I have to go find a new translator which is a process that I think I've become   rather good at. That's when I say it's  been a process building up this agency, that's   something that I've had  to do time and time again. And it's become one of my strong points now that I can identify good freelancers, freelance translators and work with them well  and become a good partner with them.   There are various places,  most of the time I'll be using LinkedIn or Proz to do that. Do you have any tips for  people? How do you look for people   on Proz and on LinkedIn? Is there something they  should have in their tagline, so you can find them? Yes, absolutely. Here's a quick thing if you're a freelance translator and   you're on LinkedIn, get rid of the abbreviation of your languages.   If you're Italian-English, don't put IT-EN, because when  people search, they don't search for IT-EN.   Most clients don't even know what those are.  So, put Italian to English translator, that way you're easily searchable on LinkedIn, that's what I recommend. I see a lot of   translators putting the two-letter abbreviation of their language and I think  that's a mistake. Because people, especially end  clients who don't even know the lingo, they won't   be searching for that and that means they won't find you. But otherwise, just be  everywhere because you never know where people  are gonna find you. I do think the best places   are still Proz.com and LinkedIn. LinkedIn has become a lot better since Covid hit but I think those are the best places.So, definitely make sure that your profiles on those places are up-to-date. Let's say you're looking for an English to Chinese translator and 50 to 100 come up on Proz. What's the process there? How do you decide where you want  to go? Do you test people, several people as well? I do tests every now and then. Let's say I'm searching for someone  English to Chinese. I'll go proz.com. Now, proz.com will list them based on  Kudos points, I'm not sure why they   do that but they do. Keep that  in mind as well. If you want to be seen on proz.com  the more Kudos points you have, the higher  you're going to rank. Sometimes it   can be just based on your specialization,  so even if it seems like   you can't get that many Kudos points in general,  check your specialization and it might be a bit   more accessible. It'll rank them by that and then I'll go through and the main   thing I look for is their ratings. How many ratings they have, if they do have ratings.   This is for both I should say because like I said I've   been using LinkedIn more lately and I'll look on LinkedIn as well because there you can   get the referrals. But Proz makes  it very easy to give ratings.  So, I check the ratings there and then I go through their profile,  I'll pick a number of them and I'll email them or I'll send them a message through Proz.  The way they respond usually will give me  some clues. One thing I'll say,   I give a simple instruction like write  and I put in quotes "Chinese to English   translation" in your subject or in the email  body, just something simple like that. Automatically, at least 50% of the people don't  do that and so I'm like you weren't paying attention. It's just little things like that  and then usually I can whittle that down  to two or three people. The last two   or three, I might give them a test. It'll be  paid, it'll be a short test based on the text that   I need to translate, exactly from the  text taking out obviously any identifying data.   Awesome. Do you also look at their CAT tools? do you have any prerequisites in your agency that people need to have? I do not and that's mainly because my clients don't. If they do have a preferred CAT tool, that's absolutely fine but I don't have any prerequisite.   Obviously, translation is not the only service  that many of us offer, how is it with your agency?  Do you also offer proofreadings, language  consultancy, subtitling, etc. What are your services?  In terms of translation, we only offer translations. all our   All our translations are TEP (translation,  editing, proofreading) but we don't offer subtitling, interpreting. What we do offer   is some ancillary stuff. If you look on the website and at the bottom it says that it's  partnered up with Selva Consulting and if you   go to selvaconsulting.com, that's also my company  but that's on a case-by-case basis. This is because a lot of times the people I work  with will need translation because   they're expanding abroad or because they're doing  business with someone who's in another country. So, they'll need something along with that, market research or information about export-import. That's a service I offer on a case-by-case basis,  it depends, via this consulting company.   What it is in the end is I used to  work for a market research firm  and if they need market research, I have friends in the market research world, people I know. So, I can find people to research whatever they need. That's why it's very much on a case-by-case  basis, it's nothing regular but every now and then   they do need something and so I'll offer these  additional consulting services that are   analogous to translation.  That's just another way to niche myself. The translation world  in terms of agencies is extremely fragmented, I think more than pretty much any other industry.  So, most agencies out there tend to be quite   niche into something. We have the specific languages that my agency works on and then we also have these  additional things, depending from   client to client, and I think you find a  lot of that in the industry. Very interesting. We already coming to an end, this has been very fruitful and I would like to ask you for a last word of advice  for people. Let's say they have been   building their freelance business for four  to five years. Every year more and more revenue   and now for a few years it has been stagnating. I've been talking to many people   this happened to and now the logical step  in their mind would be, 'I want to expand, I want to   build an agency.' What would be your word of advice for someone like this? First of all, I haven't mentioned this yet but I do have  a course out called How to set up a translation   agency, where I talk about precisely this.  This is for people who are freelance translators   who then want to set up their own agency and take that next step. So, it does go exactly through this and it goes  more into the nitty-gritty and into the details   about how to do it, how to set up, how to find the clients, how to find   translators and how to project  manage the whole process and how to go through it all. Be sure to check that out. - I'm going to put it in the description, so people can   click it there.  - The first step, I would say, is if you are   thinking about this, absolutely and you can  do it gradually like I did.   What I know several people have done  in the past is to have a group of translators   working together. If you do English to German translations  and someone else does English French and  someone else does English to Spanish,   then you can tell your clients, 'By the way, if you're translating   this to German, you might need it into French, as  well.' You can start offering more   and then just working amongst you guys  and see how that goes for a bit before taking   that next step. This is an intermediary step  that can get you comfortable with  project managing even if it's someone who's your friend or you've   worked with before. You can get a feel  for it, because you're always going to be   responsible to the client for whatever your friend  does and that changes your perspective.  At least, you get a bit more used to it before you  take the final plunge. So absolutely,   feel free to do that and feel free to check with some friends if you want   to set something up. Set up your own agency just amongst a couple friends   and see how that goes. I think that can  be an interesting preliminary step  before setting up your own thing. Thank you so much. This was very interesting,  we also filmed the video on Robert's channel,   Freelance Translator Tips. I don't know which one  goes out first, just check in the description.   If it's there, it's there, otherwise, it will come in a few days.  Thanks so much for watching, make sure to subscribe to  the channel. The goal is 20.000 subscribers by   the end of the year. Let's make that happen!  I see you next Monday with the next one. Bye-bye.