5+4 Quick Tips for a Healthy Professional Relationship between Freelancers and LSPs

Here's a few quick tips to successfully engage in a healthy relationship with your language service provider or translation agency:

?? - Do follow your PM instructions

? - Do acknowledge every project deadline, volume and fee upon reception

? - Do confirm project delivery by dropping a quick line even if a TMS is being used

?? - Do engage with Project Managers and Vendor Manager in a respectful, professional fashion (even if the occasional crazy request hits your desk —it might not be their fault after all)

?? - Do communicate any issues in a timely manner. Do never wait until it's too late. If you think solving an issue will take X, it will probably take twice as much (five times as much if you are on a Friday evening job or about to leave for holidays), so ask for help as soon as you can.

Aaaaand also...

?? - Do educate your PM/VM into applying minimum rates. Their back office time is covered by their salary. Yours is not usually covered by word rate and they might not be aware of the time required to complete paperwork and compliance tasks even for a tasty 5-word hand-off. Believe me, this is a game changer to overcome the frustration associated with this type of assignments.

?? - Do educate your PM into suggesting reasonable deadlines and project rates. Yes, they are very busy people, but so are you. In most scenarios, freelancers should not be expected to reply within minutes to request, and PMs should not assume that any freelancer can fit a 500-word translation within the hour as these might most likely be already busy. Shuffling deadlines is part of our daily lives, but c'mon, don't push it too far.

???? - Do illustrate your PM/VM into the ever growing number of side tasks associated with the translation job to highlight the need to apply fair rates and reasonable deadlines no matter the pressure on the client side. A crazy request by an uneducated client cannot lead to impossible workflows. There's a chance right there to educate everybody.

?? - Do focus on specific projects and accounts where you can provide top value over time with your growing expertise, and avoid shuffling industries and fields of expertise just because you have not built a clearly "specialized" profile. This helps grow your rates and also helps VMs/PMs make quicker, better choices.

Do you have any additional tips to improve relationships between #freelancers and #LSPs?

Feel free to share in the comments!