How to spot a good translation agency you will enjoy working with

(from the translator’s perspective)

This article is based on my 13 years of experience working as a translator with various translation agencies all over the world. I am going to tell you how I decide who to work with and who to discard immediately.

Who is a good agency?

This is who I consider to be an ideal agency to work with: They regularly order reasonable quantities of text, they pay reasonable rates, and they don’t annoy me with non-paid administrative tasks (filling out forms of any kind). As a bonus, they maintain a friendly relationship with me and show signs of respect, e.g. they are always willing to discuss deadlines, they are happy to deal with problems, they give reasonable deadlines. And especially: In case of any argument or disagreement, they are ready to discuss it and they will NOT automatically replace me if I complain or show any disagreement with them. If they can do this, then you know you have struck gold. This is definitely an agency to work with even if they don’t pay the highest rate on the market.

It’s as simple as that. But curiously enough, the vast majority of agencies struggle very hard to be such an ideal agency.

And now, let me take a look at various aspects that distinguish good agencies from the bad ones.

First contact

The very first contact is very important, as it makes the first impression, and with a little bit of experience you can already tell if this is someone you would like to work with.

Let’s consider this email:

Dear Jan

We have checked you profile on Proz.com and we think you would be a good match for us.

Right now, we have a translation of approx. 1500 words available and would be happy if you could help us with it.

We can offer you EUR XXX per source word and we would need the translation back within 5 days.

Would that be something you would be interested in? Please let us know.

Thank you,

Kind regards

This is an email I would definitely reply to and I would do my best to develop this into a lasting business relationship. Here is why:

1. Salutation: This is very important and it can have various forms, such as: Dear Jan, Hello Jan, Dear Mr. Kapoun, etc. Why is it important? Because it tells me that the agency or project manager did not send his/her email to thousands of other translators, i.e. it’s not a mass email, they are not just blind shooting, trying to get as many replies as possible. If the salutation is missing, I get very suspicious of them and have my doubts of any further cooperation.

2. They say they have checked my profile, which means they are serious about this, they know what they want and they have actually bothered to select just me or just a few of other translators. This also tells me that they are probably not looking for the lowest price possible, i.e. price might be important to them, but other factors, such as specialization and experience, also play a vital role.

3. They are requiring a reasonable amount of words to be translated. I would say that 1000-2000 words for the very first contact is very reasonable – for me, if they don’t pay, it’s not that big of a deal, and for them, if they are not happy with my translation, they don’t lose that much either.

I cannot really say why, but agencies requiring less than 1000 words for the very first job, tend to never come back again. Agencies requiring more than 2000 words for the first job tend to rise suspicion in me – they might not be willing to pay for it.

4. They know how much they are willing to pay and give a reasonable deadline. That means they have checked the usual rates and know what they want to pay. Also, by giving a reasonable deadline, they respect me as a translator, as they accept the fact that I probably also have other jobs to do and need some reasonable time frame to deliver the job. This is a sign of respect to me, which is good.

5. They seem to be generally very polite and respectful, which are all signs of a potentially very good partner.

On the other hand, consider this email:

We have now 120 words available for an English-Czech translation and we need it back within 1 hour. Please send us your lowest possible rate along with your CV. Also, register your profile here at: https://SOMEURL.com

Applicants not stating their rate and CV will not be considered for cooperation.

Yes, with this kind of emails, I press the DEL key immediately without even responding to. Exactly for the reasons stated above. This will never lead to any successful cooperation and it’s generally a waste of time.

Obviously, there’s no salutation, i.e. they are sending this to a gazillion of other translators, so even if you bother replying, you will most probably never get any reply at all. Also, the tone is generally very arrogant, which is a KO criterion for me. The “lowest rate” expression clearly tells me they want to get the translation ideally free of charge and have no interest in an long-term sustainable business. And as a translator, you definitely don’t want to get a few quick dirty bucks here and there, you want something you can rely your business on in the long-term.

Translation tests

Translation tests seem to be a beloved activity by many translation agencies. The fundamental idea seems to be sound: We have never worked together so we would like to see what you can actually deliver.

I have actually written a separate article on translation tests, which you can find here: https://bohemicus-software.cz/2021/02/12/why-do-translation-agencies-require-translation-tests-free-of-charge-are-they-stupid-or-what/

Sadly, there are a few problems to this testing thing:

1) When I started in the translation industry, it actually worked like this: I did a translation test and if they liked it, they started ordering regular translation jobs from me. Unfortunately, this is not the case anymore: Many agencies would require a test, then perhaps even comment on its very good quality… but then, amazingly enough, never ordering a single word … or perhaps just a few lines of text here and there, but definitely nothing you could rely you business on.

The result? You have lost, all in all, with emailing and translating the actual test, some 1 hour… and nothing came out of it.

They might even pretend it’s a free of charge test… and then actually selling it to their end client as a paid translation.

My attitude towards this: If they write a very polite first-contact email, have good rating on Proz/TC and generally act nicely, I can consider doing a translation test free of charge for them.

On the other hand, if they give an impression: “We are a big translation agency with thousands of clients all over the world, and you are just a little pitiful translator fuck, who would be happy to get a chance to work with us…”… well, then no, definitely no free of charge test for them, as this will be a waste of time.

To sum it up: The majority, some 90 percent, of my current very good clients never required any free-of-charge translation test. They mostly look at my Proz/TC/webpage profile and probably think: Well, he’s been around for more than 10 years in this industry so we can probably trust him.

Bureaucracy, filling out forms

I will be brief on this: Anyone requiring me to fill out their lengthy forms will generally rise suspicion in me. This is just pure experience: many administrative forms = fewer paid translation jobs. I cannot really be sure why is this like that, but that’s my experience. The worst agencies will even send you to fill out forms regularly to fill them out with the same data again and again. This is very annoying, consumes my production time and is a general sign of disrespect to me as a translator – they are actually requiring me to do their administrative work for free.

Quality assessment forms. This is even worse. Imagine a situation when they require you to do some proofreading, but instead of simply correcting the errors in the text with tracked changes, they require you to fill each error into their Excel form, specifying its type, filling out the proposed translation, even forcing you to explain why is this an error. All of this for you current proofreading rate. As you can imagine, such “proofreading” can easily take 3× more time than usual. … and of course, the agency does not want to pay anything extra for that.

A good translation agency would understand that this takes much more time and would offer adequate compensation for that.

Sadly, there are many agencies today, who try to deliver the best quality to their end clients, but do not want to pay lengthy for this.

Such agencies should be avoided, there will never be any good professional relationship with them.

Frequently changing the scope and type of service they ordered

Imagine this scenario: An agency orders a relatively big translation from you …. two days after that they say: Hi Jan, would it please be possible if you just did the proofreading on this task? or: Hi Jan, we would like to reduce the amount, could you please do only 1/3 of this task?

Well, this can occasionally happen even with the most serious agencies. Because… of reasons. Their clients might change their mind, etc. In any case, a compensation should follow, as you might have already turned some other jobs down.

If they don’t care and are unwilling to offer any such reasonable compensation, ditch them. They lack the fundamental respect towards their translator, and you will only get frustrated working for them.

Tiny jobs and minimum rates

Tiny jobs are a pain in the ass: “Hi Jan, can you please translate these 56 words for us?”.

Of course, every agency needs to deal with this kind of nuisance. Imagine this: You need to write some emails, download this job, import it to your CAT software, familiarize yourself with the topic, perhaps look up a few terms, translate it, zip it up, send it to your agency. And most importantly: You need to adjust your focus from the previous translation to this one. And this can take as much as 30 mins or even more. And then you find yourself actually working for some EUR 5 per hour. Pretty annoying, huh? This is exactly why seasoned translators don’t want to take this kind of shitty jobs.

So, how should you approach this? Well, these jobs are inevitable, every agency will ask for them. But if it’s an agency who normally orders thousands or even tens or hundreds of thousands of words from you…. of course, you gonna deal with these tiny jobs! You will even do them free of charge! Of course you will.

Unfortunately enough, there are some shitty agencies who would order nothing but such tiny jobs. Trust me, you don’t want to end up as a tiny-task translator for any agency. So if they mostly order such tiny tasks, ditch them, there’s nothing good coming out of them.

Minimum rates: A good agency understands that there are some administrative overhead costs associated with every translation and will agree on some minimum rates. In my case, EUR 10 seems to be a good match. But this can differ in every country. You need to find out ......

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