Starting out in Translation

Aug 30, 2008
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Starting out as a translator
by: Clint

Hi Andy, that's a great question you asked. It's always great to diversify and I think that if you can do both interpretation and translation, there's no reason not to try.

That being said, I think the biggest thing is to make sure you have experience translating because many translation agencies want to see what kind of clients you've had previously before awarding you a job.

So once you've got the experience, the question comes down to finding clients and this is one of the harder things for translators to do. There are a lot of sites similar to elance.com ( here are some) and while these are great for freelancers of all types, it can be discouraging when "translators" from other countries charge hardly anything and undercut translation professionals. I wrote about that trend in translation and it's not very cool.

But I still think that the best way for a translator to start to find clients is to contact translation agencies. There are many agencies always looking to expand their freelance translator network and you'll especially have a good chance of getting jobs if your area of expertise is more in demand.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

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Aug 30, 2008
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Submitted by: Clint

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Hi Andy, that's a great question you asked. It's always great to diversify and I think that if you can do both interpretation and translation, there's no reason not to try. That being said, I think the biggest thing is to make sure you have experience translating because many translation agencies want to see what kind of clients you've had previously before awarding you a job. So once you've got the experience, the question comes down to finding clients and this is one of the harder things for translators to do. There are a lot of sites similar to elance.com (<a href="http://www.spanish-translation-help.com/spanish-translator-jobs.html" target="new"> here are some</a>) and while these are great for freelancers of all types, it can be discouraging when "translators" from other countries charge hardly anything and undercut translation professionals. I wrote about that <a href="http://www.spanish-translation-help.com/free-language-translation.html" target="new">trend in translation</a> and it's not very cool. But I still think that the best way for a translator to start to find clients is to contact <a href="http://www.spanish-translation-help.com/freelance-translators.html" target="new">translation agencies</a>. There are many agencies always looking to expand their freelance translator network and you'll especially have a good chance of getting jobs if your area of expertise is more in demand. Hope that helps. Good luck.

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Starting out in Translation

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