There are few survival paths for agency-dependent freelance translators who might survive the AI transformation that has demoted professional human translators to unrealistically low-paid AI repair workers.
One path is to work in-house. Because the agencies controlling most of the market and clients have very few translator employees relative to the volume of translation they purchase and resell, in-house employment will need to be sought at non-translation entities. That is not possible for some freelancers, conditions such as location presenting hurdles. There are, of course, many more hurdles to negotiate in obtaining an in-house position.
If you want to continue translating and are currently relying on work from agencies, just about the only other path is to start actively engaging in the business of translation and behaving like you’re in business. You will need to walk the walk if your goal is to break away from agencies and sell to direct translation clients.
Some of the things you should do first are trivially easy, others are difficult.
- Stop using free email services for business. Things like Gmail are unprofessional and do not inspire trust. Quitting them is trivially easy.
- Register your own domain—this will enable you to have your own business email address(es) and a website. This is easy to do and won’t be free, but you’re in business, and businesses have expenses.
- Build your own online presence with your website. Where you need to be as a professional translator in business is not on a platform such as LinkedIn, with over a billion other users, where the clients you need will not find you. Building a website is not that difficult. One dumb way to do it is to buy a book about it and borrow the html code, after which you can learn to add and modify the site as appropriate. Then start learning about websites. For people not wanting to struggle with html and css, another method, if you can get over the ethical hurdles, is to ask an AI model like Claude to provide you the code for a website. It won’t have lots of bells and whistles and it won’t be very elegant, but you’ll have a website of sorts in no time. Because of the potential difficulty in adding material to your website, however, it’s best not to order a website from an entity that packages the site design with its hosting services, as some make it difficult to manage the site yourself, this leading many people to have essentially abandoned websites.
- Once you have your website, grow it to demonstrate that you’re still active and can write things of substance, another way of saying don’t take the commonly seen approach of having a website that is no more than a CV and a plea for work.
- Build a network of specific individuals (known as humans in real life) at entities you want as clients—that’s best done in real life, not just sitting in front of your computer. Online is not real life, and the chances of you reaching those individuals on LinkedIn or the like are extremely slim. Network building in real life is a much more difficult feat than the earlier items.
- Turn your computer off and get out in the real world, where potential clients hang out. Interactions in those places, high-risk as they may seem, will be much more valuable than hanging out with colleague translators, be it online or in person.
- If you haven’t yet done it, acquire field-specific expertise that can be convincing when interacting directly, including face-to-face, with a potential client who has that expertise. This must be to a level that is convincing when done in an environment in which you cannot use Google. Direct clients will find you out quickly if you try faking expertise.
- If you are living in your B-language (source-language) country, acquire spoken ability in that language to a level that would be convincing in live conservations with natives of that language. This is not a given; Dunning-Kruger is not your friend, and this is a particularly critical deal-breaker for native English speakers trying to obtain Japanese clients here in Japan.
The last two items can require an investment in at least time and perhaps money as well.
Also, remember that, unlike the translation-brokerng agencies, you can’t lie about your abilities with impunity. Agencies can lie about their 1000s of experts, but you are alone, and your potential direct clients will discover that quickly; you won’t be able to hide.
Speaking of not hiding, disclose your physical address—not just your country—on your website.
Some of these things might seem unnecessary or be impossible for many freelancers. If that is the case, it might be better to abandon the idea of starting to operate and behave professionally. Without the professional infrastructure, skills, and behavior, it will be difficult to build trust with entities that are themselves operating as full members of their business communities.