I have expounded at some length elsewhere on some better ways to meet the existential crisis presented to freelance translators by AI, but some translators have their own approaches.
Delusion that clients will come back when they discover how bad AI is (Reality: That AI continues to be used demonstrates that it is often good enough a large portion of the translation that is purchased), and delusion that freelancers can just adopt AI themselves to survive (Reality: They might be able to that, but not unless they radically switch their customer demographic to translation consumers and compete with agencies, and that is going to be possible for only a very small portion of the freelance translator population).
Denial of the major changes in progress and accelerating in the translation business, denial of acquiring direct clients as a useful survival strategy, and denial of the ongoing exodus of translators lacking translation work because of AI.
Desperation, quiet of course, because being openly desperate would reveal the denial behaviors to be no more than a face-saving defense mechanism.
Not all freelancers exhibit all of these reponses. Some are only suffering their desperation in silence.
I’ll say it again. The agency model for freelance translators is ending, and there is very little chance of preventing that from happening.