12 Tips on How to Become the Preferred Translator of Your Clients
If you are looking to enhance your prospects of becoming a successful translator, the below-mentioned tips are sure to help you out in becoming the preferred translator for your customers.
Tips to become the preferred translator of your clients
If you work as a translator with Universal Translation Services and have done great quality work for some of our clients, those clients might want to use your services in the future, and they will ask us if we can assign you to their job. If you didn’t have the chance to become the preferred translator of some of the clients you have worked with, the following tips will help.
Research the prospects
Start by knowing more about the client or company. If the majority of the prospects are translation companies, try to find whether they like new translators to mail them or fill a form on their website. If a company has such a form on their website, fill this form rather than sending them an email. Once accepted, do your best with your translations so they won’t receive complaints from their clients. If they do receive complaints, address them quickly, in a professional manner.
Know more about the type of work they do
Try to search about the specializations that they want their translators to have. Any client would want the best translation at the lowest rates, that is human nature. If they know your work already, they might use your services in the future. In the meantime, you can do more research in their fie4ld and try to accommodate with the terms.
Message carefully
When sending out a message to a prospect, the message has to be written in a professional manner, eventually in the client’s language. If you have a possible Dutch client, you may want to write him in Dutch rather than English, as that would show respect.
If you are a true bilingual, mention it carefully
If you are actually a true bilingual (someone who is a native speaker of multiple languages), mention that in the resume, but do so very carefully. Rather than just mentioning that you can translate stuff from a language to another, talk about how you actually became bilingual.
Ensure that the language pair along with your name is mentioned in the subject of the resume
For instance: “Amelia Bernard, French to English translator”. Still, it may be a good idea to try something else as well due to more and more fake translators flooding the market. Your subject needs to be unique and attract the receiver into reading it.
How can I promote myself as a translator?
- Maintain a strong online presence so people can get familiar with you
- Use social media as networking tool
- Always keep your business cards with you so you can share them with people at every opportunity
- Join forums and groups related to translation and communicate with linguistic experts regularly
- Create your website so people can learn more about your expertise
How do translators get clients?
- Freelancing websites: Some linguistic experts join these websites so they can get projects easily
- Translation agencies: Many translators nowadays work with agencies so they don’t have to look for clients themselves
- Word of mouth: By being good at their job, translators can get free publicity from their previous clients
- Marketing: Marketing themselves properly can also help translators in finding clients
What to study if you want to be a translator?
- Languages: If you pick a language as your major, you will also get to learn about its cultural aspect, which will be very useful for you as a translator
- Translation: There are various courses of translation that are being offered nowadays that future translators can join
- Computer: Having computer skills is a must for translators now, which is why studying this subject can help you in your career as a linguistic expert
How fluent do you have to be to be a translator?
In order to become a translator, you should be the native speaker of the language you will be translating into, which means you should be as fluent in it as possible. But you should also be fluent to a great degree in your second language so you can do your job as a translator perfectly.
How do you do research prospects?
In order to research your prospects, you should:
- Learn about them as much as you can through their social media interactions
- Be up to date about the latest happenings in the relevant industry so you can carry the conversation easily
- Search for trigger events for the prospect so you can avoid them completely
Why is prospect research important?
- It can help you in uncovering shared interests so you can keep the communications with the prospect interesting
- It can also help you in formulating the perfect ask strategy
- It proves whether or not a prospect will be useful to your company
- It will allow you to come with the kind of engagement strategies that work
What is a prospect research analyst?
A prospect research analyst is someone who is tasked with identifying, researching, and analyzing prospects. They allow companies to find the right prospects for gifts cultivation and solicitation. They have enough experience in the field to be able to analyze prospects perfectly. Without them, no fundraising campaign will become successful.
What are your prospects?
The prospects of each company and business will be different. But understanding what they are can lead you to them. Prospects are often potential customers who have been analyzed and declared to be fitting certain criteria. They are the part of a business’s target audience. They can make buying decisions independently.
Make sure that the resume is crisp and not too long
If you don’t have a lot of experience in the field, try to make sure that the resume is not longer than one page and not more than two pages in other cases.
Add published work
It is very important for translators to let their clients know about your past work. So, if you have some published work, especially some research articles for a popular platform, you can add the URL of the same in the resume.
Never talk about the rates in resume or email message
You can always talk about that later when the client or company responds to the mail.
Do not add the references
This too is something that you should save for later.
Ensure that there are no mistakes in the resume
There should be no errors in your resume, especially if you are not writing it in your native language. Ask for help from a native for editing and proofreading the resume.
Localize the resume as per the target market
The resume requirements vary as per the geographical region. So, make sure that you localize it before sending. For example, if the resume is to be sent to a French prospect, you should add your photo on the resume. However, if you are sending it to an American prospect, do not add a photo.
Verifiable information
Last but not least, make sure that the information provided in the resume and message can be verified by the prospect.
Why clients should have a preferred translator
A preferred translator is a translator who has translated most of your projects. If you’re a client who is happy with a translator’s job, you can ask your translation agency to make sure that that particular (preferred) translator is provided priority access to your project. Preferred translators can be assigned to all the projects on ongoing support by making the request online or by speaking to a designated account manager. Most generally, your preferred translator will have both local languages expertise and specific domain experience.
Ensuring consistency in your translations is essential. Having different translations for the same word at various places on your website might not only confuse users but might also make your sites look unprofessional.
Hire the same translator to examine all the translations for the same project. This way, not only the selection of words could be kept consistent, the nature and style of your work would be more consistent as well.
Following the above might get you more clients but can also help you to become the preferred translator of your clients.
