What a client!
What a client! Funny stories about translation clients
My name is Gabriela Garcia Calderon and I’m a freelance translator. Today I want to share with you a funny -not so funny- story about one of my potential translation clients. I’m sure that many of you out there can relate to this, and at least we can all have a laugh together.
By mid-June this year, I got an email from a potential client. A friend of mine had recommended me to translate a document about ways to save energy in the hotel industry. The email said something like:
“I have a text in English about energy saving methods for the hotel industry I need to translate into Spanish. It’s a PDF file I can forward to you as soon as you instruct me to. Please, let me know your quote and estimate time of delivery, but have in mind it’s really urgent. I need to have it translated by late June tops”.
After reading the email, I started a reply, which went like this:
“No problem, please send me the document so I can take a look at it and calculate the fee for the translation”.
Less than 15 minutes later, I had the file on my inbox. After downloading it and converting it into a MS Word document, I had the total word count. There were over 10,000 words to be translated. I started to calculate a reasonable rate, considering a lot of things before deciding on a final amount.
Before I could send my fee and estimated time of delivery, I got another message from the client urging me to send my answer. “This is really quite urgent,” I said to myself.
After some more minutes, I finally sent the potential client a message mentioning my fee and telling them I’d do my best to have it ready by late June.
At the most, I could take the first week of July to have it translated and double checked. And then, I waited, and waited, and waited. No more e-mails, no more urging words demanding an answer from me.
Nothing. Just silence.
The next day, I got a new e-mail with a very brief message: “I’ll get back to you by June 30.” Apparently the translation wasn’t so urgent as this client thought.
I deal with this kind of people all the time: they contact me with desperate words, crying for help, more or less telling me that their lives depend on my work and how fast I can deliver it. And all that urgency, all the needs end up suddenly when they get a quote.
What are they thinking? That the translation was to be made for free? Why do they even ask for a quote on the first place? Why don’t they just say: “I can only pay this for the translation, so take it or leave it”?
Saddened for what I felt was a lost job opportunity, but encouraged with the feeling that I was getting rid of what will surely become a hassle or, worse, an unpaid job, and knowing the answer beforehand, I waited until June 30 before sending a new e-mail:
“This is just a reminder for you that today it’s June 30 and I’d wanted to ask you if you’ve made a decision about the translation”.
I got an answer the next day: “No, sorry, I don’t need the translation anymore.”
No spam, we promise.
Nice article, Gabriela. Definitely captures that feeling of frustration when you drop everything to respond to an urgent request – and the silence that follows. Keep up the good work!!
Sure it’s frustrating, Ciarán, especially when this alleged client insists that the translation is urgent and urgent and tortures you with three e-mails in a row, and then nothing. I think we’ll just have to keep the good work to forget these situations.
Hi Gabriela! I’m a native Spanish speaker from Argentina and I work as a translator (English-Spanish, mostly). I would like to expand my business into the lucrative field of Spanish-English translations, but I just don’t have the confidence to do it. I don’t know why, really. I’ve been studying English since I was a child and I even spent two years in Britain. I can speak the language fluently, but when it comes to the written word… well, there’s a voice in my head telling me that I don’t know what I’m doing. No matter what I do, no matter what I read, no amount of Joyce, Wilde or Yeats seems to be able to silence that annoying voice. Do you have any advice for me? I would really, really appreciate it.
Hello Manuel:
My only advice would be “don’t hear that annoying voice”. You’ll just have to accept you’ll make one or two mistakes while writing in a foreign language… but, hey!, it’s understandable as it’s not your native tongue. Free yourself of worries and just go ahead!
Thank you very much, Gabriela! 🙂