Most freelance translators, at least when starting out, receive most jobs from translation agencies. It is important to know how to find reputable agencies to work with, how to contact them to provide your services, and how to provide good customer service and keep them as longstanding clients. In this episode I interview Anne de Freyman, who has been a freelance translator for 20 years and have presented and taught on the topic of marketing to translation agencies before.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Where freelance translators can find agencies to work with
• How to vet agencies and find “good” agencies that pay on time and are nice to work with
• How to contact agencies and offer our translation services
• How we can make agencies find us
• How to negotiate rates with agencies
• How to handle test translations
• How to handle agreements and contracts to sign
• Tips for creating a favorable impression with agencies and make them loyal customers
• Mistakes freelance translators make when working with translation agencies

Useful links mentioned in this episode:

Proz.com

Payment Practices

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or comments on this episode, or if you have any tips to share. I hope you enjoyed the episode! Have a great day!

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Anne de Freyman

Anne de Freyman is an English to French freelance translator from Provence, where she was brought up and studied English literature to MA level. Although she always thought her true calling was academia, she discovered real life and translation whilst working as lectrice at Sheffield university, in the UK. She fell in love with Yorkshire, with translation and with a man from Liverpool and never went back home. This was in the late 80s, well before the days of MAs in translation and like many translators of the same generation, translation is a career she was led into by serendipity. Her first translation jobs were for a very small translation company specialising in video games, as an in-house translator and admin person. She then married the man from Liverpool and moved on to a larger translation company in Nottingham. Then a baby was born and she set up as a freelance translator, just over 20 years ago. She currently works mostly for international organisations and NGOs, both directly and through agencies, specialising in human development and marine oil pollution. She also loves the challenge of translating creative copy in fields such as sports and tourism. Anne is also very involved with ITI, the UK Institute of Translation & Interpreting. She is now in her third year on the board of directors, currently as vice-chair and is heading up the team organising the next ITI conference in 2015.

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