Translators : 10 effective ways to stop the flow of spams, scams and nasty offers, and start over on clean grounds

• PLAY HARD TO GET (& disappear from Translation Directory). Personally, I was fed up with these agency emails and closed my account with TD. Since then I am receiving way less crappy offers and no more scammers. TD is feeding this by making your CV available to absolutely anyone including crooks. Translators have to be more selective with those websites and set their own limits. Trust me, putting your CV all over the web is not going to provide you with more work, but will rather cause a lot of nuisance.  

• STOP GIVING YOUR MONEY TO PROZ : I only got one offer from Proz as a paying member, but am still working on a project I found on it when I was a non paying member. On top of lowering the rates and respect standards, this company is oblivious to the interests of its paying members, serving those of unscrupulous agencies. It refuses to listen to translators and their code of ethics is very suspicious, according to this insightful report. No need to stress that I deeply regret the 120 euros membership which ended up in Henry Dotterer's fat pocket. I guess shutting down websites like Proz and Translation Directory would be the best thing that can ever happen to the translation industry.

• LOOK and be professional, show that you are not a "sunday translator" or looking for a new fun extra job. You have hard earned degrees and credentials, excellent language skills and are your own boss. Ideally, don't position yourself as a job seeker but as a service provider. Don't do anything for free, including tests, or only accept free tests (under 200 words to serious companies). Know the law, and have terms & conditions and a price list.

• SECURE YOUR CV: make a PDF, with watermark and copyright. Don't put it all over the web if you don't want it to be unknowingly used or if you don't want someone else to ruin your reputation.

• SET YOUR PRICE LIMITS ON PORTAL OFFERS : set yourself a minimum price and STICK to it. You won't receive anymore disappointing offers. 

• START CHARGING REAL MONEY FOR YOUR SERVICES : that means always try to negociate higher rates. If you know you are valuable to a project and sense that it does not compute with what you are getting paid, RAISE your prices, with the attitude that goes with it. Instead of asking for a raise, state that your prices are increasing from next month on, and only accept compromise if it is substancial enough. This worked for me. I increased my rate by 50 percent over one year working on the same project, despite the allegedly "fixed budget" of the project. To help you negociate, make a list of arguments susceptible to make them think twice about it (they might not find someone as qualified for the same price, will have to interrupt the project for some time while looking for another translator, not providing the same quality, the client will leave and so on...) I personally could rely on the fact that another language team was fired from the project (book translated into 3 languages) by the end client, so my team was still holding it together.

• OBEY STRICT PROFESSIONAL RULES when answering offers: before accepting anything, one must have : a PO stating deadline and total price, number of words (Do your own word count :), do not start anything without the PO. If a NDA or agreement is given to you, make sure it does not work against you.

• CHECK the agencies (cf this blog "Looking up agencies") and look for them in Black lists, then tell them why you refuse to work for them (low rates, non payment or disgracious spelling or grammatical mistakes...).

• COMMUNICATE, explain things to PM (that they should know, aka your performance is 2000 words a day), and ask questions so you are not held responsible for anything later on and so that your translation fits the needs of the client. If you have to go through an agency, remember that the PM does not know much because he doesn't know what questions to ask, but that you on the contrary need to know everything -or as much as possible.

• START A COOP with trusted fellow translators : If instead of spending our time and energy slaving away for agencies, we were spending it getting rid of them and promoting ourselves via cooperatives, we could get out of this situation and enable good translators to stay in the business. I think this is possible via a lot of PR and communication about our status. Letting end clients (when you know them) know about the reality of this system is also important, but also writing blogs and informing companies and the media. We just have to think of new ways to save our profession and share our ideas through social networks. 

These are just a few basic ideas, but what would be your priorities and solutions to improve the future of translators?