T. Mark Humphries wrote:
Thanks everybody, and especially you Lukasz, for all the help.
Glad to be of help. Academic workers of the world unite and all.
That job reinforced my opinions about academic translations, as it happens. It was for a journal run by former professors/friends of mine, and the contributor was a French author. Outside of their regular university salaries, precisely no one is paid for producing the issue--not the contributor, not the editors, and certainly not the translator (this was a favor for an old friend who's been very good to me in the past, and the task was well-timed to allow me to test drive my new CAT toy). Had I not done it, one of the editors would have, also for free. There's just no money in academia.
Yeah, exactly. Still, I love writing law review articles, as they all pay back by simply being on my CV and enhancing my aura. The beauty of this is that they'll usually take a good article sooner or later, even ask for more, publication isn't difficult and all. It's usually just enough to be good and write well, at least here.
I still have to do some work on my profile, and only today I happened across "KuDoz points", so I'll be getting into that.
KudoZ points are the SEO juice of the directory of translators and interpreters. The more you answer in the relevant field and pair (primarily) or just the pair (secondarily), the higher you place. It's kinda like monitoring your mail for client inquiries: it's tedious, and you really can't focus on work pausing every 5 minutes like that unless you learn to cope. But if you learn to cope, it pays. The higher you are in the directory, the less you lose due to people's limited attention span and energy for scrolling down and comparing dozens of different translators. The higher you are, the better off you are.
Do you all use the invoice feature at ProZ, or do you have your own?
I have my own. And it's no feature, it's just a template.
How do you calculate tax?
I don't. First thing I outsourced even before I finished formalising the business into legal existence.
How are you paid?
Usually without fail. Wonder if that has anything to do with funny expressions like 'law school', 'Litigation Department' etc. in my CV. I don't even have to sue people or anything.
Is it best to set up a dedicated Paypal account?
No idea. But I know that some outsourcers specifically inquire about PayPal and give the appearance of caring rather strongly about it. It could be a good idea to be able to satisfy that desire.
And lastly, a few days ago I received an e-mail from a foreign company with a job offer, asking for rates and thus-and-such. (I'd rather not say which country, as it's not germane to the question and I don't want to offend anyone.) Having done freelance writing for a mobile app consultancy, I know how hard it can be to seek redress for grievances from foreign contractors...how worried will I need to be about not getting paid for work I've done?
There's always risk, hence I'd opt for smaller jobs or smaller chunks of jobs, progressing in line with your trust in them (and theirs in you, I guess). I could work for a week without guarantees but not for a month. I'm a Peter Pan, though, mind you. If you have a wife and children, you can afford even less flexibility.
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