I'd think about being cautious posting a good BB rating for a good client

Jeff Whittaker wrote:
There are also people who will see your entry in the BB and then contact the agency and inform them that they are a colleague or yours/they know you/they have worked with you/you have recommended them/you suggested they contact the agency/you are no longer doing business as as translator and they are assuming your clients.

Don't underestimate the lengths that some unscrupulous people will go to in order to get work.

Charlie Bavington wrote:

I suspect part of the problem may be a difference brought about the scarcity of otherwise of the language combinations offered.

My guess is that most general agencies handle German->English work. Unless they are very new, very small or very specialised.
My guess is that general agencies that bother dealing with English->Lithuanian are much fewer in number.

Anyone scouting for Ger->Eng work might as well just apply/enquire with any and every agency they find. If they get rejected, it is unlikely to be because of the language combination. It will be because of price, experience, specialisation, etc. (I say this having gone through this process some years ago for Fr->Eng - the only ones I didn't bother applying to were those that specified they were only Medical or some other specific field - I never once received the reply "we don't do Fr-Eng".)

Whereas I can well imagine that people looking for work in Eng->Lithuanian or Latvian or plenty of other scarcer languages probably receive a fair number of knockbacks purely on the the basis of their language combination. "Sorry, we don't bother with Lithuanian, there isn't enough demand."

Kevin Lossner wrote:



If someone wants to do client research, BB is only one of many ways to get that information as you point out. I use it, you use it and other use it, and whether we have specific translators in mind when doing so is rather irrelevant, because indirectly I am going after *somebody's* client if I send a proposal of cooperation to agency XYZ. In the end, however, I have to convince that agency to try my services (on any basis, even - God forbid - price), and when they try me out I have to deliver what they expect, consistently and reliably. If another translator can do that - hurray. I'll probably still be hearing from that client on occasion, because a translator who can meet those criteria will be booked out sooner or later in a language pair as much in demand as German to English.




Yes, quite safe. Back at the beginning of 2003 I took a big "hit" when two of my large direct clients were purchased by another company and, after months of working to get that third company as a client it was bought up by a fourth one. At the time I had a handful of clients - I was just making the transition from full-time employment to full-time freelance work, and I was concerned that this would have an unpleasant effect on my income. So I have made it a point since then to "spread the risk" and cultivate a broad clientele, so that you can walk off with my top five clients tomorrow and I can make up the volume immediately from the "pool". This strategy has its disadvantages - mostly the occasional lack of capacity for a job I would really like to take on - but it gives us one less thing to worry about in our business and allows us to focus more on the day-to-day work. When I see the occasional discussion threads where a translator mentions getting 90% of his/her volume from one agency, I just cringe. In a case like that, or one where you choose for whatever reason to work with just half a dozen agencies, I can see how the threat of poaching may be seen as a very real one. Because of the risk distribution in my business model, however, it simply doesn't enter my mind to worry about it.



You don't? Some days when I'm struggling to find a coherent phrase for an expression I've translated a dozen times and nothing in my TM hits the mark I certainly do.

I make no claim to be among the best, just fairly consistent in my output and working methods and fortunate in my specialties, which come from 20+ years of working in other fields. I think there are quite a number of translators who are just as good or better, but the ones I know who fit that description have very little capacity available and/or cost a lot more. I keep the names, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of some of these people handy (in fact, I used to have an e-mail template with this information), and I do not hesitate to pass it out to old or new clients so that they can find someone when we are too busy. This is a lot less stress than worrying about poachers. With the effort spent raising a fence to keep out the poachers, one could probably just go out and get a lot more good clients.

Charlie Bavington wrote:
I suspect part of the problem may be a difference brought about the scarcity of otherwise of the language combinations offered.
...
Hence, for this latter group, I could well see that one strategy would be to follow in the footsteps of an established translator in the same pair, and apply to those agencies that you know they work for. At the very least, you know that, unlike many other agencies, they do work in your pair.