Whether you are working full time or part time, it is always good to be paid well for it. If you work as a freelance translator, then the amount you earn can be very crucial as you need to look after your family and other finances. Sometimes you might earn more while sometimes not. Such fluctuations usually keep you worried about financial health.
But there are various strategies that you can follow in order to earn more while working as a freelance translator. They can help you stay committed to your goals without getting worried about the finances. Moreover, they will improve your working styles, skills, and the ability to survive successfully in the freelancing market. So make sure you follow this guide to earn more money as a freelance translator and become the most efficient translator in the eyes of different clients. Besides, you can find opportunities for freelance translator at Dormzi if you are looking for more work.
Pay attention to the latest and upcoming tech
You have to keep yourself up to date with the latest tools and technologies to enhance your work skills. For instance, many freelance translators use computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools to edit, manage, and store their translation work. You can use such tools proficiently as they can speed up your translation process, and eventually, the faster the work, the more you will earn.
This application contains translation memory tools that store the snippets of your text, right from heading and sentences to full paragraphs. This feature significantly improves the translation process and makes the work easier. So the translators who pay attention to the latest tech and stay up to date with it have more efficiency over those who don’t.
Choose a niche and become an expert in it
Considering the rising popularity of freelancing, translators who want to make a unique place in the industry and set their expectations at a higher level than other freelance translators need to create their own space with the expertise. Work with excellent quality and good customer service always goes a long way but becoming an expert in a particular niche surely helps you step ahead among other freelancers and positively affects your income.
For example, when it comes to legal work, freelance translators with a few years of experience in legal translation will have high preference over those who don’t. The same applies to financial translation, medical translation, educational translation, and so on. Thus, make sure you choose a niche relevant to your work experience or enhance your skills and become an expert in it.
Have a diversified client base
Choosing a niche is important, but it is also necessary to have a diversified client base. It helps you diversify your skills and have a range of different clients to create greater income security. If you have clients from different fields, you will never run out of work and also be able to upgrade your translation skills.
Besides, working with a mixture of private and business clients also works well based on the type of freelancing you take from them. You might see that professional translators have various options in front of them from a range of different companies. This is because they register with several companies and keep their contact details up to date so that they can contact the companies whenever there’s a shortage of work on their desk. Moreover, being available to work immediately might be beneficial as it can save the work from going away to another freelancer.
Offer services for less common languages
There will be many freelance translators working on the same set of target and source languages. This situation makes it challenging for the clients to find translators who work on less common languages so they can create various opportunities out of it. If you work on less common languages, you can generate excellent income for translation even though they don’t help generate a steady income source. Thus, freelance translators who offer less common languages, along with other common languages, have a higher chance of generating a good income than other translators.
Stay up to date with the customer trends
Keeping up with customer trends is an excellent way to ensure that you earn more money while working as a freelance translator. For instance, nowadays, most businesses require a translator to translate the video or an audio record into a target language. This work is becoming popular as some businesses collaborate with international clients and record their interviews in their source language. Thus, you can follow such trends and see what the requirements of the customers are so that you can fulfil them with your skills and knowledge.
Conclusion
If you are enthusiastic about learning new skills and want to upgrade yourself in the field of freelance translation, make sure you follow the points mentioned in this article.