The Challenge Of Being A Freelance Translator

Being a freelance translator is one of the most rewarding occupations that one could wish to have. In common with all other professional self-employed occupations, it can bring great rewards as well as present great challenges.

Being a freelance translator is an equitable profession. As a professional, you stand or fall according to your own skills and efforts, there is no-one else to blame should things go wrong and likewise all due accolades are yours alone when a great success has been made.

So what does it take to be a freelance translator?

Discipline and a resolute attitude! You will mostly be working from home and although this is the dream of many, it throws up its own set of problems.

Firstly, although most people would dearly love to work from home, anyone who has done so, very quickly finds out that they start missing the company and social interaction that goes on in an office. Hand in glove with this is the security of the actual routine of getting up in the morning, getting prepared and making the journey into work. Most people profess to hating the whole process, but without it, it is very easy to become lost and feel lonely and isolated.

There is no definitive solution to this...it is a test of your own character as to whether you can push on, content with only your own company...some people can never achieve this...the only way to find this out is to do it.

The next challenge professional translators' face is that of daily routine. In an office environment, the ground rules such as work throughput etc are laid out for you. It is all too easy to be somewhat lax when working in your home environment, to lie in for an extra hour and before long, most of the working day has been lost. To combat this it is very necessary to substitute mini routines of your own and to stick to them.

Once the hurdles to solo working have surmounted, what you will be doing is, of course, document translations. These can either be UK documents to be translated into another language or vice versa. Like all professionals, you will face a choice as to the source of your clients, for a translator the two choices are; set up your own business, get a business.educationeasy.net professional website and market yourself on and offline. Your other option is to freelance under the auspices of a translation company and allow them to assign clients to you.

Each of these options has its own merits and you will need to carefully cost out the alternatives...your decision will have a direct impact on your pocket.

Summing up, the lot of a professional translator, as with all freelancers, is hard, rewarding and you need courage...the courage to control your own future!

Lingo24 lingo24.com document translations UK

Jack Waley-Cohen is the Operations Director of Lingo24 lingo24.com/whyuselingo24.html language translation agencies UK, a provider of high quality lingo24.com/technical_translations.html technical translation