Charity Donations: Free Deduction Calculator

Tax season is approaching rapidly in the U.S., and we wanted to share a website that our American CPA (whom we highly recommend; we finally found a great one!) told us about. It's a nifty and free tool to help you figure out how much your charity donations are worth. To claim 2010 deductions, can use this tool for donations you made last year for which you have a receipt from the charity, but for which you not yet calculated the value. Then attach a print-out from the software to the dated receipt you received from the charity to make sure you have all the proper documentation to prove your donations. Although this tool is developed by Intuit, maker of the fee-based Turbotax, the deduction tool, aptly named It's Deductible, is free. All you need is a free account -- and yes, they do want your e-mail address (but won't send you unsolicited stuff). It also keeps track of all your donations throughout the year.

We've found this tool to be highly intuitive and quite useful, and it turns out that the donations we made in 2010 (furniture, scanner, clothes, sporting goods, etc.) actually had a higher monetary value than we thought -- a pleasant surprise indeed. Get started and let us know what you think.

5 Myths About Direct Clients

Happy 2011 to all our wonderful colleagues around the world! We figured we'd start 2011 with discussing one of our favorite subjects: direct clients. As many of our readers know, we work exclusively with direct clients, and our experiences have been overwhelmingly positive. We frequently get questions about direct clients, some of them based on some erroneous perceptions/beliefs about direct clients. Keep in mind that our experiences are not always necessarily representative, and that we have been working with direct clients for roughly ten years -- and educating your clients is also a big part of the equation.

Here are the 5 myths that we hear the most often:

1. Direct clients are difficult to work with. Sure, some clients are more challenging to communicate with than others, but the vast majority of our clients are accessible, easy to talk to, and very professional.
2. Direct clients don't pay on time. Based on our substantial historical experience, that has not been the case. In ten years, we have only had one client who never paid (he filed for bankruptcy). What is indeed difficult is finding payment data about direct clients, as the fantastic translator databases, such as Payment Practices, only track agencies. When in doubt, ask for partial payment up front. 
3. Direct clients are never happy. That also hasn't turned out to be true for us. It's your job to make the client happy; whatever it takes. Without an agency as buffer, you are fully responsible for the customer services experience, and if you want repeat customers, you have to ensure that the experience is outstanding. You will need an editor to proof all your documents. Direct clients expect outstanding work -- as they should. We have a five-step quality assurance process, and we make sure that our clients know how thorough it is. If there is a problem, direct clients expect it to be fixed promptly.
4. Direct clients are impossible to find. While it is true that they are challenging to find, it's not impossible. Growing a translation business is like any other business: you need to combine an offline and online strategy with outreach and social efforts. The more people know about you, the better. This will, however, take time. There's no such thing as immediate gratification when it comes to direct customer acquisition, and it requires some patience (which is not our strongest suit).
5. Direct clients are too busy to answer the phone. It is true that most of our clients are extremely busy, but they are typically very much vested in the projects we translate: they have either created the documents or are responsible for their publication. Hence, it's in their interest to move the project forward.  Of course, some clients might be too busy at a given time, but it is your job to try to get the question answered, perhaps by an assistant or by e-mailing or calling a few times. 

Perhaps 2011 will be the year that you start working with more direct clients? Either strategy -- direct clients, agencies, or both -- has advantages and disadvantages. Our ideal situation includes long-term repeat direct customers for whom we do projects on a weekly (and oftentimes daily) basis: they are the bread and butter of our business. 

We Will Miss You, 2010! Will You?

As we put the finishing touches on our last projects of 2010, we realized that we haven't really had much time to  reflect on our year, and that's because we've been buried in work (which is a good thing). It certainly didn't feel like the recession (or end of the recession) to us, and we had the opportunity to sign a good number of repeat customers this year, for whom we do projects on a weekly -- and sometimes even daily -- basis. In addition, we were able to capitalize on our business development efforts and established business relationships with several dozen new clients on both sides of the Atlantic. We will definitely miss 2010: our book was released to excellent reviews, we were able to work together in person for almost three months, we attended and spoke at many outstanding conferences around the world, we won several awards, we worked on the boards of directors of our regional and national associations, and we had the chance to spend time with our wonderful friends and colleagues. That said, we would like to improve on taking time off: we really are not very good at fully leaving work behind and are constantly lugging our laptops around.

We are sad to see 2010 go, but we look forward to another prosperous, rewarding, healthy and fun 2011! We would love to hear how you feel about 2010: was business good? Was it a struggle? Are you happy that 2010 is finally coming to a close? We have heard mixed reviews from our colleagues -- some had fantastic years, while for others it was just a slow recovery from 2009. 

Happy 2011 to our dear friends and colleagues around the world!

Last-Minute Holiday Gifts (No Shipping)

Time flies -- and now Christmas is right around the corner. Did you forget a special someone on your list who happens to be a linguist, and now it's too late to mail anything? Not to worry: here is a short list of great gifts that recipients can receive via e-mail. They might not have anything to unwrap, but these gifts sure will get some use!

1. The Translator's Toolbox: A Computer Primer for Translators  is the perfect guide for anything you need to know about technology (PDf files, operating systems, translation environment tools, terminology tools, online security, and much much more) by ATA technology guru, working translator, prolific writer and all-around great guy Jost Zetzsche. This 400-page, password protected PDF can be purchased via PayPal and is $50 ($30 for ATA members). In addition, there's the premium edition of Jost's incredibly popular newsletter (The Tool Kit), which you can send to your favorite translator for $15. 
2. Give the gift of good research by purchasing an annual subscription to the invaluable Payment Practices database. Expertly run by our wonderful colleague Ted Wozniak, there's no better tool than to research an LSP before you take a job than Payment Practices (PP). This might be the best $19.99 gift you could give a translator. 
3. While we haven't had the chance to read it yet, we hear great things about Alex Eames' Business Success for Translators. It's an e-book that you can download immediately for $33. This price includes a 20% holiday discount that Alex is offering at the moment. If the name sounds familiar: Alex is the editor of tranfree. 
4. Is the linguist on your list starting out in the business? Then give the gift of Getting Started as a Freelance Translator, a tailored online course offered by one of the most knowledgeable linguists in the business: Corinne McKay. Her new online class starts on January 10 and is $350 ($300 for ATA members).
5. Purchase a subscription to the Watercooler Network, which is perhaps the best new private forum for linguists that we have seen. Expertly run by Andy Bell, who lives in Australia, Watercooler is a members-only, advertising-free forum for linguists around the world. Since there's a small barrier to entry in the form of a $25 every six months, you will not have to share the forum with folks who are not serious about the profession. 
6. And, last but not least, if you'd like to get our Entrepreneurial Linguist book -- the PDF version -- you can download it immediately for $17. 

Happy holidays and merry Christmas to all our colleagues, clients and friends around the world! 

Scam Alert: Omarion Desmond

It's quite a troubling trend that online scams are increasingly targeting our industry, as scammers (mostly incorrectly) assume that linguists work in a vacuum or are not very tech-savvy (another incorrect assumption). Luckily, we have forums like these, in addition to outstanding payment practices lists and black lists, to share information and to educate each other. This month's scam alert comes from our dear colleague and fellow author Cora Bastiaansen of the Netherlands, whom we had the pleasure of meeting at a conference in Utrecht earlier this year. Here's her story in her own words. It is a scam that has been making the rounds in the U.S. and that was the subject of an article in the ATA Chronicle earlier this year:

On November 26, I received an inquiry regarding a large translation job through www.gotranslators.com. Since the gentleman who needed the translation service did not seem to work for a properly registered company, I asked him for some kind of guarantee. He understood my reservations and suggested sending me a check as a deposit.  In addition, he promised me a second assignment at a later point. I was happy and reassured and I waited for part of the 1600 euros, the amount of the first job. His confidence in me must have been enormous, for he sent me a check of 5000 euros, which was, according to him, payment for both jobs, including the costs for cashing the check. Such a decent fellow!

When the check arrived, I was somewhat surprised: so much money, a check from a German bank, an envelope sent from Russia, and no note or letter accompanying it.

I was reluctant to cash the check -- it's almost like I knew something was up. However, keeping it in the house did not feel good either, so I deposited the money into my bank account a few days later.

I received e-mails from the client every day, pushing me to cash the check and asking me about the progress of the translation, which I had not yet started (was that my gut feeling?).

On December 14, I received a message from www.gotranslators.com warning its members of scams. I checked out the black list on their website and found my client's name among the swindlers, most of whom were from Russia (the stamp!).

Then I received another e-mail: the "client" claimed he had acted too fast and his boss had vetoed the second part of the translation. He asked me to send back part of the money via Western Union as soon as possible.

However, the money in my account is not quite mine yet: it is an advance payment from the bank while they wait for the funds to clear.  But I could have accessed the funds, and I would have been able to withdraw the money that my "client" was asking for and send it to him through Western Union. And later, when it would appear that the check that my "client" gave me was a fake, I'd lose a significant amount of money because the bank would immediately reverse the whole 5,000 that they had tentatively authorized. Thanks to GoTranslators' moderators, I made no such Western Union transfer and I did not lose any money. What a relief!  I just contacted my bank, told them about the scam, and I am now waiting for their advice. To be continued...

This is the scammer's original posting:

Sender : Omarion Desmond (omoode1@gmail.com)

Subject : GoTranslators - TRANSLATOR SERVICE NEEDED.

Dear Translator, I have a 20,000 words on to be translated from English to Dutch. Let me know if you are available and how much it is going to cost. Regards, Omarion Desmond.

The lesson: if it's too good to be true, it probably is. We don't get a lot of fraudulent-sounding inquiries, but when we do, we do a quick online search of the text to be translated and usually quickly find out that it's a Wikipedia entry or some other publicly available text. Such as the case for Cora's "translation" -- she found it online. Thanks to Cora for sharing her experience, and beware of advance payments! Depending on your bank, it might take up to a week or two to verify that the funds do really exist, so even if the money is showing on your account, it's not yours yet. Now: why do banks make the funds available pending verification? Seems to us like they shouldn't, but that's another story. 

If you have another scam report, please share it by leaving a comment or e-mailing us so we can share it with our colleagues around the world. 

Pro Bono Work: Kiva

We oftentimes get questions about how to overcome the typical chicken/egg dilemma: clients want translators to have experience, but they won't hire newcomers to the world of translation without experience. Many times, newcomers make the (poor) choice to take lower rates to get started. The effect is that it destroys the market for the rest of us (think macroeconomics!), and that it's very challenging to raise your rates once you have gained more experience. Thus, starting low is not the way to go. However, how do you get experience?

As many of our readers now, we are strong supporters of our communities and of fighting global poverty through activism, volunteering and by donating to international organizations. One of our favorite causes is microlending to small businesses, many times women-owned, around the world. Several non-profits run these remarkable programs, and Kiva is perhaps the most visible one (although one we haven't donated to). In November, we ran into Naomi Baer, a translator and member of the ATA and NCTA (Northern California Translators Association)  in Denver after the ATA conference. She mentioned a volunteer translator program at Kiva. We think that's a fantastic way to get started in the industry while making our planet a better place to live.

Kiva has millions of words that it needs translated on a continuous basis, especially in languages of lesser diffusion. As is to be expected, there's no budget for paying translators. However, this is a fantastic opportunity for both newcomers and for established translators who want to give back.

Although Kiva's volunteer translation team is currently full (go volunteers!), they are accepting applications for languages that they will need in the future, which include Arabic, Armenian, Bahasa Indonesia, Dari, French, Khmer, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese. Visit the Kiva Translation Program page for more information. All translations are from the foreign language into English. Kiva also needs volunteers for its Editing Program. 

In-House Translator Position in the Chicago Area

As our dear readers know, we write mainly about linguists who are also entrepreneurs and run their own businesses. However, running a business is difficult (if it were easy, everyone would do it). Hence, working as an in-house translator is a nice alternative (Judy is a recovering in-house translation department manager). Unfortunately, these positions are relatively rare. We just received this posting from our colleague Melissa Ramer, who is the translation manager at the agency in question, Valtera, which is located in the Chicago area.  We asked Melissa to give us a ballpark salary figure -- with the goal of minimizing time wasted for both applicant and hiring agency -- but her HR folks would only say that "salary is commensurate with experience." We are happy to make this information available to our readers, but we have no further information than what is listed below and we are in no way affiliated with the employer (nor do we know, unfortunately, whether it's a great place to work or not). Good luck!

WHO WE ARE:  For more than 30 years, Valtera has provided private and public sector employers with solutions to human resource management needs. We specialize in surveys associated with assessment and selection processes, organizational diagnostics, performance management, and service quality. As a leader in the industry, Valtera is able to attract and retain distinguished and talented professionals who address the unique business needs of each client. Visit www.valtera.com for more information.

OUR CULTURE:  Our employees work collaboratively on teams. We are personally and professionally driven to provide the highest level of service to our clients and are willing to invest personal discretionary efforts to achieve this result. We demonstrate the highest standards of ethics and integrity in every transaction. In exchange for this commitment, our employees receive a competitive salary and generous benefit package.

THE OPPORTUNITY:  We are seeking a talented individual to join our Translation Department. The translation department works with both internal and external clients on large-scale, multi-lingual projects. Tasks include translation, proofreading of translations, managing translation projects, and all associated administrative tasks.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Spanish, Translation studies, or equivalent (Master’s degree a plus)
• Demonstrated translation experience
• At least one year in a professional work environment
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Office including Word, Access, and Excel (Translation software knowledge a plus)
• Excellent reading and writing skills in English and Spanish (Additional languages a plus)

Typical success factors for this role include:

·         Managing multiple processes simultaneously and independently

·         Developing and managing project timelines

·         Creating, tracking, and analyzing project information

·         Superior customer service

·         Strong communication and interpersonal skills

This is a full-time, on-site position. No freelance or contractor responses, please. No relocation services are provided.

HOW TO APPLY:  Please submit resume and cover letter with salary expectation via email to hr@valtera.com. Please include “Translator position” in the subject line.

Internships for Spanish & French Translators

Through one of our e-mail lists, we just received a note that the U.S. Department of Justice/INTERPOL has a few openings for Spanish and French translator-interns. Unfortunately, as is the case with most internships, there is no payment offered, which is a bit disheartening. Thus, the DOJ can certainly expect to exclusively attract recent graduates or newcomers to the profession, which might not be the best solution for translations of sensitive materials, but we digress. That said, we are sure the experience would be fantastic. We wanted to share the details of the posting with our colleagues here. Unfortunately, we have no further information -- if you are interested, please contact the person listed below.

Internship Opportunity – INTERPOL Washington

The U.S. National Central Bureau (USNCB) of INTERPOL is offering a limited number of non-paid internship opportunities to Spanish- and French-speaking translators with U.S. government agencies at its headquarters in downtown Washington, DC.

The work, which involves translating written requests for international police assistance, will provide participants with a first-hand understanding of the nature and impact of transnational crime; the legal mechanisms that facilitate and/or impact international law enforcement cooperation, and the issues that affect international criminal investigations and humanitarian assistance efforts.

Certified translators are preferred. Applicants must be proficient in the use of Microsoft Word. Applicants must also be a United States citizen and successfully complete a drug test and security investigation prior to reporting.

To apply, please submit a resume or Curriculum Vitae (CV) with cover letter indicating prospective dates of availability to:

Translator Internship Program

U.S. Department of Justice

INTERPOL-USNCB

Washington, DC 20530

Applicants should specify whether or not they have an active U.S. Government security clearance, and at what level. Applications must be postmarked by midnight, Thursday, December 30, 2010. Requests for additional information regarding this opportunity may be directed to Edwin.Quall@usdoj.gov. 

Adventures in Pricing

A few weeks ago, a dear friend who is also an entrepreneur in another line of business referred a new direct client to us.

The client, who had never worked with a translator, contacted us and asked for more information, which we gladly provided. Then they mentioned that the rate that they had in mind for translators was roughly seven times lower than our rate. We took the opportunity to do some gentle client education, explained the process, how time-intensive it is, how much in-depth knowledge is required, etc. We also added that unfortunately our rates were simply not in line with what they were willing to pay, and that we understood if they did not want to move forward. We carefully pointed out that high-quality services are usually not available at very low prices, and mentioned that we'd be happy to recommend qualified colleagues who charge slightly less than we do.

A few days later, the client got back to us and accepted our original rate, which was seven times higher than what they were originally willing to pay. They said that they appreciated the fact that we took the time to explain the process and that they would prefer to work with us than with a colleague because we came highly recommended. We are still quite stunned at this outcome, as we didn't think we could reach an agreement with this particular client: we thought their ideas of pricing simply differed too much from ours. The lesson: take the time to educate your client, stand your ground, and good things might happen. 

The Ethical Dilemma: What Would You Do?

After many a client request, the European side of our business, for which we also hold a license as an advertising agency, recently started offering Facebook advertising services (via our German-language site www.facebook-werbung.com). It includes purchasing ad space, copywriting and, if applicable, translating the ad, reporting on the success of the ad, etc. One of our clients is a charming swim instructor with whom we have great rapport. However, she seems to have fallen for one of the many obscure “get rich on the internet” schemes. While there are many respectable affiliate programs out there (e.g. Amazon), the personalized horoscopes she tries to sell are not among them. (It took us a while to realize who is behind this specific scheme.) It works like this: some shady self-proclaimed internet gurus promise easy wealth on the internet by becoming a reseller of their products. They then urge people to purchase overpriced websites, databases, accounting software etc. from them. It’s the same old story: the ones digging for gold are not getting rich, but the one selling the shovels are.

As an affiliate partner, you “just” have to attract people to your new website selling these personalized horoscopes. So the swim instructor turned to us. Obviously, she has a limited budget for Facebook ads. Right now she’s attracting about 50 persons a week to her external website (to which the Facebook ad is linked). Problem is: the conversion rate for purchases on the internet is no more than 5 percent. To date, she has sold nothing. To increase her sales, she would have to spend a substantially higher amount of money in advertising, but she would end up not making any profit.

She wants to continue placing the ads, but we know it’s useless. During an hour-long (!) conversation last Friday, Dagy tried to diplomatically phrase her reservations. However, the client didn’t seem too receptive. She seemed indoctrinated by this business idea. She would like to continue placing her ad in December, but we strongly believe it is time for her to quit. Not just Facebook, but this whole horoscope thing altogether. While we do not want to tell clients what to do, we do feel the ethical urge to keep clients from getting exploited.  The client is very happy with our copywriting work and with the ad placement and advice we have given her thus far. However, her desire to get rich fast might be keeping her from seeing through this rip-off scheme.

What would you do? And if you refused to continue the Facebook ads, how would you explain that to the client? We appreciate your thoughts on this tricky matter.

On another note: happy Thanksgiving to all our colleagues, friends, clients, and family in the US! We know it's just another Thursday in Europe, so Dagy will be working while Judy will work on increasing the amount of food on her plate without looking like a glutton.