 Hello everyone. So here I have a confession to make or a confession. Basically, I'm gonna Well, yeah confess because all this time I've been doing these videos and you know I did the course and the book and all that you know how to be a successful freelance translator And I've been trying to focus on teaching how to be a successful freelance translator or how to be a successful freelancer in general and Throughout all this time. I've not once I've checked all the videos not once Have I tried to focus on how to be an unsuccessful freelance translator? And so for all of you out there who are saying well, I don't want to be a successful freelance translator I want to be an unsuccessful one Finally finally finally. I'm gonna make a video for you This video is to teach you how to be an unsuccessful freelance translator These are just a couple of tips a couple of the preliminaries But hopefully if you follow these steps, they'll be enough for you to be an unsuccessful freelance translator They're just the basics. So anyway, let's get started with it. First of all how to be an unsuccessful freelance translator tip number one Here you have a choice actually either never answer your clients or Wait, so this is simple when you get a request for a translation or maybe you've sent out an application And they ask you for more information either a don't respond at all Or if you have to respond because the email there is there and it's bothering you So you have to get out of your inbox. You have to you know, do something with it at least wait to respond I would say wait at least I don't know 48 hours Anything more than 24 will work but 48 the longer you can wait the better Just make them wait for that response because then this helps them to know that they're gonna have to keep waiting Every time they need a response for you, okay? So it at least you get them used to it right away that they're gonna have to wait a long time for you to respond So tip number one never answer your clients or wait as long as you can to do so tip number two Miss your deadlines here if they give you a deadline. They say we need this Thursday by noon Then try to deliver it. I would say earliest by say Thursday 3 p.m You know because there if you know if you feel embarrassed about it something like that at least there You can still say oh, I was working on it But there was a problem with the email or there was a problem with the this or that or whatever excuse you can come up with Then just send it, you know around 3 p.m. But if you can it's better just to send it Friday Whatever send it during the weekend. Who cares at least there you can be sure that well to be unsuccessful Tip number three Don't proofread your work. This is a big one because too many translators there Translate and then as even when they're done translating They go through and proofread their work to check for mistakes to make sure they translated something correctly that they didn't miss something out or didn't use Something incorrectly and they go through it again to make sure that it's written Well and written in a way that sounds fluent if you do that then you're just gonna be successful So I mean make sure you don't proofread your work I would translate it very quickly and then just just close the document Don't send it right away because that goes against tip number two, but just close the document right there and don't deal with it anymore after that Tip number four, I think we're at what do I have? Oh formatting formatting Format get about it That was a bad pun I don't even think that was a pun anyway forget about formatting because a lot of times you're dealing with PDFs and Or you're dealing with charts. You're dealing with graphs You're dealing with a lot of stuff that needs to be formatted And if you deal with Microsoft Word, you know what can happen you do, you know, you add one Space or one tab over here and then suddenly Everything changes and all the format changes you have new columns you have this that and the other I would just not worry about that In fact, whenever you do the translation, just type it up Don't worry about the formatting at all if the initial document They gave you was five pages and suddenly you have seven pages and two of them are just on one column here And then that I mean that doesn't matter forget about format formatting Don't even think about it And if you have weird formats, it's even hard to look at when you're typing get through that. That's what it takes So don't format good Tip number. I think we're at five. I'm totally losing count. But anyway tip number five. Oh This is actually a good one because it helps with the other tips wait until the last minute to translate Because this ties in well with trying to miss your deadlines. I was tip number two So here wait until the last minute if you have that deadline, let's say Thursday at noon I would wait until say Thursday when you wake up to do it The best way to do this is to procrastinate a lot. So like the days leading up to it Say you're gonna start working, but there are a million other things you can find that can take up your time Maybe you need to put in order your room. You need to run a bunch of errands You need to you know, make sure everything is just so you need to find the right place to do it Because you go to a coffee shop, but it's too loud go to another one is and it's not loud enough I mean, you know, you need some sort of noise around you So keep doing stuff like that until the very last minute And so you don't get started with your translation until the last minute And then this makes it like I said a lot easier to then miss your deadline It also makes it a lot easier to not have time to proofread your work and and to forget about formatting So these really tie into each other and you know one of these tips can help the other ones So keep that in mind Tip number six, I guess Don't deal with follow-ups. Oh, yeah follow us because a lot of times you'll be setting a translation Especially if you've been paying attention to not proofreading and formatting and all that they're gonna have questions about your translation Don't deal with that stuff. You did your translation. You sent it in don't deal with follow-ups They have questions about anything or they want to know about your formatting or maybe a mistranslation or whatever they you know They're talking about just don't deal with it Once again, like I said if it's really that email in your inbox is really bothering you then reply But wait at least 24 48 hours before replying just so they know that they got to take their time with you Come on, so don't deal with follow-ups is My recommendation Tip number. I think we're at seven here seven. Oh Yeah, of course once all this is done Add complications for payment what I mean by this is at this point. You want to tell your client Okay, I know I charge you a hundred euros, but actually there's also a tax an eight percent tax So you owe me a hundred and eight euros. Oh, and by the way, I don't accept PayPal I don't accept bank transfer. You have to pay me by cashier's check So please mail it to my place even though it's international Can you mail it and in my local currency because I need it that way all these are great ideas for complicating the payment process and this is really good because it makes it a lot harder for them to pay you and So it makes it a lot harder for you to receive your money and you know, that's awesome So what you should do is just try to figure out different complications as much of the ones I've listed or if you can come up with other ones then feel free to add those as well There are other ones that I've heard of can say oh But since you're based in this country and I'm based in that country Then I need this stat in the other add it on to it or other payment Complications give them the wrong bank account number and then have them go through it a bunch of times before you tell them Oh, no, that's the wrong bank account number, you know pay me and another account or something like that just try to add as many up complications as possible for the payment and you know anything you can do to delay the payment as much as possible and And yeah, that's about it. Those are my top. In fact, you know what actually I'm gonna give you a bonus tip right now Now this is more advanced. That's why I'm using it as a bonus tip and not one of the main tips But find a way to charge per target word instead of source word So if you get a PDF if you get a stack scan document something like that you can tell them look I can't count the number of words there So I'm gonna charge you per target word and then when they say okay to that up to a center price per target word what you can Do is make very long sentences try to make your very long sentences even longer and longer and longer and longer and longer See what I did there do stuff like that try to add Adjectives anywhere you can instead of saying well, that was the gentleman's jacket You can say that was the gentle that was the jacket belonging to the gentleman or something like that Just add more words whatever you can do and because they certainly they totally will never realize how awkward it sounds of course not and That way you can get a lot more words and then you can get totally get paid more Which will then get delayed because you're gonna be adding complications payment That's something they definitely will not pick up on at all. I mean, how could they and so just made it make it As wordy as possible. It's also because it's definitely worth your time Trying to come up with different words for the extra sense You'll get for each word that you add and making a really awkward Translation that you get to send them as proof of your work that you can do So anyway follow my seven steps plus the bonus and you are sure to be unsuccessful You can thank me later