 Hi, this video is not for translators, but it's for people who are thinking of hiring translators I'm making this video because I'm a translator, but I also work with other translators and I've hired many translators for my agency I also made a course on hiring freelancers in general So I have a lot of experience being a freelancer and hiring freelancers I also have a lot of opinions about it here. I'm gonna rant about a couple of them specifically dealing with freelance translators This is for all of you who are thinking of hiring a translator online My main reason for this is that there are tons of good translators out there and you have access to them all If you need a Ukrainian to Swedish translator There's someone out there who can do that if you need, you know, the best type of engineering Chinese to English translator you can find one and you don't need to leave your city your town or your even your couch Because you can find all them online However, any time you talk to someone about Having hired a freelancer or working with freelancers You're gonna get some horror story because you know a ton of things can go wrong so this is just a helping hand for both of you to make both of your lives easier and To let you take advantage to let you use the fact that you know You can have access to all these translators all over the world and hopefully you can work well with them And it can make everyone's life easier Point number one translators and interpreters. These are two different things a translator Translates written text an interpreter deals with spoken word It can get more complicated and you can have Transcriptions and you know transcription translations you can and they also have consecutive or simultaneous Interpreters they also have something called chukotage and all this stuff. I won't get into that now Just for now know that when you ask for a translator You're asking for someone who writes for some reason many people say translator when they actually mean interpreter But not vice versa. I'm not sure why but anyway translator writes an interpreter speaks point number two If you have something to be translated a file or anything along those lines Just send us the file will give you a price and a time frame and that's all you need Don't do these things say I have this legal file and you know, this is about this thick But I have 12 of them over there. Anyway, how much will it cost? No, we can deal with that I've literally had people contact me and ask me it was something like well We have 12 pages or it's about 20 pages, but they're 12 groups of them So yeah, how much would it cost any file that you send can mean many different things? Are they in word? Are they a PDF? Is it a physical file? Is it handwritten? Is it typed up? Is it many many different lines with handwriting on the side and stamps or you know Many times it's just a blank page with one stamp in the middle a translator's price is always per word But you shouldn't have to deal with all that you shouldn't have to deal with trying to decipher See how many words there aren't all that we can handle that Don't worry about it. Just send us the file if as was the case when I was working with this legal firm There's an issue about keeping it secret and we can't let it out and all that just send an NDA So when this specifically happened because it was quite recent and it was a huge file and it was you know It was 12 sets of 20 pages But you know and in the end he sent like a sample meaning like two paragraphs and say okay it's sort of like this I have to assume that it's all gonna be like that or worse and I'm gonna obviously give myself plenty of cushion when I give a price quote because I don't know What to expect so you'll get a better price and it'll be a lot easier if you can just send the whole file So I even told this guy just send me an NDA I'll sign whatever so you can send me the file and I can look at it and give you a real price quote So anyway, don't try to do the work yourself Don't try to guess how much there is or just give a number of pages or say it's this fake or say I have a legal doc or whatever so many times by the way people contact me and say they have x number of words And it turns out to be a totally different number if you just can find a way to send us the file pdf word You know mail it to us if you have to it'll still be quicker and easier and more precise and we'll tell you exactly How much it'll cost how long it'll take and you don't need to worry about it anymore It's a lot less work for you too. The other point is um regarding proofreading and editing There's always a translator usually a translator will work on a translation And then someone else might edit it or proofread it now very often these two terms are interchangeable They shouldn't be an editor technically should know the source language know the pitfalls know how You know what mistakes can be made in translation dealing with this type of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah And ideally you can give them the source and the target text and then they can check the translation make sure it's fine A proofreader just proofreads the target language So if it's chinese to english a proofreader only might only speak english You know just correct the english grammar and that's it. They're still used quite interchangeably very often You can just ask so just keep that in mind Another thing to keep in mind is these proofreaders and editors very often are paid to find mistakes You don't want to give something to be proofread or to be edited and they send it back to you with like only one Mark here because it looks like they haven't been doing their job when you hire them You should specify feel free to make any changes you think sound better But let me know if there are any real mistakes just keep that in mind Another thing to keep in mind is long term versus One time if you're hiring a translator for just that one job then that's fine You hire them for that job you pay them and that's it But if you're hiring them to translate a monthly report and every month you have a similar report to translate And you like the translator you're working with hire them on an ongoing basis First of all, you can streamline everything you don't have to contact them every month and say hey, are you available for this? Yes, I'm available. How much would it cost? It'll cost this much blah blah blah blah But you can just say hey, I have these coming every month. What price can you do it for? Let the translator come up with a price and see if it works chances are it'll be a bit less Because the translator is also happy to have regular jobs So if you have translations that get repeated monthly reports quarterly reports, uh menu that gets changed I mean, I don't know whatever it might be. I would suggest to try to come up with a long-term contract Also, you don't risk the fact that maybe you know next quarter you contact them say hey, I have the same thing Can you translate it and they'll be like no, sorry. I'm busy with something else right now So, uh another point and we're getting to the end of the I'll make this the last point for now Someone who speaks both languages both the source and the target language both languages that you're dealing with does not necessarily Mean that they can translate just because they speak Chinese in English does not mean that they can translate from Chinese to English Trust me. I've just seen it so often chances are you're going to hire someone who's a friend who speaks both languages And then you're going to feel bad because You're going to have to either fire them or not pay them because they didn't do a good job Even if they grew up with both languages and I grew up with two languages and I can attest to this Just because someone speaks two languages does not mean they can translate from one language to the other You should try to find a real translator. That's pretty much it I think I've covered more or less the basics So hopefully if you've watched this video and if you need to hire freelance translators You can use these points and it'll be a lot easier for you and the translator to understand each other Most of these mistakes we encounter them quite often And we translators try to deal with them as best we can just keep these things in mind when you're hiring translators And everything will go a lot more smoothly. Trust me. So, okay I'm going to give actually one more bonus point just because this is something that I've dealt with a couple times I deal with a lot of translations now to and from chinese. They're two different types of chinese traditional chinese Simplified chinese now simplified chinese is for mainland china traditional chinese is spoken in hong kong and mcow and taiwan And in some other places outside of china the hong kong and mcow traditional chinese is actually cantonese And the traditional chinese of taiwan Is still mandarin if this sounds very complicated It's because it is quite complicated the best way to deal with it when you're dealing with chinese translations Is to let the translator know this is for a client in shanghai It's for whatever chinese they use this is from a client in hong kong It's probably whatever they use if you just say where it's going to where it's from or better yet Like I said in point number one If you have the file in chinese just send it to the translator and the translator will know what it is and how to deal with it So, yeah, that's just another Pet peeve because I had a huge job in various different languages german italian french and english into chinese And they had told me it's traditional chinese and I'd found translators and it was all set and then The client was like oh, yeah, because for you know the end client in shanghai and blah blah blah Wait, that's simplified chinese. That's not traditional So hopefully you found this useful most of my videos are for translators But if you are a translator and you have clients maybe you want to send this to them You know someone who hires translators regularly or who will need to hire translators Feel free to send this to them because hopefully it'll make life a lot more smooth for people who are hiring translators and for the translators themselves If you are a freelancer freelance translator feel free to subscribe and you'll get more videos like this In the future. I'll see you next time. Thanks. Bye Hello Hello, hello Blah blah blah blah blah blah. That's it. That's all I had to say