| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Advice about Pricing Thread poster: Paul Dixon
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Paul Dixon 
Brazil
Local time: 06:59
Portuguese to English
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Does anyone know of any course I can take or book/material I can read about the art of pricing? The crisis in Brazil is now worse than it ever has been, and with the 'discount culture' in the country it is difficult to get a fair price. If I quote my regular price they ask for discounts of up to 90% which obviously I don't accept - but there is always someone who does accept hypoinfrasubindian (hisip) prices, which is extremely damaging for the profession.
Some people say 'base your price ... See more Does anyone know of any course I can take or book/material I can read about the art of pricing? The crisis in Brazil is now worse than it ever has been, and with the 'discount culture' in the country it is difficult to get a fair price. If I quote my regular price they ask for discounts of up to 90% which obviously I don't accept - but there is always someone who does accept hypoinfrasubindian (hisip) prices, which is extremely damaging for the profession.
Some people say 'base your price on what you need'. This would never work here as prices are so high (like 150 reais for a bottle of gas) and the market prices are so low.
I also make bids for jobs on ProZ but an alarming number of 'declined' have appeared. Why?
What can I do? I don't want to charge hisip prices. Am I pricing myself out of the market?
Please help.
[Edited at 2021-07-08 10:41 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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| I don't think | Jul 7, 2021 |
You can actually get worthwhile serious work on ProZ.
Look for direct clients or agencies. Single job bids are kind of a waste.
Also, maybe avoid Brazil and target the Portuguese?
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Paul Dixon wrote:
Does anyone know of any course I can take or book/material I can read about the art of pricing? The crisis in Brazil is now worse than it ever has been, and with the 'discount culture' in the country it is difficult to get a fair price. If I quote my regular price they ask for discounts of up to 90% which obviously I don't accept - but there is always someone who does accept hypoinfrasubindianm (hisip) prices, which is extremely damaging for the profession.
Some people say 'base your price on what you need'. This would never work here as prices are so high (like 150 reais for a bottle of gas) and the market prices are so low.
I also make bids for jobs on ProZ but an alarming number of 'declined' have appeared. Why?
What can I do? I don't want to charge hisip prices. Am I pricing myself out of the market?
Please help.
I don't know of any course, book or material about the art of pricing, and if there was, I wonder if it would be of any help to you.
Normally I would say use common sense, but since this is not the first time you are mentioning the/your 'crisis' in Brasil, I think you are the victim of the combination wrong country, wrong language combination, wrong time.
I wish you luck.
[Edited at 2021-07-07 22:30 GMT]
| | | | | Perhaps you need to shift your focus? | Jul 7, 2021 |
Most Russian translation agencies charge their clients $0.04-0.05 per word. And they pay their freelance translators $0.02-0.03 per word.
Therefore, I stopped working for Russian clients in the mid-2000s (with a few exceptions) because they are likely to balk at any rate higher than $0.05 per word.
I think you need to stop wasting your time on Brazilian clients and focus your marketing efforts on potential clients in countries that can support higher rates.
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LIZ LI
China
Local time: 17:59
French to Chinese
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| Agree with Robert | Jul 8, 2021 |
Robert Rietvelt wrote:
I think you are the victim of the combination wrong country, wrong language combination, wrong time.
I wish you luck.
[Edited at 2021-07-07 22:30 GMT]
Sorry to hear that.
And can't agree more with Robert.
Brazilian translators & interpreters can make a fortune (high above decent life) in my country, whether in-house or not; agencies always complain about the lack of qualified professionals in the language pair of Brazilian Portuguese-Chinese; football clubs keep looking for billingual talents for their Brazilian players; audiovisual studios pay for 200% of "standard" rate of EN-ZH for BP natives; students majored in Portuguese are fully booked since end of their 2nd year...
[Edited at 2021-07-08 02:12 GMT]
| | | | Paul Dixon
Brazil
Local time: 06:59
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Clarification | Jul 8, 2021 |
Just to point out why I mention Brazil here, it is where I live and of course this is where many clients would be. Regarding Portuguese clients, it is an interesting market but in the EN>PTPT market there is the issue of linguistic variant. Fortunately I have a contrastive dictionary which compares the two variants. And I do regularly contact clients in Portugal.
About seeking jobs outside the jobs board, I do this regularly. I wish there was some way of sending hundreds of e-mails at once... See more Just to point out why I mention Brazil here, it is where I live and of course this is where many clients would be. Regarding Portuguese clients, it is an interesting market but in the EN>PTPT market there is the issue of linguistic variant. Fortunately I have a contrastive dictionary which compares the two variants. And I do regularly contact clients in Portugal.
About seeking jobs outside the jobs board, I do this regularly. I wish there was some way of sending hundreds of e-mails at once but it would probably be the 'Dear Linguist' type, not very professional. And doing them one by one means I can only do a dozen or two a day. And Control C Control V is risky - like writing 'I look forward to translating in the medical field' and then copying it into another application - for a law firm)
The Brazilian crisis is a complex issue and difficult to explain without going into political issues. However, the pandemic has had a lot to with it. Together with this, we also have the 'discount culture' which means that everyone asks for discounts, and if you don't give a discount they go somewhere else. Does this happen anywhere else in the world?
It is interesting to hear viewpoints from other countries. I had heard about the Chinese football teams, one I remember is Guangzhou (spelling?), and China is a reasonably important commercial partner. And If Chinese wasn't quite so complicated I would study it.
Another phenomenon is that while there has been little PT/EN and PT/ES, I have seen an increase in demand for Somali, Vietnamese. Xavante (a Native Brazilian language) and even an Angolan tribal language whose name I can't remember. Trying to think why this trend has arisen. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | discount culture and other tricks | Jul 8, 2021 |
Vladimir Pochinov wrote:
And they pay their freelance translators $0.02-0.03 per word.
With the current exchange rate it's rather $0.01 per word.
Paul, it's an interesting remark about the discount culture. I dare to generalize that flawed business practices are more common in third world countries. Indian agencies are widely known for their attitude which has been discussed in numerous threads (just one of the examples https://www.proz.com/forum/money_matters/99772-why_are_indian_translation_companies_so_complicate.html ).
A Russian agency approached me recently. I learned from them that when doing a review they only pay for the edited words. Say, you've got a 300-page book to proofread. How long will it take? A couple of weeks, I suppose. Let's imagine the text is fine and you found 100 typos in this book. Then you'll get a whole lot of $0.66 for two weeks work. Let's imagine the text is not so fine and you had to correct 3 typos per page (a total of 900 in the book). In this case you'll get $6. Nobody cares how you can live half of the month on $6. This approach is ridiculous for me because the actual work of checking the accuracy of the text is deliberately left unpaid if you only get paid for the corrections. However, they put their payment system as an advantage - the more corrections you make, the more you earn.
What surprises me most is that these cheap agencies are very active here, on Proz. There are a few freelance marketplaces in Russia where $0.01 per word for translation would be just all right and would elicit plenty of responses. However, they don't look for translators of their highly specialized texts on these marketplaces. Instead, they are sending their propositions on Proz where the average EN-RU translation rate is 10 times higher.
Well, you wanted to hear viewpoints from other countries. I hope I gave you some outlook of what we have in Russia, on the other side of the globe.
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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The one saving grace is they cannot seem to be bothered to provide quality results.
Which leads to an entertaining yo-yo rollercoaster of a relationship with RU-EN clients in higher price brackets: swamped for a few weeks, then sudden utter silence, then they crawl back a few weeks later. And if you get a bunch of revision jobs or access to a shared TM, you can literally see how their quality took a nosedive in the couple weeks that they tried to cut costs and go cheap.
... See more The one saving grace is they cannot seem to be bothered to provide quality results.
Which leads to an entertaining yo-yo rollercoaster of a relationship with RU-EN clients in higher price brackets: swamped for a few weeks, then sudden utter silence, then they crawl back a few weeks later. And if you get a bunch of revision jobs or access to a shared TM, you can literally see how their quality took a nosedive in the couple weeks that they tried to cut costs and go cheap.
But they just keep trying anyway. So have a backup language or two and/or a balanced distribution between several major clients if you want to play the premium end of the Russian language market.
Vladimir Pochinov wrote:
Most Russian translation agencies charge their clients $0.04-0.05 per word. And they pay their freelance translators $0.02-0.03 per word.
Therefore, I stopped working for Russian clients in the mid-2000s (with a few exceptions) because they are likely to balk at any rate higher than $0.05 per word.
I think you need to stop wasting your time on Brazilian clients and focus your marketing efforts on potential clients in countries that can support higher rates. ▲ Collapse
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LIZ LI
China
Local time: 17:59
French to Chinese
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Paul Dixon wrote:
It is interesting to hear viewpoints from other countries. I had heard about the Chinese football teams, one I remember is Guangzhou (spelling?), and China is a reasonably important commercial partner. And If Chinese wasn't quite so complicated I would study it.
Another phenomenon is that while there has been little PT/EN and PT/ES, I have seen an increase in demand for Somali, Vietnamese. Xavante (a Native Brazilian language) and even an Angolan tribal language whose name I can't remember. Trying to think why this trend has arisen.
Hi Paul,
You make it right, Guangzhou (or Canton if you like) is (or maybe WAS) probably the best known Chinese city among footballers. But actually, Brazilian players are the most wanted players for ALL local clubs. So you can easily understand why there is a huge demand of translation & interpretation in this language pair.
I know little about business between Brazil & China, but products of Chile keep breaking sales records in my country. And I read a job offer from "PROCHILE" in China earlier today, looking for hiring a trilingual Chinese (ESP, EN & ZH) based in the city of CHENGDU (pandas' hometown) at $4626 USD... while local average salary was appx. $1000 as of 2020... So I'm assuming that Spanish - Chinese translation/interpretation is also in prosperity.
Sorry again to hear such bad news.
If I were you, I would try to find ways for some side incomes & get specialized somewhere rates are higher & less competitive.
| | | | | Focus on one or two well-paying areas of specialization | Jul 9, 2021 |
From your profile, I see you offer translation services in such areas as Finance (general), Medical (general), Business/Commerce (general), General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters.
It means you are competing with Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and other MT engines.
You know that Legal (general) and a 70-page share purchase agreement belong to very different market segments.
When I was with a major international law firm (2008-2013), clients pa... See more From your profile, I see you offer translation services in such areas as Finance (general), Medical (general), Business/Commerce (general), General / Conversation / Greetings / Letters.
It means you are competing with Google Translate, Microsoft Translator, and other MT engines.
You know that Legal (general) and a 70-page share purchase agreement belong to very different market segments.
When I was with a major international law firm (2008-2013), clients paid our firm $160 per staff translator's hour. The highest rate I have ever negotiated as an independent translator was $0.22 per word.
With an M&A deal worth $5 billion or an LCIA arbitration worth $300 million at stake, it's less surprising that clients pay up to $800 per hour for legal services. When a client coughs up $1-2 million annually on legal services, spending $5K per month on translation services is chicken feed.
So, instead of offering Finance (general), switch to Finance (crypto), Finance (investments and securities), or Finance (accounting).
Whatever area of expertise you may choose, you are likely to have a hard time securing your perfect clients. However, your perfect clients are out there ... (© The X Files) ▲ Collapse
| | | | | quality issues | Jul 9, 2021 |
Adieu wrote:
The one saving grace is they cannot seem to be bothered to provide quality results.
In my experience, these agencies are very concerned about the quality but they find peculiar ways to express their concern: they introduce complicated QA procedures and impose fines of all sorts.
| | | | | I agree with Robert and Adieu | Jul 9, 2021 |
Hi, I'm a newbie freelancer, so I barely have any experience with all this, but I think that searching for clients outside of Brazil is your best option. I have three stable clients at the moment: one in Spain, where I live, one in the United States, and one in Sweden. So far, the US has given me the most reliable, well-paid and consistent work. I specialize mainly in subtitling, so maybe checking your specializations would be a good idea.
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Georgi Kovachev
Bulgaria
Local time: 12:59
Member (2010)
English to Bulgarian
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| Skills in negotiating | Jul 9, 2021 |
I think that actually you need to improve your skills in negotiating. You may want to google book on negotiation or Negotiation Books, or similar.
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 12:59
Member
English to Turkish
Have you ever considered moving to England? I assume you hold dual citizenship (Brazil and UK) and you're bilingual in the true sense of the word (meaning native in both Portuguese and English).
If I were you, I'd go back to the UK and start working as a EN-PT simultaneous interpreter there. Forget about translation. I don't know anything about the interpreting market, but you should be able to earn a lot more than you do now, being native of both English and Portuguese.
| | | | Paul Dixon
Brazil
Local time: 06:59
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Baran: Just a bit of clarification here.
1. Although the crisis now is very bad, it has actually been worse (except in translation where it is still bad). Business has now returned, at least in part, so the general economy is slowly improving. In the past the situation was so bad that the President gave everyone a kind of emergency stipend although still insignificant at 600 reais per month (100 quid). less than the rent of a small room - there was a second one but lower in value and not s... See more Baran: Just a bit of clarification here.
1. Although the crisis now is very bad, it has actually been worse (except in translation where it is still bad). Business has now returned, at least in part, so the general economy is slowly improving. In the past the situation was so bad that the President gave everyone a kind of emergency stipend although still insignificant at 600 reais per month (100 quid). less than the rent of a small room - there was a second one but lower in value and not so many people eligible. But too late for hundreds of restaurants and thousands of small businesses who have closed doors. Hotels and restaurants have been the worst hit because of lack of tourism and corporate events, all cancelled or held remotely.
2. I was actually thinking of moving back to the UK at the bottom of the crisis, but unfortunately 'Witchicombe' and 'Fromage' succeeded in passing what is already proving to be the worst disaster of all - 'Brexshit' as it is aptly known. This makes life difficult for translators as there is less trade with the EU.
3. My citizenship is British only. I am native in both languages. I have permanent residence as I came as a child. If I naturalised I could become a sworn translator (tradutor juramentado) as these are never short of work. But if I did that I would probably lose my right to enter the UK - but could then enter Portugal, as Portugal and Brazil have some kind of agreement by which citizens of one country can live in the other. Another problem is that to be a tradutor juramentado you need to pass a special exam 'concurso' but this is only held every 20 or so years! (This is because it is a lifelong position and nobody leaves except on grounds of health - due to their excellent earnings).
4. Interpretation: I have no experience whatsoever but have heard about excellent earnings for PT interpreters, especially in China (but I would have to learn Chinese first). I guess it would take ages to learn how to do interpretation? There is an excellent course in Curitiba I believe - but don't know how it works in the pandemic. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Pages in topic: [1 2] > | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Advice about Pricing | Anycount & Translation Office 3000 | Translation Office 3000
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