实用帖|翻译公司不给派活了，怎么挽回？

圈圈有话说

大家好！从上周一开始就没推送过了，我现在有点儿心虚。

不过，今天跟大家分享的一篇文章相当实用相当棒！

是翻译界的一位大佬Matt Stanton写的，有领英的同学可以上去关注他。我也是刚刚知道他，通过某位虽然叫YS但其实并不怎么严肃甚至此处省略N字……的前辈……

把话题扯回来，先介绍下这位Matt大佬，16年英日自由译员，在领英上关注近两万，应该算得上是国际翻译界的KOL了。

他写了很多有意思的文章，包括一本书《88 ways to be successful as a freelance translator》，为人特别有个性，语言风格也比较激烈，当然也招致了不少批评。

比如说，他在《You Don't Need Translation Training》中斩钉截铁地说，想要成为一名译员，你不用去读个翻译学位，也不用去上什么网课。

是不是惊世骇俗？是不是大吃一惊？

因为真的很多很多人在知乎上问在简书上问甚至还跑过来我微信上问，各种纠结自己不是英专背景能不能当译员，或者说哎呀我想当译员，不过等我考出CATTI 2再说吧。

这种例子，我真是见得太多太多了。

但是为什么大佬敢说translation training是完全不需要的呢？

因为“I am proof of that"。他是完完全全靠自学过了日语N1，完完全全靠自己变成了翻译界的大佬。

而他的秘诀是什么呢？很简单，”Hard Work"。

我呢，也跟他一样是个没证书没专业背景的野生翻译，对他倒抱有几分好感，不过能不能成功，现在下结论还为时尚早，大家过个十年再看我叭哈哈哈哈~

到底要不要拿个翻译学位，要不要上课，大家用批判的眼光自行判断，这种容易引起争议的话题，我就不说了。

回头说今天选来跟大家分享的文章，秉承了我一贯的实用风格。

原标题是《How to win back an agent that's gone cold》，也就是说，如果你跟某家翻译公司合作得好好的，结果有一天不知道咋了，他们不理你了，不给你派单了，你该咋办呢？

应该赶紧去问项目经理，怎么啦，怎么没活啦，能不能给我派个稿子呀？

Matt Stanton告诉你，这种蠢事千万别干！

你，一定要塑造一个“popular， in-demand translator”的形象。

那真的很想要单子干怎么办呢？

Matt 教你，要懂得旁敲侧击，曲线救国。

明白吗?

不明白的话，自己来读这篇文章吧，非常具有实操性。

喜欢的话记得分享点赞哟~比心

In the last week or two I've seen more than one post asking for advice on a common problem that freelance translators face: an agent that's gone cold.

The translator used to get a lot of orders from the agent, but recently they've dried up.

(Before I move on, I'd like to emphasize that I believe such posts are unwise - as they involve you going public about a lack of business, which is not going to do your rep any good among current and potential customers that might see the post.)

Anyway, in this situation, many freelancers are apt to panic and start questioning their abilities, but this can lead to a damaging loss of confidence and self-esteem, and it may have nothing at all to do with you. 

(The agent may have lost its top salesman, for example - though in one of the posts I saw the agent had actually been advertising for translators in the same language pair as the translator they'd ghosted, so I'll ignore such possibilities in this article.)

It's important to stay calm and rational.

Though certainly, the first thing you should do is try to find out why the drop-off in orders might have occurred.

That doesn't mean contacting the agent to say, "Hey, I'm not getting any work from you these days. What's up?"

Whatever you do, don't do that.

Because as I talk about in my bestselling Amazon/Kindle ebook, 88 WAYS TO BE SUCCESSFUL AS A FREELANCE TRANSLATOR, it's vital to ALWAYS be giving off the vibe of a popular, in-demand translator - not a desperate and needy one who's struggling to put food on the table.

Instead, start doing some detective work, though don't spend too much time on this as it's likely that you will never be able to find out the real reason or reasons for the order slowdown.

Nevertheless, here are some of the things that you can do:

Pull up some of the translations you did for the agent (the advice in this article actually works equally well for direct clients, but the posts I saw concerned agents, so I'll stick to that term) and review them. Look for omissions, mistranslations, clunky language, typos, etc. to ascertain whether quality issues might have been one of the causes.

Look at the last communications you had with the agent. Did you refuse any offers from them? It may simply be that they stopped contacting you because you were always saying no. Remember that whenever you say no, someone else is saying yes, and all things being equal, the people saying yes are likely to become the go-to guys for the agent.

Ask yourself whether you hiked your rates with the agent at around the time the slump began. Price is incredibly important. I remember once having an agent that I was getting hardly any work from (though it had been that way since I first registered with them), and when I cut my rate by 20% I was suddenly inundated with offers. Even if you didn't raise your rates, average market rates could have dropped, making you less attractive for low-margin jobs.

Okay, now you have a better idea of what the problem might be, it's time to contact the agent. If, for example, you determined that quality issues were the cause, you can resolve to improve quality in the future, but that isn't going to help if you never get another order, so you need to take action if you want to start getting orders from them again. You could always just forget about the agent and register with some new ones, but you don't really have anything to lose by contacting them at this point.

So how should you contact the agent?

The golden rule is to do so in a non-needy way.

Your communication needs to come across as casual and unforced.

The best way is to send them your updated resume. For example, you could say, "I recently obtained XX certification, so I'm sending you my updated CV." If there's nothing new to add to your resume (think competitions won, courses completed, memberships acquired, etc.), that could be a symptom of a deeper problem, so you'll want to take a look at that. White space on a resume is a recipe for long-term failure as a freelance translator.

Other approaches are to send them a link to an article you liked that is relevant to their business, to ask them to complete a customer satisfaction survey, to ask their opinion on something, etc.

And if you're in the vicinity of their office, how about dropping in to say hi and introduce yourself in person to the team you'd only ever had contact with by email or over the phone?

You can use multiple approaches and make contact repeatedly, if you like, but don't overdo it, as even non-needy communications eventually come across as needy if the frequency is too high.

Best of luck with winning back those agents that have gone cold!

正文结束了，希望这篇文章对大家有帮助。

看到这里的肯定都是我的真爱粉了。我来跟大家汇报下我这几天失踪干嘛了。

木有去玩，木有花天酒地，木有谈恋爱，委屈脸，就是单纯的忙死了==。

最近好消息是过了Lionbridge（大家如果看过那篇超实用！国外翻译机构指南第一辑，应该知道这家是2017年全球LSP排名榜中的第一名）的Brand Guardian岗位，负责耐克在中国市场官网和应用的本地化文字质量。

坏消息是工作量陡然增加，又要完成日常翻译又要熟悉挑战性很大的新工作，抽空还要写写东西时间实在是有点捉襟见肘，更糟糕的是我可能还想做一个翻译社区==

对，一个翻译社区。

这个念头其实酝酿挺久了。

主要面向在校大学生、刚刚才开始入门的兼职/自由译员。

内容暂定每日两个问答+一句话练习+不定期干货（包括我觉得值得一读的文章，翻译工具推荐，还有我知道大家一定很想了解的靠谱翻译公司推荐，哼，我合作过/勾搭过的翻译公司可不止三家），还有一些就是我不太方便在公众号这类公众场合说的内容。

暂定5月1日-31日期间知识星球“圈圈的翻译之路”试运营，在此期间免费开放~

有兴趣的加我cfyXrux注明，我5月1日统一拉人入群。

以上，祝大家周末愉快~

引用

很拉风的圈圈

最近真真切切体验到了一把工作压力大的感觉，跳出舒适区真的是件不容易的事。

还有发现我之前对国外翻译公司的评价过于一厢情愿了，昨天前辈告诉我里面藏着无数的坑，吓得我…叹气==

这年头挣钱不容易。