Why Do We Need Them?

So if a translation agency does nothing more than provide translation services, why do translators need them? Why can’t translators simply work for the end-client directly, cut out the middle, and make lots more money? There are three reasons.

First, the size of translation projects. Many translation jobs consist of hundreds or thousands of pages of material, perhaps one or more manuals, technical documentation, or legal materials. The end-client, the one that contracts with the agency to do the translation work, wants the job completed too quickly for a single translator to ever do, such as two weeks for 250,000 words of material, and prepared professionally, perhaps printed in full color with graphics and photos. In other words, no single translator has the capacity to provide this scale of service for projects of this size.

Second, the nature of translation projects. Often a translation job will involve translating material into five languages at once, such as with the preparation of an annual report or the manuals for a new software package. Again, the end-client wants it all returned quickly, so no single translator, even assuming that one translator has the ability to translate into five different languages, a virtual impossibility, can hope to finish the job.

Third, the nature of end-clients. End-clients usually prefer to deal with the same organization on a regular basis. This simplifies their own business operations considerably. What this means is that an individual translator cannot reasonably hope to provide all the different services, including various languages, subject areas, desktop publishing, offset printing, and so forth, that an end-client might need during a given business year. Once again, the demands of many end-clients are far beyond what a single translator can provide.

So there are the translation agencies. They provide two categories of service. One: they put together the number of translators needed to handle the material in question (and many agencies maintain an in-house translation staff for this purpose, particularly for languages with high, steady demand). Two: they manage the project from start to completion, including project estimates and bids, desktop publishing, layout, and typesetting, localization of content (both text and visual material), graphics, and printing. Translators therefore are a small but essential part of this the overall translation process.

Agencies, at least good ones, also simplify a translator’s life. The agency calls, tells you there is work to be done, you briefly discuss the job with someone you know and trust, then you do the work, submit it along with an invoice, and you get paid. You don’t have to deal with submitting invoices to a huge corporation, a task which can be something of a nuisance, explaining to people with no knowledge of language and translation why your translation doesn’t look exactly like the original, telling people with no experience living in other cultures why a particular friendly hand gesture in the United States is lewd in Brazil or meaningless in Taiwan. Most important, you don’t have to deal with as much marketing, something the agencies do as a matter of course.

Agencies benefit from having good translators available because they can then provide their clients with quality products in a timely fashion. Agencies definitely want to have good translators, are willing to pay good translators more, and will often be very flexible with you when they want you in particular to do a job. Note the reciprocal relationship here. Not only do translators need agencies to get work, but agencies need translators to get their work done. Agencies need translators as much as translators need agencies because each group provides skills and services the other requires to survive.

Translators do from time to time band together to provide the services that an agency provides in an attempt to circumvent what some translators see as a source of lost income. However, they typically find that this requires a considerable investment in computer hardware, software, and training, not to mention finding reliable printing service bureaus and such. All of this is specialized work, outside the skill set most translators have developed. Color separations, image manipulation, layout, typesetting, and so forth require knowledge and experience. Some groups of translators do cultivate these skills or hire people who have them, but by the time they do all of this and create a successful, functional group, they have in essence become a translation agency.

Now what about those projects that don’t require fancy printing, DTP, or color separations? In practice, agencies tend to handle those because they come from the same people who have the big projects. End-clients like simplicity, so they work consistently with the same agency.

However, many translators do develop their own clients and translate such "simpler material" for them. About half my work comes from agencies and half comes from direct clients. It is a good situation because the agencies I work with are responsible and competent and pay me fairly, and my direct clients are the same. Reaching this position requires time and effort, however, as well as no small amount of luck.

Nevertheless, most translators work for agencies at some point in their careers. Some agencies are easier to work for than others. The point of this article is to increase understanding about the relationship which exists between translators and agencies and to provide insight into what translators can do to make that relationship better. If I seem to be putting the onus on translators, I do so only because change comes more readily for individuals than organizations, and translators stand to benefit considerably as individuals from knowing how to work with agencies. I also hope that agencies will reciprocate and treat translators with the respect that their professionalism deserves.

If the above ideas have convinced you that working with translation agencies is worthwhile, then you still have a lot to do. Even if you want to work exclusively with direct clients, the marketing procedure remains very similar. In other words, there is a lot of business to take care of before you will be inundated with translation work.