Marketing For Translators

The scenario should be familiar: a social occasion, probably. Someone asks you what you do and you answer, confident and proudly enough: “I’m a translator”. If you’ve had a bad day, maybe you add “Of the freelance variety”, with a little smirk. What follows should also be familiar.

You’ll get asked how to spell that particular word or get thrown a couple of syntactic curveballs. If things do really heat up, you’ll get to hear how some cheap domestic appliance’s user manual ruined their life because some translator didn’t know the difference between “hot” and “cold”. Tragic, I’m quite sure.

Usually, not much credit is given to this kind of situation. It is a common thing and, after all it’s a social occasion; let’s not get too serious here. If you think like this, STOP.

You don’t have to ruin the party, though (actually, never ruin the party, it isn’t good publicity).
What you should do is place the question to yourself: “What is it that I do?”
The answer is different. You know the methods you use, you know the hours of research you put in, and you know all the quality checks you put in. You know what it is to be a translator.
This should hardly be a surprise, but I’ll just put it put, bold letters and all:

Your clients don’t have the slightest idea of any of the things you do.

They give you some PDF file with screenshots pasted inside and then, after a couple of hours, they get a PDF file with the text translated. To your client that’s what you did: you translated.

The importance of perceived value

The problem here is the perceived value of the service.
Translators have been trying to educate clients for years. I know that there are a lot of happy endings on that story and that strong relationships have been created that way. However, most clients don’t want to be educated on something that is an afterthought most of the times.

So take a look at your marketing materials, especially your website/blog and try to answer these questions:

1. What perceived value is there to what you do? Remember that saying “I’m a professional translator” probably isn’t enough.
2. Who are you talking to? How familiar does someone need to be with the translation world to understand that working with you is the right choice?

So, what is it that you do again?