Pricing - it's not all about money money money.

We hear all too often that interpreters and translators are being undercut and struggle to get fair payments for their services. There can be many reasons for this, but a lack of education and awareness on both sides seems key in my opinion. I was fortunate enough to have teachers on my Master’s program who explained rates to us, the impact of undercutting just to get work and how to uphold the values of our profession, but perhaps that is not the case for everyone. This lack of awareness might be understandable from the translator’s or interpreter’s perspective, but a want to educate yourself is essential if you want to succeed in this profession.

There are of course sites like Proz.com which can offer a guide for how to price your work, although rates on here are not necessarily accurate representations of the market you find yourself working in, and are very often lower than what you should actually be charging. You should be able to work out what offers from agencies are acceptable or not!

Recently I came across a post on social media discussing the pros and cons of giving a January offer – I believe it was X% off your first order of the year to try and attract clients. January is a famously quiet period but that doesn’t mean we should suddenly be capable of working for less just because it’s quiet – we need to put ourselves in the clients’ shoes as well. If my hairdresser told me I got X% off because it’s quiet then I would be looking for a good deal next time I had to go. There is of course the logic of supply and demand but the number of “translators” out there is rapidly increasing so a high quality service definitely should not be falling in price.

I think that as professionals we also have a responsibility to demonstrate and explain why our service costs the price it does. Just last week I contacted a client for an interpreting assignment with a price that is the standard price for a day’s work in Paris and I was met with horror at the cost, however I feel it is my duty to not only fight for this price for me but also for my colleagues and the amount of dedication to our profession that it represents. I’m sure many of you, like me, see some of the prices offered and want to tear your hair out but if the person posting the job received multiple offers for a fair and normal price that upholds our pricing then perhaps they would realise what the true price should be? After all if you look to buy a iPhone and find a new one for half the price on a slightly dodgy looking website you do wonder if you’re really going to get a genuine iPhone or not. This should be the same for pricing with translation/interpreting, and I wonder why many still chose to go with the dodgy half price iPhone.

What is your opinion on this matter? Scapegoating aside, are there any pro-positive solutions we could implement?

One solution is to explain our profession better, so that clients understand what we do, and therefore why we charge what we charge. This topic is extremely relevant, and many of you may have either attended or followed news on the AIIC Assembly in Valencia on Twitter, if so you will have heard of the new ISO standard for interpreting services which can be used to explain our profession to clients. The ISO explains the different modes of interpreting as well as basic conditions governing interpreting assignments and the responsibilities of both parties. For more information on ISO 18841:2018 in English see here.