The market of individual client focuses on working directly alongside people that need anything from book translation up to a birth certificate, it's still sort of legit segment of direct client market. Despite this, there are tons of translators that avoid this. As a translator, I've been working alongside individual clients, majority of them were certified, but despite this, I have also translated things such as real estate purchase, business plans, and sale documents. Apart from this, I have also alongside an individual client for book. I love working with direct individuals because –
The work is somewhat gratifying, because people need this service and also appreciates it. There are times when clients appreciate it to a great extent. There have been times when my clients have sent me greeting cards to appreciate my translation.
When I worked alongside an ISO Certified French Language Translation Company, they taught me that individual clients don't pay. When I work, I usually charge a flat fee. No negotiation and no work until he client pays off via paypal. This means no quoting, haggling and also no risk of not getting paid !
For agencies, these small and one time projects aren't what they look forward to working for, because it requires a minimum charge upon the company. But being a freelancer, you can create templates for this process and do these jobs over and over after streamlining it.
Majority of the freelancers aren't interested in this market, this is why you can generate some buzz simply by uploading dedicate pages on your website.
The point is, majority of the freelancers leave these clients for two reasons, either they are afraid of not getting paid or either they don't want to spend a major slice of their time in negotiating about rate and turnaround. TO make things simple, ask them to pay in advance and refuse to negotiate. They can look for another translator in case they can't pay in advance or want to negotiate.
When you work with individuals, the following can be a possibility.
If you are working along people who don't have any skill about translation, you have to work with patience. I have worked with so many weird clients in French Language Translation Company in Delhi. There are so many weird request you would come across, such as "Would you be able to translate my driver's license ?" or can you convert the grades I got from French to US based system ? Or can you leave the classes in which I failed ? As a freelancer, you can't put a blame on them, you should always be willing to explain these things.
A lot of people would always come asking whether you can certify the translation. They will say things like that I have already translated the document but I need to put your certified translator stamp upon it. When it comes to me, I refuse.
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