Are you a student in an interpreter training program wondering what you're
gonna do once you finish? Or maybe you have already finished and you're saying
to yourself, "Now what?" Well today we're going to talk about one of your options
and how it specifically relates to ASL or American Sign Language.
Hello everyone. My name is Jim Baker and today we're going to discuss freelance ASL
interpreting. So first off, what is 'freelance?' Well, the term comes to us from
the 1820 novel by Sir Walter Scott "Ivanhoe."
In it he uses the term 'freelances' to denote a group of soldiers that...
basically they're mercenaries. They're soldiers for hire. They're free to
go to wherever to be hired as soldiers they're not beholden to any
specific Lord, or Noble, or King, or whatever. His novel takes place in medieval times
and so that's what he was describing. He used that term 'freelances' to describe
these soldiers. Over the years, that term has grown in it's common usage to mean
anybody who can accept whatever type of work. It doesn't have to be soldier
work. But they can go ... they're free to say I'm going to work for this person today
and this person tomorrow or next week or whatever. And that's where the
term 'freelance' comes from. Another term that is used as a synonym for
'freelance' is 'independent contractor.' You may have heard that term as well.
So, let's talk about various aspects of freelancing and why they may or may not
be right for you.
First off did you know that 93% of all interpreters and
translators are freelancers? Now really quickly, as an aside, I just want to say
there is a difference between interpreting and translating.
They're similar but they're different we'll talk more about that in a bit. But what this
means is that with such a high percentage of people doing freelance
work, what that means is obviously there's a lot of work out there for
freelancers. There's a lot of work available. Now whether you can actually
land a job at that is going to depend on all kinds of things. It's gonna depend on
what the client's needs are, your experience. It's gonna depend on what
languages you work in. It's going to depend on your willingness to travel
perhaps for work, what market you live in what the demand is there for your
particular language pair, and so forth. The good news is that freelancing in
general is growing and especially in the interpreting and translating markets is
growing especially for freelancers. Because remote interpreting and remote
translating are becoming more more popular. It's a lot easier to
do something through electronic means, electronic communications as good as
they've become nowadays, than it is to have somebody travel long distance
and paying for plane tickets and hotels or whatever. It's easier
to to do short-term assignments like that electronically. It's a lot more
convenient. The interpreter doesn't have to worry about staying in hotels. They
can sleep in their own bed at night. There are all kinds of benefits but the
point is that it's growing and so the amount of work that's available for
freelancers is growing. It's a great time to be a freelancer right now.
Now, the downside of that is that with such a high percentage, 93% of
all of them are freelancers, that means you've got a lot of competition out
there. And depending on your market again, you might have more or less.
There are all kinds of variables that can that can affect it. But one
of the biggest things that's going to affect your ability to get work is, as
you do take on jobs and you complete them, you're going to
develop a reputation. It just naturally happens. It doesn't matter what
industry you're in. And as you get that reputation, that can be a good thing for
you or it could be a bad thing for you. And it really depends on you. How do you
treat your clients, and so forth. And how do you deliver the product? When
you make mistakes, how do you fix them? Things like this all go into
the reputation you're going to for yourself, and as you build that
reputation it will affect whether you get business more or less.
The next aspect of freelancing to keep in mind is that when you are an independent
contractor, you're your own boss. A lot of people, especially younger people, like to
hear that because they don't ... "Nobody's gonna tell me when I gotta
be to work, when I have to stop work and can't get paid anymore, how much I am
worth, what my time's worth, how much they'll pay me. Nobody's
gonna tell me all these different things, and ... I get to
decide those for myself." Being your own boss has its perks.
But there's also a downside. And that is when you're the boss nobody is going to tell you those things.
YOU have to be the one to tell yourself how early or how late you're gonna work.
You have to be the one to decide, "I gotta go to work. It's 7:00. I've set
this for my time." Whatever ... whatever you decide. But point is
you have to make those decisions. And you have to be the one to kick yourself out
of bed, especially on those days when you just wake up you go, "Can I just stay in
bed, please?" Those days were gonna happen!
For example, my wife, and I ... For five years we ran a business in Alabama. In a
totally different industry, but we were an independent contractor.
We accepted clients all the time. We actually rejected work from
clients from time to time. It didn't happen often, but occasionally
there were some clients that we did. Because, well, we had one that didn't pay
or we had others that in some cases we had too much work and we
just couldn't. We just had to say, "Sorry, we can't deliver you a good quality
product in a good time. It's just, we're swamped."
And we had to reject work. And we had other reasons too why occasionally we would
reject an order here and there, even from regular clients. But the point is, that
one business ... For five years that was our bread and butter. That's what we fed our
family with, paid our bills. And I had to be a self-starter. Because
not being a self-starter, I wouldn't make any money, I don't pay the bills. I had to
get myself out of bed. Nobody was gonna kick me out of bed and say you got to go to
work. I had to do that.
So, if you're not a self-starter that's okay. You can learn to be so. If you really
want to be your own boss, you HAVE to learn that. If you decide it's not worth
it to you, if you decide, "I just don't want to do that,"
then maybe freelancing is not for you and you maybe want to
look into being an employee and that's fine too. But this is something you have to decide.
Another aspect of being an independent contractor is the fact that
you have to be more aware of your finances and your taxes than a regular
employee does. Let me explain how that works. Now, I can't speak to how it works
in other countries, but here in the United States, when you are hired by a
regular employer they have you fill out what's called a W-4 form. And this
form gives them information that they use to calculate how much out of each
paycheck ... how much of your money they're gonna
keep out of our paycheck and pay to the government for your taxes. So, let's say,
for example, you work a 40-hour-a-week job making $10/hour.
Well, simple math tells you that in a week's time you're gonna make $400, right?
It's easy math. However, when you get your paycheck, you're not gonna see $400 in
the check. It'll have itemized all the different calculations
it'll start with $400 but the amount you get in the check might be for example
maybe $372 or whatever, the rest of it being
whatever they kept out to pay to the government on your behalf.
The same thing does not apply as an independent contractor. Because as an independent
contractor let's say I go as an independent contractor and I have
several clients. And let's say in a given week I contract a combined total of 40
hours. 40 billable hours at the same rate of $10/hr. We'll make it easy.
So, in that week I'm gonna earn four hundred dollars, Now, we're gonna assume that
everybody's paying. Nobody's canceling the appointments, etc. We're
gonna assume that I actually see that. Okay, so I do the
work. I get paid. When all that money comes in I'm gonna see four hundred
dollars, right? Right! YAY! More money for me! Until I have to take some of that out
and pay the taxes all myself. So, that's the luxury of working for someone else.
They pay the taxes. You don't even see it. You never even see that money. You might
see a number on a pay stub, but you don't see the money. As an independent
contractor, you have to be mindful of it. And say, "I've got to save some money out
so I can pay my taxes." So, having to keep track of your taxes and pay it all
yourself and everything it's kind of a bummer, right? Yes, it is; however there are
a couple possible upsides to it. Number one is if you're the kind of
person where you like to keep track of every single dollar, every single dime, and
know exactly what it's going for ... doing it this way, as an independent
contractor, where you have to keep track of everything, it gives you a greater
sense of control of the money. But you have to be careful that you actually
save that money and pay it to the government as necessary. You don't want
to cross the IRS. You just don't. The other other upside is if your business
is doing well enough where you can actually afford to hire someone else to
come in, that person could actually save you money ... especially if
they're not just a bookkeeper but actually a tax professional they're
worth what you pay them. Because they can actually find ways for you to pay less
taxes. Legal ways. Legal deductions, now. They're not trying to ...
evade the tax laws, or circumvent them, but trying ... to work within the
laws now, to legally reduce the amount you have to pay in taxes. So that's what
Heather and I did. We ... When our business got big enough, we hired
someone to come in and do the taxes, do our bookkeeping and manage our
taxes for us. We still had to pay the taxes but she did all the figuring. It also
was nice having a freelancer do that rather than an employee handle that
because when the time eventually came that Heather and I decided to close our
business and move from Alabama to Texas, we didn't ... we quote-unquote
"fired" her but not really fired her. We just said, "Hey,
we're closing our business. We won't need your services anymore."
Well, she wasn't out of a job, because she's a freelancer! She had other clients that
she went and worked for. She just lost a client but she still had
work. So I didn't have that guilt of having to let someone go. Because I did
have the same thing. We did have employees with our business, and it was
a different thing to happen to tell them, Hey, we're closing the business. We're
gonna have to let you go, because we're closing the business." That was hard.
Because these people ... that was their job. That's what they depended on for their
income. That was difficult. So, nice little perk of hiring another
freelancer is that you don't have that problem. So, now the question is, "Can you make a
living freelancing?" Well, in many ways the answer to that question really depends
on you. But the short answer is "Yeah! It's very possible. People do it all the time."
But for a better answer than that, I'm gonna defer to a lady by the name of
Jill Stewardson. She has a YouTube channel called "ASL Stew," and she has
graciously given me permission to use clips from her videos in this
presentation. So what you're gonna see now, is a clip from one of her videos
entitled "Freelance Interpreting: Pros And Cons."
For more on Jill's take on freelance
interpreting, I encourage you to watch the rest of that video and her other
videos. She's got a great series of videos on her YouTube channel. To get her
take on interpreting as a regular employee instead of freelancing I would
highly encourage you to go check out her video "Interpreter Salary (Can You Live On It?)"
So, now let's switch gears and discuss interpreting itself.
What is 'interpreting?' Well, to start off with, let's dispel a myth right now. I
mentioned it a little bit earlier that 'interpreting' and 'translating' are two
separate things. They are not the same thing. They are similar, but they are not
the same thing. What do I mean by that? Translating is ... You're working with
written text or "passive language." Essentially, you're taking a text, a
source text, in one language ... it could be a book. It could be a website, a poem. It
could be a song. It could be a technical paper. It could be anything. Anything
that's written down in one form or another. You're taking that text and
converting it from the source language to the target language. When you do this,
I call it "passive language" because it's sitting there. You have this static text
that you're working from. As you're working through it, you can stop, take
time and research the topic if you don't understand a particular word or how it's
being used in that context. If you think about just the English language, for
example, and how many uses or how many different uses there are for
the same word. And when you're working with written text as a translator, you
can take the time to ask "What does this mean in that context?" "OH! That's what
they're trying to say, okay!" And then you translate it as needed. So you
have time. You can go back. You can reread you can make sure, "Oh, I've got a
typo here," "Oh, I know that's not really the best way to express that. I think
this is a better way. I just couldn't think of it at the time." You
have all those kind of things that you can do when you're translating.
You can go back to edit it and get it just the way you want it before you ever
deliver it to the customer. Interpreting is different. You're working with "active
language." You're talking about signed or spoken language, on the fly.
You're interpreting right then. Now, there are two different ways of doing it. One
of them is called "simultaneous translation." I'm
sorry, "simultaneous interpreting." Where, basically the person starts speaking, and
while they're still speaking, before they've finished delivering their
message, you're already translating ... or interpreting ... See? I'm using
them wrong myself! While they're speaking, before they finished, you're
already starting to do your interpretation. You're already
interpreting. Simultaneous translation is used _usually_ in settings where you have
a one-way communication going on so you have a speaker who's giving a
lecture or speech or something of that nature, or some other kind of
presentation to an audience, and they're speaking and you're just interpreting that.
And it's usually one-directional. So, you only have to worry about going
from this language to that language. Now, _usually_ that's the case. It's
not always. Consecutive interpreting is is the other style, where, basically it's
used in more intimate settings or more personal settings, where you have a
dialogue going on between two people. So this person over here is the person
giving the source message, to begin with, They say whatever in their native
tongue or whatever language they're most comfortable with. You receive it and you wait
until they finish. And then you do the mental gymnastics to convert it to the
target language and then you come over here and you deliver it. And then
this person speaks back in that language and then you do your mental gymnastics
and convert it back over to this language.
That's "consecutive interpreting". Now, with consecutive interpreting you have a
little bit of an advantage because you get a little bit more time to think and
process before delivering the message. But if you were to watch
an experienced interpreter you wouldn't notice the time difference. They're doing
it that quick. Their brains are so trained you
just don't notice it. So, now we come to the point where we're gonna put
these two aspects together. What does a day look like for a freelance interpreter?
What is a typical workday? Well, first off, there is no real "typical
workday" but there are some things that can be fairly common from ... maybe
not each individual day but you have periods where ebbs and flows and stuff.
To give you a better example, since I've never actually worked as a freelance
interpreter, or any other kind of interpreter at this point, I'm gonna
defer to another lady who also has a YouTube channel., Her name is Amanda Ho-Pham.
she is actually a Vietnamese-English
interpreter who lives in Melbourne, State of Victoria, Australia, and she also
Has given me permission to use some clips from her videos. What you're gonna
see here are two clips from her videos. The first one is from "A Day In The Life
Of A Freelance Interpreter" and the second one is from a video entitled, "All In A Day's Work - Interpreting."
I realized that they
booked me for three hours. I sat there and waited for an hour catching up on all my emails
and you know ringing people I needed to ring. And also to just do some paperwork.
And then, when the patient got called in, and it was done and over in an hour and
a half. And they still paid me for three hours. So, now I've got a bit of
free time. I might just dash home. Even though it's about 20 minutes drive
or 25 minutes drive, I will still go home and have a little rest before my next
job ... in the afternoon. I'm here today for a standard job. Now, a
standard job is a 90 minutes job ... booked by the
client through the agency, and the work is passed on to us. So, interpreters,
freelance interpreters have to register with agencies. I'd say at least four
to five agencies to fill up their diary and to have enough work. And there is a
lot of work. So, in a day, a freelance interpreter will do anything
between ... three and five standard jobs, and on
average about three and a half jobs. So, on days where we do three jobs it's very
comfortable. So, you can imagine 90 minutes booked for
each job, and then about half an hour traveling time in between jobs. And the
rest is really a bit of free time for an interpreter to be able to do their
personal things. You know, go do some grocery shopping pay some bills,
read, run some errands for their family. And today for example I
stationed my work close to home so that I can dash in and out of home looking after
the children. When I talk about children, they are not little children. They're
fairly older children and they are at home because they are on school holidays.
So it is a really fantastic job when it comes
to that type of flexibility. You are still able to earn quite a good living
and, you know, take care of your family and work as per hours that you desire or
that suits your needs.
So there are many different types of work available to
interpreters. Freelancing is one of those types and in fact ... it can be
varied, as you just saw. But, I want to mention two more quick benefits. We're
not really going to spend a lot of time on these but I want you to think about
them as you as you consider this, if you decide to consider this as an option. Two
other benefits to freelancing. The first one has to do with the fact that you can
pick and choose what kinds of jobs you want to do. This gives you the option
maybe ... for example, let's say you're not someone who wants to freelance
long-term. Alright? But, this could be a way for you to kind of "try before you buy," if you
will, to try different ... Maybe you want to try medical . Maybe you want
to try legal. Maybe you want to try other things. Education, K-12 or University, or
whatever. You want to try all all kinds of different ones to find out what
really you have a passion for. You might think it's one thing and then when you
actually get into it, you may find you hate it. But that doesn't mean you
hate interpreting. It just means you don't necessarily like that niche.
So, freelance can give you a chance to try all kinds of things before you
actually focus in one area. The other thing being a freelancer can do is, it
can help you expand your network. You can meet new people all the time, hopefully
other people that work in the field. And, in fact, it can be a way to
potentially, possibly lead you to an employer, a full-time employer that you
can work really well with.
My goal in this video is not to persuade you to any
particular point of view regarding freelancing, or any particular decision.
Instead, I hope I've provided you information so that you can see what
options are available to you and not think you have to be pigeonholed into
one particular thing. You know, a lot of times we might look at something and say
"Okay, well ... what ... Is this all there is?"
And really, with interpreting, there's a wide field out there. And so, I
hope I've presented that to you. I'll conclude this with one more short video
clip from Jill Stewardson, and this is from her video "Why I Almost Quit Interpreting!"
And I would highly encourage you to go to watch the whole
video, but I love this one clip. And so, I wanted to share it with you really quick.
Thank you for watching. I've included
below links to the videos that these clips are taken from. I highly encourage you to
to go watch them. These ladies have a lot of insight they've gained from years of
working in the field, and I know that you can benefit from things they have to say.
Even if you're not going to be freelancing they have a lot of other
things to say that can help you out in the field.
See you next time!
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