| Pagina's in het onderwerp: < [1 2] | Is anybody else finding it quiet? De persoon die dit onderwerp heeft geplaatst: Terry Richards
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| Quite the contrary! | Sep 26, 2013 |
Things were extremely slow 3 years ago, but business has been steadily picking up over the last 9 months...
| | | | John Fossey 
Canada
Local time: 07:56
Lid 2008
Frans naar Engels
+ ...
| Au contraire | Sep 26, 2013 |
I've never been busier in my memory.
| | | | David Hayes
Frankrijk
Local time: 13:56
Frans naar Engels
The first two weeks of September were almost dead, and then things started to pick up again. It's a pity you didn't post this last week since a new client contacted me with the offer of a huge IT manual to translate. It was not something I could handle and so I recommended a few names of people I have heard of in the UK. I would have willingly passed it on to you! It was an urgent job so the rate was far from mean.
Generally speaking, early September is always quiet for me.
| | | | liz askew
Verenigd Koninkrijk
Local time: 12:56
Lid 2007
Frans naar Engels
+ ...
| Strangely enough it was very quiet.... | Sep 26, 2013 |
Well, for the last few days it went completely quiet, but then today I received two large jobs, so....so far, I have been busy every week since Christmas; the first three days of this week I had nothing.
I should say I only do medical - I am not sure what your subject matter is - would this have anything to do with reduction in your work?
Hope work comes your way soon.
[Edited at 2013-09-26 18:56 GMT]
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Terry Richards
Frankrijk
Local time: 13:56
Frans naar Engels
+ ...
ONDERWERPSTARTER
...all for your contributions and kind comments.
Actually, I haven't been too concerned about the shortage of work as we are moving house and I have been spending long weekends over there decorating etc.
I also seem to have appeased the gods that deliver translation work as my inbox started going crazy within seconds of starting this thread. Either a lot of agencies read this message board or the change of address notification I sent out yesterday has refreshed some mem... See more ...all for your contributions and kind comments.
Actually, I haven't been too concerned about the shortage of work as we are moving house and I have been spending long weekends over there decorating etc.
I also seem to have appeased the gods that deliver translation work as my inbox started going crazy within seconds of starting this thread. Either a lot of agencies read this message board or the change of address notification I sent out yesterday has refreshed some memories. Either way, September has now gone from awful to merely bad 
One factor that I was wondering about (and this thread has reinforced my wonderings) is that my customer list might be getting a bit "stale". It may be time to be doing a bit of marketing. It's never a good thing to be reliant on too few customers even if they are good ones. Or should I say especially if they are good ones? ▲ Collapse
| | | | | A few quiet days... | Sep 26, 2013 |
Had a couple of quiet days last week, but a very large job in the pipeline for next week - hey, it's always roundabouts and swings, isn't it?
Steve K.
| | | | Triston Goodwin
Verenigde Staten
Local time: 05:56
Spaans naar Engels
+ ...
| July - September | Sep 27, 2013 |
We've noticed a huge drop in work since July and it's caused a lot of trouble for us here. Luckily we had enough trickle in and a few side projects that paid in, so we were able to keep our house and my car (but only by the skin of our teeth!).
The last two weeks have been crazy though; we've made more than we have in the past two months.
| | | | Steffen Walter
Duitsland
Local time: 13:56
Lid 2002
Engels naar Duits
+ ...
| Steady workload | Sep 27, 2013 |
In my case, September has always been quite busy (although not the best month in the year), which is also true for this month. As has been said, this might also be due to my language pairs (English to German, French to German, and German to English) - the situation is certainly somewhat different for Spanish, Italian etc.
At any rate, I haven't had a quiet day for ages - must have been sometime last year or so.
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| We're all just a drop in the ocean | Sep 27, 2013 |
Although I'm always curious to read these "is it just me?" threads, which come up every once in a while, I never form generalisations from them because they can never hope to give a representative picture of the ocean that is the translation market, of which each of us forms just a drop.
By comparison with the overall market, the number of KudoZ askers must be infinitesimally small, and they might be asking fewer questions because they're on holiday (it IS the time of year, after al... See more Although I'm always curious to read these "is it just me?" threads, which come up every once in a while, I never form generalisations from them because they can never hope to give a representative picture of the ocean that is the translation market, of which each of us forms just a drop.
By comparison with the overall market, the number of KudoZ askers must be infinitesimally small, and they might be asking fewer questions because they're on holiday (it IS the time of year, after all), or because they're simply not having many terminological difficulties at the moment, or for any number of other reasons.
But for what it's worth: I keep quite detailed breakdowns of my work according to language pair, client etc. as I do find it interesting to follow the trends, and I've never been busier than this year - in fact, I'm getting a bit desperate for more free time, yet I find it hard to say no to some clients! So far this year, FR-EN has accounted for nearly 80% of my workload by number of words, which is far higher than in previous years, yet my client base is actually quite small. A year or two ago, I became a little concerned about the drop in the number of emails I received through ProZ from prospective new clients, which had been much higher in my first 2-3 years as a freelancer, and it hasn't increased a whole lot since. But that could easily be because of my directory ranking, as I very rarely participate in KudoZ now. And despite that, my regulars are consistently keeping me more than busy.
In summary, what I'd say is that although the workload we receive from a particular source can fluctuate a lot, this doesn't necessarily reflect what is happening in the market as a whole. If you find the right new clients, who knows - they might just keep you busier than you could ever imagine right now! So as you say, it might simply be time to refresh your customer base a little. Keep yourself visible and the work should find its way to you sooner or later! ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Exactly right. | Sep 27, 2013 |
Nikki Graham wrote:
It seems that September is becoming my new August, and August is actually turning out to be an OK month. However, having said all that, this financial year (from April for me) had been a very good one up until this month.
La rentrée is coming later and later, in my experience. We moved house in August, and if I hadn't had a child to enroll in school, I'd have done it in September instead. Things are only just getting going again this week, for me.
| | | | jyuan_us
Verenigde Staten
Local time: 07:56
Lid 2005
Engels naar Chinees
+ ...
| In monetary term | Sep 29, 2013 |
I made only $1200 in the last 2 weeks, which is far less than usual.
This might have been due to the fact that I started to turn down jobs from the low-paying agencies, and those agencies whose requirements are extremely complicated. But I did count the client job requesting e-mails in the past 2 weeks, and found that the number was substantially reduced.
The reason might be that some end clients budget year starts on Oct 1st. They were wrapping up projects covered by t... See more I made only $1200 in the last 2 weeks, which is far less than usual.
This might have been due to the fact that I started to turn down jobs from the low-paying agencies, and those agencies whose requirements are extremely complicated. But I did count the client job requesting e-mails in the past 2 weeks, and found that the number was substantially reduced.
The reason might be that some end clients budget year starts on Oct 1st. They were wrapping up projects covered by the last years' budget, without starting anything new.
[Edited at 2013-09-29 07:45 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
Verenigd Koninkrijk
Local time: 12:56
Lid 2008
Italiaans naar Engels
Terry Richards wrote:
.....I also seem to have appeased the gods that deliver translation work as my inbox started going crazy within seconds of starting this thread.
...and so did mine, as soon as I posted in it! Truly, the Gods work in mysterious ways.
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