Hello dear fellow translators,

It’s only been a couple of months since you’ve resumed work after the summer break and you already can’t tell if you’re coming or going? Here’s what you can do to manage the rush in 2 simple steps: the “I put you first” strategy.

• Draw a list of all your clients with different criteria, such as how nice they are to work with, how much they pay, what types of projects they send you, how frequently they send you projects and so on.

• Pick your top 3 clients and write them the following message:

“I’m writing you to give you a quick update about my availability. After a couple of weeks of holiday, I resumed work and things started to get crazy again so I decided to make one thing to deal with this: think about the translation partners I want to favor and build a special relationship with them. We started working together last spring/a couple of years ago. I delivered only a couple of projects for you as I was too busy dealing with other offers. I’m now having a new approach: I want to favor my partners who allow me to work under the best conditions and I think you’re one of them. So, please, be aware that whenever you’ll send me a translation or review offer, I’ll put your offer first to thank you for being a nice company to work with. Of course, if I have other projects planned, I might not have a full availability for you but I’ll always make my best to give you the best deadline and the best possible quality. I guess you must get many translation requests from clients those days so, please, don’t hesitate to send them to me and I’ll let you know if I can help you taking care of them.”

Result: I did it a couple of months ago and they all replied quickly and thanked me for my email. The day after, one of them sent me a 2700 word-project to translate from German into French. I couldn’t’ have been happier! So, if you have partners you enjoy working with and who pay well, never forget to tell them how you feel. That might be the start of a long and flourishing working relationship.

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