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And then there's taxes: Your tax liability as a home business sole proprietor of a translation service

Started preparing my taxes today for my tax lady, a professional income tax accountant.

These are the things I do to prepare my tax return for my sole-proprietor translation agency:

-Calculate the total payments made to my freelance translators. This is considered a "business expense". They will be sent a 1099 form.

-Send out w-9 forms to all translators I have paid over $600 to in the past year. Have them fill out , sign and provide social security #, of course, on that form, this info will be used on the 1099 form.

-Calculate all my other business expenses as a freelance translator/translation agency owner: notarization fee receipts, printer paper and ribbons, phone bill, health insurance bills(yes, you can get a deduction as a self employed business owner!!), stamps, envelopes, postage, computer equipment, etc.

-Interest from my money market, index fund, mutual funds--all my investments.

Around first of March, my tax preparer sends a 1099 form to my translators and service providers. I usually go at end of February to the tax preparer with my initital preparations and documents.

All done: Did my taxes yesterday. Have to pay "self-employed business tax", which pays into Social Security and Medicare. Profits are more this year, my net profits, so more taxes to pay.

Next year I will make sure I get all business expenses documented and recorded, every nit-picky detail of all my expenses, which I avoided a bit last year.

Put a banner and link to your translation agency on this blog: One-time fee, $75

Not much work for our translation agency last month. We finally are getting paid by that Los Angeles marketing company; at least that is what they say, "the check is in the mail"-type thing. We delivered the finished translation on December 15th.

One reason we are not getting work lately is that we have raised our rates 15%. I am lowering the payment rates to our translators, at least the newer ones, by 15% also.

We have to make a better profit. Last year's income tax showed a crappy net income and we are simply paying our translators too much and charging our translation customers too little.

Translators will have to expect a reduction in payment for their work this year. Demand for translation jobs, and the number of freelance translators' resumes and CV's we receive, way exceeds translations requested by customers. There are less and less translation projects, more competition on prices from other agencies; so translators are becoming a dime a dozen; we get 40 resumes/cv's per week!

I could try to remain a discount translation agency, but it ain't worth it. We produce high quality translations; we expect the standard rate.

Message to freelancers: if you want more translation jobs, start your own agency. Everything has its price; you must pay your dues.

The End of Sending out Interpreters for "Certified or Registered Interpreter" Requests

Today is the end of our service sending out interpreters for any type of legal or government assignments. The bureaucracy and red tape involved and disasters are too much of a risk.

A few years ago, we sent out a supposedly Fed certified Spanish interpreter for a deposition and the judge rejected the interpreter as he did not have "California certification" as an interpreter!!

Today we sent out a Polish , state -registered interpreter, and the Canadian consulate rejected him, saying he had to be "certified", a classification which does not exist in California!!

Hello,
Today we, my translation agency, have sent a Polish interpreter to work on case of :Mr. ------, file number -------092 INT .

He has travelled all the way from Canada to Los Angeles for a visa application at your office at considerable expense.

Your consulate rejected my interpreter , who is registered, and you asked for a certified Polish interpreter--this classification does not exist in California!

Our interpreter showed you his registered interpreter card and explained, but you said he was not allowed to do interpreting for this case!

Attached is the resume of the first interpreter. We will send another Polish interpreter today to see if he can work out the situation.

We ended up contracting another interpreter, procured for us by the first interpreter who may or may not have lied about bringing in the valid registered interpreter's card. This 2nd interpreter somehow was excepted--his valid card or maybe his confirmed listing may have had something to do with this; or maybe it was that I faxed the Canadian consulate about 7 times.

So, we had to pay for two interpreters. We made no profit, and lost about $50 as well.

No, not completely. I have decided we will just do telephone interpreting. No big risk.

In the future I may just refer interpreting jobs to my interpreters, and not take them directly(i.e., invoicing, setting up time, informing client and interpreter of time, date; being responsible and liable financially that interpreter arrives and works well; that the client and his people show up and pay me within two weeks, etc.). If I just refer the jobs to my interpreters they can do the billing themselves and collecting payment themselves; thus I avoid any liability, but then of course my interpreters can rip me off and "stiff" me (i.e., just collect payment and forget to pay me a percentage).

I just want to avoid the disaster of the Polish translators at the LA Canadian consulate....Sure I will not get as much of a commission amount, but less risky by far!

Business has been slow. Lots of calls for quotes. People are shopping around more. Not many jobs set up.

Did a certified translation of a French civil status document. Made a mistake on the birthdates and gender of some of the family members listed. Actually, the client gave the wrong birthdate on one, and the mistakes on gender were just due to fast proofreading. I should have proofread more closely and slowed down on editing before getting the statement of accuracy notarized and sending the documents. On Monday I will have to print the corrected text up again and get it notarized again and re-send it to the client.

So, what about the future of my translation agency? I don't know. Perhaps I should invest more in advertising. My seemingly complete waste of $250 for Google Adwords was quite a risk. Not one conversion from click to sale. Amazing. Did it for 2 months.

A lot of internet advertising programs just seem to be a big scam. I always preferred to do-it-yourself approach by making links and trading them, writing blogs, etc. Sometimes I use Craigslist.

Getting itchy for something new. Would like to go mobile, run the agency part-time from PDA or laptop, global cell; and do other things.

Reading Diderot, Supplément au voyage de bougainville, Pensées philosophiques ,Lettre sur les aveugles. Gone to Starbuck's a few times wit this book. Interesting collection of his writings, questioning relgion, investigation of Tahitian culture, etc. Good to keep up on my French while waiting for translation jobs.

Had a plan to hitchhike around France, England and Italy starting this spring, but spring is here and my plans have still not solidified, it is all in a dissolved nebulous stage, nothing has completely come together; waiting for the the direction. I would think of buying a PDA, like a Blackberry World Edition or something, instead of lugging around a laptop. Was even thinking of bringing along my guitar.

It would be good to keep the business running while travelling for a few months, but carrying that laptop is too much of a hassle.

Spent the last 5 and half days translating a French film treatment into English. Roughly 6-8 hours per day. Really interesting fantasy story, much funner than doing legal and technical translations, but also in a way, harder work! Lots of colloquialisms and verbs to look up, lots of re-fashioning the French into American English, rephrasing, detecting nuance, shades of meaning.

Lots of caffeine, a sufficient amount of cigarettes to get me through; and increased pain in fingers, hands and neck. Looking up a lot of words in both the French-English dictionary(Oxford Hachette Concise), and a thesaurus and old Webster's Dictionary to find the right word for the context.

Had to have a few beers some nights just to take the pressure off. Finally, I decided that the 2-week due date wasn't going to be adequate time to finish without losing hair or unhealthily raising my blood pressure, not to mention the risk of rushing through and making lots of mistakes; so, I sub-contracted the rest of the treatment to another translator, who promised to finish the rest of it, around 15 thousand more words, by next Sunday.

Thank the gods for those translators I have in my database. The translator I ended up using had actually just sent in her resume. The sample test translation of the text was very good, so I went with her; this was all arranged on Easter Sunday of course...

I don't know if I am a speedy translator. I am actually very exacting and detail-oriented, so I go sort of slow, I like to get things perfect. In the future I will ask for more time, not give the client such a quick turnaround time, which I can't do anyway.

I find I work best from 6 a.m. to about 1 p.m. After that I start to drag, lose concentration, get tired. My mind is clearest upon waking up at dawn. A good strong cup of tea helps me get my translating focus on.

Finished up a few more translation: English>Italian, 3 release letters(material, location, personal) for a A&E Entertainment, using my trusty Italian translator in Naples, Italy. I still send personal checks on an American bank to her as payment; so far she hasn't requested Paypal or wire transfer(bank).

Wouldn't say the money is rolling in, but when the clients actually get around to sending me their checks, I shall have another raising of my bank account balance.

Got some requests for certified Spanish>English translations: This client faxed 6 pages of academic transcripts, Mexican or Cuban, I forgot; actually they were so hard to read (especially the seals) that I just said what the hell and sent them off to one of my translators via regular mail, didn't want to let the client down after he'd faxed them. That project took me a few hours, but in the end, I will just get a referral commission from the translator who is taking the job and invoicing directly.

How can I avoid these last minute abandoning of translation projects, where I just send them along for my Spanish translator in LA to take care of them totally? I dunno, the faxing is the problem; because after a client goes to the trouble of faxing several pages, I should at least try to get him a translator instead of just declining the job entirely. I really prefer when the clients scan and send the diplomas, transcripts and birth certificates, etc. via email; so much easier to send them along to another translator.

I usually translated these projects myself, but find several pages of blurred tiny print just not worth it!!

Summer Trip to Europe 2009 for a translator/translation agency entrepreneur: Hitchhiking, guitar, beaches, etc

As I wrote above "Had a plan to hitchhike around France, England and Italy starting this spring, but spring is here and my plans have still not solidified, it is all in a dissolved nebulous stage, nothing has completely come together; waiting for the the direction. "; however it is now Spring and nothing is really decided.

I'd like to travel with my guitar and just do busking(street playing); don't have a partner yet. Somehow I am looking for an experience like in James Michener's The Drifters.

Update: It's July and I have still not gotten a travel partner for this great adventure; too lazy to go alone. If interested, contact me via my agencies' websites.

Re-defining the perception of advanced mobile phones… the HTC Touch Diamond™ signals a giant leap forward in combining hi-tech prowess with intuitive usability and exhilarating design.

Featuring a sharp 2.8-inch touch screen housed within a stunning formation of brushed metal and flawless faceted edges, the HTC Touch Diamond is as beautiful to behold as it is to use.

With HTC’s vibrant touch-responsive user interface, TouchFLO™ 3D, and ultra-fast HSDPA internet connectivity… the HTC Touch Diamond offers a rich online experience to rival a notebook computer, allowing you to interact with Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia as freely as you would with a broadband connection.

Your contacts, favourite music, videos and photos are no longer an uninspired line of text. With TouchFLO 3D, album artwork, video stills and snapshots of your friends’ and family’s faces are brought to life for you to interact, play and launch at your fingertips.

A 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera will help you capture the perfect moment in style and with a massive 4GB of internal storage you can keep all the files you need. The integrated ultra-sensitive GPS will help you find your destination as quickly and efficiently as a dedicated satellite navigation unit.

Style and substance in a phone are no longer mutually exclusive. The HTC Touch Diamond has arrived.

Vibrant TouchFLO 3D user interface, responding perfectly to your finger gestures when scrolling through contacts, browsing the web, and launching media… all vividly displayed as photos and artwork powered by the 3D graphics processor.

4GB of internal storage to preserve more photos, music, files and exchanged data than ever before.

Integrated GPS for use with maps software for a full turn-by-turn satellite navigation experience.

Summer Slowdown: How to endure the famine days in the translation agency, 2009....

July has been really slow for my translation agency. Although we had two big "nibbles" for quotes, one for a 1,000-PAGE(!) Korean>English tranlsation job, which I may have marked up a bit too much; the other for a 2,000 word document from English>French; we have seen essentially nil in our coffers this month.

August should heat up, excuse the pun, with increased calls from European translation agencies and some clients, while European are on vacation. Nevertheless, I don't do third-party deals anymore, only sell translation direct to the client.

In the meantime, best thing to do is the painful laborious process of collecting email addresses of prospective clients, searching high and low over the Internet, then mailing out form advertising letters for my agency; 3 or 4 at a time , so as more easily to pass any possible "spam filter" and get the word across about my translation services.

Don't forget to put up free adds with your webite URL on whatever free ad Internet bulletin board or business directory you can find anywhere. Get listed everywhere. Add pages to your website. Send out resumes/Cv's to prospective clients, put ads in local newspapers, etc. Maybe even pay for a few ads on an Internet business directory.

Best thing is to add content to your agency or freelance translation website. Fill in more info on your CV.

Read a lot in the language you translate from. I am a French translator , so I have lots of French books to read to keep up my fluency and skills. Tone up your linguistic mind.

We are contacting and collaborating with French and American import-export companies.

Put up Skype link today on both the Los Angeles translations and the nationwide "London" translations site:

(Do I really need size 18 font?) Ok, in case any of you readers have not done so, take a look at both of my translation websites : http://theglobalservice.com and http://all-texts.com. Take a look around, click on the links of my translation websites, get a feel of how I put it together, look at all the interesting pages.

When we hire interpreters on freelance basis we interview them by phone and email with the following questions:

1. What kind of settings have you interpreted in?
2. Do you do conference interpreting? Are you familiar with working with headsets for a large audience?
3. In the legal field, have you done depositions, hearings, mediations, arbitrations, and/or jury trials?
4. Can you tell me some of the difficulties you often experience interpreting, such as large groups, difference in regional dialects, difficult terminology.
5. What fields would you say you have the most confidence interpreting in?
6. What insurance companies, types of law firms, clinics and hospitals have you worked in?
7. Please describe your experience interpreting in very high stress situations, like pre-op, sentencing, on site at any penitentiaries, or in time-sensitive situations, like on-air voiceovers for radio or TV.
8. Do you have any governmental clearances? If so, what types of government settings have you interpreted in?

My Playlist on this page(automatic music player you are listening to now): Mason Williams "Classical Gas", Ennio Morricone "Carillon", Bruno Nicolai "Il Mio Nome", Paco de Lucia's interpretation of "Concierto de Aranjuez", etc.

Are you an experienced freelance translators already? Register here for jobs here at my agency.

Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique

Dictionary Reference.com

Wordreference.com

Eurodicautom

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