Freelance translator

We classify our freelance translators according to their working experience (student, junior, intermediate, senior, and expert) in order to:

• Create distinct operational environments, thus avoiding a scenario in which all resources (students and seniors) are competing for the same job in order to cut down the costs or to get a job at great cost, but without the right skills. On second thought, there is something worse than getting the customer used to pay little: let him think that if he pays a lot, he will never get a service which comes up of his expectations!

• Establish a career path – necessary for any long-term work commitment. Nowadays, in many parts of the world, if someone wants to be a freelance translator, opens his laptop and starts working from home as a translator, or decides to be just a moonlighter who accepts every kind of job for freelance translator. The Foreign Friend supports those who want to take up a real career path that has a starting phase (learning), an intermediate phase (dedication and growth) and a final phase (sharing).

• Offer easy work opportunities to new recruits – avoiding them to compete with their senior colleagues. Those who lack experience should have the chance to gain it. The Foreign Friend offers free tutorials to beginners, so they can learn to use memoQ, put their knowledge into practice and have the feedback of expert translators who review their jobs. We also organize online and in-house courses to teach the financial and business aspects as well as the tool of the trade.
  We recommend you to fully commit to one or two fields (not more!) in which you could become a guru in time.

• Differentiate jobs that are more complex and require higher skills – protecting them from the damages of commercial dumping. If beginners are committed to jobs that are more their speed, Senior translators could dedicate themselves to more complex jobs. The Foreign Friend offers very technical and voluminous translations or stylistic and/or cultural adaptations.

• Push back the commoditization of professional translation. Helping customers to distinguish the quality that can be asked of a student from the quality that should be expected from a senior, we make use of our role as intermediaries in responsible and innovative ways, by showing customers that professional translations are not just a matter of price!