Ultimate Guide To Promoting Your Freelance Translation Services or Agency (Part 1)

Updated October 20, 2022

Today I’m going to give you some tips on how to promote your freelance translation business.

To quickly introduce myself, my name is Woo and I am a top translator in the Korean|English language pair. I’m considered a top translator because I am a native Korean and English speaker. This means I have no accent in both languages and I can easily prove this claim by getting on the phone with a native English or Korean speaker of your choice.

You can check out my agency at woothefreelancer.com (site under construction)

I’ll break down how to promote your translation business into several steps.

1. UpWork | Freelance Platforms

The easiest way to get some work is to get on UpWork, Fiverr, Freelancer.com, PeoplePerHour and start bidding. Remember, when you start out, you should bid as low as possible in order to get some reviews.

In general, I recommend that you spend at least 8 hours a day in promotion and applying, if you are not working.

2. Sign Up For The Top Two Translation Specific Platforms:

The top two translation specific platforms for translators are:

- ProZ.com

- Translator’s Cafe

These are made for translators so you have the best chance at finding actually sustainable clients there.

3. Sign Up For Translation Gig Platforms

If you sign up for all of these, you should at least have some work coming in:

- Tolq.com

- Strakertranslations.com

- Onehourtranslation.com

- Textmaster.com

- Appen.com

- Motaworld.com (11/15/2022 update: had onboarding meeting)

- Translatorsbase.com (Update: don’t sign up, according to Trustpilot, it’s a scam and requires a membership)

- Smartcat.com

4. Check out the Top 6 Translation Agencies:

These are big companies and always have work coming in. However, they don’t pay that much because everyone wants to work with them and they generally don’t pay that much. So it’s useful to sign up with them to have a backup.

- Lionbridge (www.lionbridge.com)

- Welocalize (www.welocalize.com)

- RWS (acquired SDL)(www.rws.com)

- Moravia

- Transperfect (Interview Nov 7, 2022)

- Vistatec

5. Check out Alconost.com

I am a freelance translator for Alconost.com and I must say that they have treated me fairly. For that reason, I can vouch for their integrity, at least based on my personal experience.

6. * Botique Agencies (The Key to Making Good Money)

The Top Translation Agencies generally don’t pay that much so the key to a sustainable business is finding botique agencies that have the funds to pay you enough.

* Look for a City

* Look for an Agency Within A City

I will be searching for agencies in cities that have at least a sustainable standard of living. This way, they would be more available to pay me my rates. For example, we can search on Google “Singapore translation Agency”

Let’s say Raffles Translation Agency comes up. We now look on “blue board” to see if they’re scammers or not. Google search “Raffles Blue Board.”

You should see whether they’re good platforms or not.

7. Language tutoring platforms?

If you are a translator, then you should also be able to teach a language. In the next article, I’ll talk about promoting your language teaching services. They should provide a decent supplemental income.

Thank you for reading! If you have any questions, please let me know!