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What makes a client a "good client"?
Initiator des Themas: conejo
José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brasilien
Local time: 17:57
Englisch > Portugiesisch
+ ...
In stillem Gedenken
They consider me as part of their team Jun 20, 2009

The key word is WE. Anyone can make it good, but we can make it great!

Payment? With them, it can be taken for granted. Just as everyone in the team will be paid, I will, too, on time, and at my normal rates.

The interesting thing is that they listen. They really want to know my ideas, as well as what I think about theirs.


 
Neil Coffey
Neil Coffey  Identity Verified
Vereinigtes Königreich
Local time: 20:57
Französisch > Englisch
+ ...
Trusts your professional opinion Jun 20, 2009

Possibly this is a slight paraphrase of your point (10), but I'd add "trusts your professional opinion". For some reason there are people who pay for a professional translation and then get extremely concerned when your translation doesn't agree with the opinion of either (a) the Microsoft Word grammar checker or (b) their mate down the pub.

 
Doron Greenspan MITI
Doron Greenspan MITI  Identity Verified
Israel
Local time: 22:57
Mitglied (2005)
Englisch > Hebräisch
+ ...
Deadlines/pressure Jun 20, 2009

It's strange that no-one else mentioned this so far:

I like my clients to respect my working hours/habits, and NOT send me 'rush' jobs on Friday, etc.
As a matter of principle, I try to stick to normal working hours, and expect my good clients to take that into account - and most really do!

Doron

[Edited at 2009-06-21 05:24 GMT]


 
Nicole Schnell
Nicole Schnell  Identity Verified
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 13:57
Englisch > Deutsch
+ ...
In stillem Gedenken
It is worth mentioning again Jun 20, 2009

Doron Greenspan MITI wrote:

It's strange that no-one else mentioned this so far:

I like my clients to respect my working hours/habits, and NOT send me 'rush' jobs on Friday, etc.
As a matter of principle, I try to stick to normal working hours, and expect my good clients to take that into account - and most really do!


Nicole Schnell wrote:
1.) The clients consider themselves business partners and nothing else and respect my office just the same.


This includes office hours.


 
Doron Greenspan MITI
Doron Greenspan MITI  Identity Verified
Israel
Local time: 22:57
Mitglied (2005)
Englisch > Hebräisch
+ ...
Indeed Jun 21, 2009

Sorry Nicole, I guess that demonstrated quite well the difference between implicit and explicit.

Doron

[Edited at 2009-06-21 07:47 GMT]


 
conejo
conejo  Identity Verified
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 15:57
Japanisch > Englisch
+ ...
THEMENSTARTER
Rush jobs/weekend work... Jun 22, 2009

Doron Greenspan MITI wrote:
I like my clients to respect my working hours/habits, and NOT send me 'rush' jobs on Friday, etc. As a matter of principle, I try to stick to normal working hours, and expect my good clients to take that into account - and most really do!
Doron

[Edited at 2009-06-21 05:24 GMT]


Yeah... I understand that clients need to have things done on weekends sometimes, but if I work on weekends it pretty much messes up the flow of my life so I try not to... Mostly I turn down jobs that would require me to work a whole weekend.


 
conejo
conejo  Identity Verified
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 15:57
Japanisch > Englisch
+ ...
THEMENSTARTER
Mate at the pub Jun 22, 2009

Neil Coffey wrote:
Possibly this is a slight paraphrase of your point (10), but I'd add "trusts your professional opinion". For some reason there are people who pay for a professional translation and then get extremely concerned when your translation doesn't agree with the opinion of either (a) the Microsoft Word grammar checker or (b) their mate down the pub.


Haha. Yeah... I once turned in a translation test for a new potential client, and they came back with all these questions about my translation, that made me think, do you even know English at all? Lol... Which maybe they didn't.


 
MariusV
MariusV  Identity Verified
Litauen
Local time: 22:57
Englisch > Litauisch
+ ...
I'd put like that Jun 23, 2009

By order of importance:

1. Good organization and project management (no rush, no mess, no time waste, clear instructions, etc.), efficient and mutually fair solutions of problems;
2. A high professional level of the client (if it is an agency - understanding the specifics of the project in relation to the target language, no stupid or irrelevant questions, competent revisers/proofreaders);
3. Valuing of your work and the "heart" you put into the work (I noticed that the
... See more
By order of importance:

1. Good organization and project management (no rush, no mess, no time waste, clear instructions, etc.), efficient and mutually fair solutions of problems;
2. A high professional level of the client (if it is an agency - understanding the specifics of the project in relation to the target language, no stupid or irrelevant questions, competent revisers/proofreaders);
3. Valuing of your work and the "heart" you put into the work (I noticed that the more professional the client is, the more he/she values the work, and vice versa);
4. Timely payment, reasonable rates (not necessarily the highest ones) and no those dumb and cheap "negotiation tricks" (like "if you do these two pages for a much smaller rate, you can expect a project of 10 milliion words next week" and similar)...
5. No free test translations that end in nothing in most cases.

P.S. A GOOD client is always right


[Edited at 2009-06-23 03:16 GMT]
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Wendy Cummings
Wendy Cummings  Identity Verified
Vereinigtes Königreich
Local time: 20:57
Spanisch > Englisch
+ ...
the more technical/practical side of things Jun 23, 2009

I would like agencies to have a better understanding of the practical side of our job; how they can make things a little easier for us.

e.g.

1. If the document is in pdf format - they could either copy/paste into word (if editable) or invest in good OCR and scan it - and then make sure the formatting is correct. We all know that translating .doc is much easier than .pdf

2. Providing up-to-date glossaries - and not just in excel format. Multiterm termbases
... See more
I would like agencies to have a better understanding of the practical side of our job; how they can make things a little easier for us.

e.g.

1. If the document is in pdf format - they could either copy/paste into word (if editable) or invest in good OCR and scan it - and then make sure the formatting is correct. We all know that translating .doc is much easier than .pdf

2. Providing up-to-date glossaries - and not just in excel format. Multiterm termbases would be good - especially if they already expect us to use Trados

3. Marking the source document if there are special instructions. If headers/some paragraphs etc are not to be translated, they could highlight them or mark them somehow. I had a job yesterday in which it was a 50 page document, but i only had to translate "the obvious section headings". Well, not all of them were that obvious...

4. Providing references from previous jobs. I have often done jobs for the same end client, but the agency has totally forgotten about it and it has been me that has reminded them and asked them to send me the reference information again.

5. And yes, chocolates at Christmas would be nice!
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conejo
conejo  Identity Verified
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 15:57
Japanisch > Englisch
+ ...
THEMENSTARTER
Negotiation tricks Jun 23, 2009

MariusV wrote:
no those dumb and cheap "negotiation tricks" (like "if you do these two pages for a much smaller rate, you can expect a project of 10 milliion words next week" and similar)...


Yeah... I basically don't believe in those 'volume' discounts. My work did not suddenly have less value because it is a bigger project. And the thing of being able to promise what will happen next week, most of the time when they promise stuff like that it never pans out anyway.


 
Gina W
Gina W
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 16:57
Mitglied (2003)
Französisch > Englisch
Also, a client who does proper QC on my work Jun 24, 2009

I think that every translation agency should do QC on every job and not expect the translator to be solely responsible for that. And I think that it is their responsibility to make sure the QC is done by qualified individuals. I don't like the thought of submitting a translation and then an agency just clicking "Forward" to the end client. I also don't like if an agency has someone check my work and then comes back to me with ridiculously unnecessary and/or erroneous "corrections". Obviously... See more
I think that every translation agency should do QC on every job and not expect the translator to be solely responsible for that. And I think that it is their responsibility to make sure the QC is done by qualified individuals. I don't like the thought of submitting a translation and then an agency just clicking "Forward" to the end client. I also don't like if an agency has someone check my work and then comes back to me with ridiculously unnecessary and/or erroneous "corrections". Obviously these things are the exception and occur very rarely, but it was annoying all the same the few times this has happened.

For direct clients, the same applies - check over the work, and in a timely manner, but don't think that just because someone who "knows" the source and/or target language(s) finds a "mistake" makes it so.

If the above has already been mentioned then I apologize for being redundant.:)
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What makes a client a "good client"?







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