Freelancer vs. in-house translator

Have you ever noticed that when you as a translator work in freelance on a daily basis, you eventually start yearning for the safety and security of an in-house position? Similarly, when you get stuck in a normal, 8-hours-a-day desk position, you want nothing but become a freelancer and have a chance to drink your morning coffee in your pajamas at 10. am. Boy are we so hard to please.

Speaking of me, I have been a freelancer for over 4 years when I received my first in-house position. For almost a year now, I get up at 6.30 am and go to work like any other person. Finally, I have a "normal job" as my mother used to say - for people like her, freelancing often seems like being on a neverending holiday. All that she has seen during my freelancer years was me getting up late in the morning (usually at 10 am or later) - only because I preferred working at night. She noticed me missing lunch or dinner - only because I hate to stop translating when I am in the middle. She also complained about how I had no free weekend or holiday to visit grandma - she could not understand that freelancing requires you to be flexible and yes, to occasionally work on weekends as well. She also remembered how carefully I tried to save money - only because freelancing means you are going to have weeks and months when money is tight.

As I already mentioned, I got hired by a company to be an in-house language pro for over a year. How about the benefits?

• As mother said, I have a normal job with the usual social insurance and everything. I have sick leaves and paid holidays. I get the sense of security that I am being taken care of. 

• I have a fair amount of income every month that I can rely on.  It is not so little that I should worry about it yet not so much that I could live carelessly. As an ambitious person I always strive for the better in every aspect of my life - this holds true for my salary as well.

• For the first time in my life, I got colleagues to work with and share the room with. Although I take care of the majority of my work by myself, I appreciate any great advice from people who are smarter, wiser, older and more experienced than I am.

• When you land on an in-house position, you also get the chance to relax a bit: all those marketing, advertising and business activities you had to put up with while freelancing suddenly disappear. For now, you are solely a translator who does nothing but translates. It is kind of a 'give or take' though. There are translators, like me, who simply enjoy doing marketing and advertising and consider it to be a part of our usual work, almost as much as actual translation.

You might realized that my list of benefits is not too long. That is because I consider myself a born freelancer and sadly, there are many more drawbacks of in-housing  than benefits. Mind you, I say all this coming from MY OWN EXPERIENCES. I am sure there are many of you who would enjoy in-house translation jobs and would not trade them for the ongoing uncertainty of freelancing. However, for lack of a better term I would say I am pro-freelance. I also tell you why.

• First and foremost I am a highly individual person. I simply hate hierarchy and having a boss. I am not a great team worker and I like to create my own rules. I am at my highest potential whenever I get a chance to work individually. Therefore freelancing for me has never felt like some kind of disaster, instead, it feels deliberating. 

•  Secondly, I used to work more when I was a freelancer. At my workplace I always stop workflow at 17.00 pm. I am not motivated to work more or work with greater quality since my salary is pretty much fixed. No matter how hard and determined I am, I always get the same amount. Whereas in my freelancing years I could rely on the simple truth that the more time I spend with working, the greater amount of money I earn. Whenever I was in need of making (quick) money, I could always find work. Whenever I wanted to take some time off and be away from my home office, I was able to do that because I managed my working days and I had no boss to tell me not to relax. 

• Thirdly, I used to make more money when I was a freelancer. Surely, that higher amount was never regular  and I had some days and weeks spent in sorrow. (Kicking off your freelancer career is extremely hard - that first year is crucial to survive). Yet I had days and weeks when I made more money than I could ever imagine and hope for had I been a regular worker. I had the luxury to spend on my greatest passion in life: travelling. I certainly believe that with great time management and an unyielding passion for translation, a freelancer can make more than an in-house professional. 

• My work has been so much more interesting and fun while freelancing. Why? Well, at a company or at a translation agency, you are mostly  charged with the translation work of a certain specific area. For me, this is mainly business translation now. At the same time, a freelancer has a chance to meet a range variety of other topics. Back in time, I would start my Monday with some legal translation. On Tuesday, I contributed to business correspondence via e-mail and phone. On Wednesday, I had a chance to translate excerpts from a pharmaceutical handbook. The list goes on. My professional life was more colourful and challenging.

I could go on and on about the joys of freelancing - presumably you all get it now how much I enjoyed it. However, I also think that being an in-house translator helped me grow professionally and as a person. It also made me realize how much I want to spend my career with freelancing and building my own business.

I am curious about all of you - feel free to share your personal stories and views on these two possible career paths for translators!

Starting off a joyful conversation

Before I launch my brand new blog, first let me have the opportunity for a brief but to-the-point introduction of myself.

My name is Andrea and as many of you already know, I am a twenty-something language professional. I am closer to twenty than to thirty yet I am closer to be someone called an experienced linguist than an inexperienced one. My nickname  and so-called brand name 'Translatorana' comes from, obviously, my profession (translator) and my first name (Andrea). Having a brand name instead of going with your official one is a risky idea but it has been paid off so far. The way I see it, the language industry is definitely the place where sometimes you have to take risk in order to succeed.

I am a native speaker of Hungarian and my working languages are English, German and Italian.  In the majority of time I translate from English to Hungarian and vica versa. I have limited working proficiency in German and Italian which means I only translate them into Hungarian. My relation to these languages can easily be determined in one sentence: living near the Hungarian- Austrian border, German is the one I started off with (at the age of 5), English is the one I love the most and speak at its best, yet Italian is my true love story. As a total lingua fanatic, I have future plans to study one of the Slavic languages (preferably Russian) and improve my skills in Neo-Latino languages like Spanish and French. I am also highly interested in learning Catalán language - I guess it has something to do with the fact that I am a longtime supporter of FC Barcelona :)

In this blog I am intended to address professional issues that I am mostly concerned about - whether it is the relation between translation and social media; the gift and the curse of being a freelancer; the importance of being a great marketer for your business or how to be the master of your mother language (first and foremost). Speaking as a native Hungarian whose mother tounge is ranked 4th on the world list of most difficult languages to study, I think I can speak from perspective.

I encourage all translators, proofreaders, interpreters, teachers and language lovers to join me and engage in a powerful conversation to help things moving forward and to achieve something great together.