Unusual: weeks without a (decent) job

Adieu wrote:

Are you heavily dependent on a single client/agency, an industry, or an end client for your workload?

Sometimes, it literally comes down to one person or one system bringing huge chains to a stop. Some bureaucrat gets replaced or goes away on a ridiculously long civil servant vacation and thousands of documents end up unsigned/unstamped/unforwarded, some government body's or industry giant's server gets its shoelaces tied together, some essential waypoint that all documents move through on their way to you gets locked down, quarantined, or moves offices, etc.

Jelena Delibasic wrote:

I'm experiencing the same thing, which could be explained by the fact that Serbian is actually a small market. However, I also agree with Samuel. It happens. It's the nature of business. It's simply unpredictable.
I'm also thinking about what steps to take.

Samuel Murray wrote:


I'm reminded of the English expression "when it rains, it pours". Sometimes, I get so much work that I can barely keep up with it. At other times, I go without work for an entire week or sometimes even more. My month-to-month income truly isn't predictable. Some translators experience "slow" months of the year, but I don't. Sometimes my Decembers are very quiet, and sometimes it is the busiest time of the year.

Unless there is a very good reason why you're not getting any work (e.g. an industry or economy collapsed, or an upstream client suddenly uses an entirely different sent of middle-men), this is simply part of the unpredictability of being a freelance translator. But I understand that this can be quite frightening if you don't have sufficient buffers to keep you going.

Now is the time to do extra marketing or extra training. If you work for agencies, go through the Blue Board's list of agencies and write to as many of them as you can.

[Edited at 2022-02-17 11:18 GMT]

Kevin Fulton wrote:

My regular customers are in unrelated industries (manufacturing and publishing), and if the number of jobs they send on an annual basis were averaged out over the course of the year, I wouldn't have any slow periods. Nevertheless there are sometimes gaps lasting weeks during which they send me no work. If these lacunae were predictable, I could plan vacations or at least short trips away from the office without worrying about additional loss of income. Since this seems to be unavoidable, I've stopped worrying about it.

roeland wrote:

This started, at least for me, around november 2021 already. I talked to a few of my regular clients, there is simply not much demand for Dutch at the moment. They expect it to pick up once the C19 restrictions are over and people head back into the office. That could be any day now...;-)

Tom in London wrote:



I've tried that, a couple of times, in the past, without result. I was very methodical, carefully seeking out the agencies to contact, specially preparing a good CV, and keeping a record of all the ones I'd contacted. The response was total silence. So it pains me when I see less experienced translators advised to do this as a good way of marketing themselves.

[Edited at 2022-02-17 13:54 GMT]

Tom in London wrote:



I've tried that, a couple of times, in the past, without result. I was very methodical, carefully seeking out the agencies to contact, specially preparing a good CV, and keeping a record of all the ones I'd contacted. The response was total silence. So it pains me when I see less experienced translators advised to do this as a good way of marketing themselves.

[Edited at 2022-02-17 13:54 GMT]

Tom in London wrote:



I've tried that, a couple of times, in the past, without result. I was very methodical, carefully seeking out the agencies to contact, specially preparing a good CV, and keeping a record of all the ones I'd contacted. The response was total silence. So it pains me when I see less experienced translators advised to do this as a good way of marketing themselves.

[Edited at 2022-02-17 13:54 GMT]