I had come to the conclusion that rates really have been falling for one, simple reason – one agency for whom I have done a lot of work over a number of years simply stopped contacting me. After around four months I wrote to them, asking if everything was ok. After all, bankruptcies happen, company principals die or get taken ill – there are all sorts of reasons why a source of work might suddenly dry up. Their answer was very simple and very clear: although (they were kind enough to say that) I am “certainly one of their best translators”, my rates were simply too high. When they ask their own customers for the same money that they use to charge, they simply no longer get orders. They would only be able to make use of me, they said, if I could restructure my charges in such a way that I would be getting only something like 75% of my former rate. My relationship with this trusted customer is a good one, and the circumstances make it quite clear that this was not a “try on”. I should point out that I had been charging this client the same as I charge everybody else. On the other hand, I don’t know what their own margin is, and I therefore don’t know how their charges to end-customers compare with those made by other agencies.

The implication was clear enough to prompt me to write to all the clients for whom I have done jobs in the last two years, bluntly asking them whether my current price is a problem. Every single one was kind enough to reply, and every single one said that no, my prices are perfectly normal and perfectly acceptable. All of them but one said that they were simply finding that there is, at present, much less work about, and that companies who need translations done are trying to reduce the amount, postpone the work, or in some other way put less translation out onto the market. The only one who claimed to be as busy as ever is quite a small concern, and focused primarily on French rather than German, so perhaps not typical of my other clients.

There does seem to be still plenty of support for the old wisdom that if people will not pay a decent price, they may indeed get translations, but that he quality will be very poor. If a bargain-basement approach were to become a trend that characterised the whole market, good translators would eventually become altogether hard to find.

Conclusion? I don’t know, but it’s food for thought.

I have now heard from a number of sources confirming the rather unsurprising suspicion that the GFC is having a significant, negative effect on the freelance translating trade. It could hardly be otherwise. And yet I see no reason to start doubting the accepted wisdom that translations are not primarily sold on price. Of course, anybody can price themselves out of the market, and I dare say that in a tighter financial climate this mistake is easier to make. Surely, however, the various aspects concerning quality, reliability, trustworthiness and so on are as important as they ever were.

My suspicion is that the agency concerned was simply trying to take advantage of the current situation to exert downward pressure on translators’ rates. They are, after all, in business, and there is nothing particularly wicked about that. I rather doubt, however, whether there would be many of us who would now say that they first noticed a drop in demand over the last six or twelve months, then compensated for that by dropping fees, and now find themselves as much in demand as they were, say, in the first half of 2008. This would, it seems to me, imply that the translation market is as responsive to price as the retail markets for petrol or sliced white bread. That seems unlikely, but I’d be interested to hear from anybody who wants to argue that I am wrong.