On discounts in translation
A potential client emailed me asking for a quote for a translation job. I sent them my rates and they replied asking for a discount. Anything we haven’t seen before?
Why do clients ask for discounts?
Clients ask for discounts because many translators grant them. If we never gave a discount, clients would stop asking for them. However, many translators give discounts just because they are asked, complicating life for the tough guys who never grant one, no matter how much they are asked.
Some translators are crazy about discounts and go around giving them left and right, even before the client asks. The client asks how much they charge and they’ll reply, “My usual rate is 10 LSD$ per word, but I'll give you a 20% discount.” Other translators are so crazy about discounts that they give them one without even telling the client. The client calls and they say to themselves, "I'm going to give this guy a 20% discount.". As soon as the client asks for the price, instead of 10 LSD$, they automatically say 8 LSD$. Then the client asks for a discount and they don't know what to do. In fact, they never charge their usual rates to anyone; but that's another story. Then there are the those who say,"Don't ask about my price: my price is your price." That, in my dictionary, is called begging and is the lowest and vilest limit of unprofessionalism. I still remember when my mother, in the mid-1950s, interviewed a woman to come and help her with household chores once a week. When asked how much she charged, she replied, "Anything you give me will be fine." I was very young, but I felt very embarrassed. That woman was offering a service, not begging.
There's nothing wrong with a client offering a rate, a rate you can accept or reject. But offering to work at any rate the client cares to pay is humiliating and, therefore, unprofessional.
Other translators simply inflate their rates a bit so they can give a discount without having to lower the price too much. This is what I call rewarding bad clients to the detriment of good clients, as it means that the good ones who never ask for a discount pay more than those who pester us for one.
Witty answers to silly questions
A couple of years ago, I sent a series of “witty answers to silly questions" to a translators' mailing list which was later posted on some ProZ forum with the appropriate credits. Somehow it disappeared, but the answers have been attributed to an anonymous writer here and there on various websites. They are quite funny and have been very useful to me on several occasions, but I stopped using them a while ago. Witty answers can be very amusing, but most of the time they generate increasingly long discussions that stray farther and farther from the topic, go off on a tangent and tend not to lead anywhere in particular. After 15 minutes of talking over the phone, the client will say, "Well, look, I'll pay you 5 LSD$ per word and not a penny more", taking us back to square one.
Nowadays, I tend to use responses that cut discussions short. These responses reduce the time wasted on useless discussions and have the advantage of taking the client by surprise, a kind of ambush, so to speak. My first approach is to say that the quoted rate is the same I charge all clients and that I work at full capacity; so working for less would actually be throwing money away. This surprises them doubly, because, as you know, all clients assume we have no other clients and that they are doing us a favour by calling us. It knocks the client off balance, using a technique I learned from a book titled Learn to be a Boxing Champion. I take advantage of the situation and strike again by saying that the demand for my work has been growing so much that I am seriously considering raising my rates.
Often the two-punch technique is enough. It works better than inflating rates to absorb discounts. The client thinks they've been lucky to have asked for a quote before the increase and I usually get the job.
First job
Then there's the request for promotional discounts for the first job. I never give discounts for being the first job. If you give such a discount, either the guy will never give you a second job or he'll ask why on earth you're asking for 10 LSD$ per word today, when you asked for 8 sensible LSD$ last week.
I also refuse discounts for seniority. They are simply ridiculous. Do they cut the salary of the guy who asks for the seniority discount every year he works for the company? The other day I was asked for a discount for being a regular client. Who do they take me for? An airline?
The problem with volume discounts
I also reject volume discounts. And this is a very, very serious matter. The reasoning behind these discounts is that the provider benefits from economies of scale and can share these gains with the client, to mutual benefit. But this rarely happens in the case of translation services. Unless it's a repetitive text and you use computer-assisted translation tools, there are no gains at all. Handling a long text requires a lot of extra work to ensure consistency, which actually increases our costs and, consequently, being honest, would put us in a position to ask for a premium.
Moreover, contrary to what people usually think, large jobs are a threat to our economic security because they prevent us from properly attending to other clients. At the end of the job, you've worked flat out, earned very little money and lost your other clients. It's not a good prospect at all.
And there's the problem of client dependency. Any client representing 10% of your income for a few months is a threat to your security. If the client catches a cold, you catch pneumonia. It happened to me: I had a big client, a really big client. The controlling company then sent in a new big boss who soon befriended another translator, called my contact in the office and said: "Forget about that Danilo guy: we now have an in-house translator." And indeed they did.
The new one wasn't good: too slow and too prone to lecturing people about small aspects of English and Portuguese grammar. Two months later, he had accumulated a huge backlog of work and several enemies. So the company called me again and, of course, asked me for a discount on my usual fees, because now they had an in-house translator who could do the job for much less and, obviously, I was looking for more work. Sometimes I can be very impulsive, so I just left the room without saying a word for fear of saying something that would make things worse. The tactic worked: my contact called me back, apologised and invited me to work for them at my usual rates.
A happy ending, so to speak; although it's often not as happy as this. The best part is that I had learned the lesson.
Volume discounts at second glance
However, I must admit that asking for a volume discount makes a lot of sense. It's a valid request in many businesses where the setup is long and the economies of scale are substantial. Ask any printer. It's just that it's not valid in our business. Clients may or may not know this, but they will ask for a volume discount because it's normal and it often works.
Many agencies go a step further and ask for discounts based on the volume they have, not the volume we work with. Let's say an agency calls you and asks for a discount because it's a huge project involving several languages. But of course you will be assigned a tiny percentage in your own language. Why should you give a discount based on their volume?
We've already paid for that
A similar tactic is to ask you to retranslate something that has already been translated by someone who botched the job and, to top it off, with a request for a discount, since the company has already paid for the translation once. I think no comment is needed.
Do you call that negotiation?
Nevertheless, the request for volume discounts is part of a legitimate negotiation process: something is offered in exchange for what is asked. If you're not interested in what they offer, that's bad. But something was offered. Once, a client who knew how high interest rates are in Brazil offered me immediate payment in exchange for a discount, which was given, as expected. He kept his word: the payment was made to my account within 48 hours. We both won. That's negotiation.
However, there are other strategies that can hardly be called negotiation. The client calls and says they have a lower offer, they're not trying to negotiate: this is intimidation, pure, hard and old-fashioned. Sometimes the client even tells you how low the offer is. You quote 100, the client calls back and says they have another quote of 70 for the same job, implying you should go down to 69. I'm sure in most cases the client is lying. They've just heard the quote, gone for a coffee and to gossip a bit around the office, and called back with a quote they just made up. There's no point in arguing with this type of scoundrel.
The usual response in these cases is "my fees correspond to the quality of my work," which I consider trite and lacking in elegance, as it implies that my colleague is less competent than I am. I refuse to judge work I haven't seen and when I have seen it, I only judge it if I'm paid for my labour. My standard response in these cases is, "If you have a provider who offers satisfactory services at low prices, they should be your go-to provider under any circumstances. On the other hand, there are enough clients willing to pay my rates and there's no reason why I should lower them." That throws the client off balance again, because it shifts the responsibility onto their shoulders.
Sometimes, the client simply says they have a better offer. The standard response should be something like, "So what else is new?"
Blocking negotiation
There are many variations of the intimidation strategy, in fact, too many to cover here. They basically include some statements that avoid negotiation, such as "My boss says it's too high," "The Purchasing Department has told me they know a very good guy who is much more reasonable with fees", "We'd like to work with you, but company policy forces me to select the lowest of three quotes and, unfortunately...", "It's for a client and they already have an offer," "Our director has already promised the job to X," "We have a low budget for this job, I can't do anything." All these tactics imply that your contact doesn't have enough authority to decide and, moreover, can't put you in touch with those who do. So nothing can be done: give the discount or not. No matter how nicely you put it, it's disrespectful.
You can't call this type of strategy negotiation, it's the biggest refusal to negotiate. The client is putting a gun to your head. I don't like that kind of conversation and it usually makes me want to be rude to the client. As I'm a mature and polite gentleman most of the time, I just say I can't do anything. I never try to tell my contact what I think they could tell "the others," as it's very likely they've made up the story.
For a good cause, not for commercial purposes
Everyone wants translators to work for free or at low prices for a good cause. Before giving in, always ask who else is working for free. Don't be surprised if you're the only one.
There are also those types who try to get you to translate material related to their academic work for a pittance, claiming they have no commercial purposes. True, they don't pursue a commercial purpose, but they do have a very firm economic purpose. In other words, the guy is going to study abroad or prepare a thesis defence because he wants higher income and will surely get it. It's an investment. It's often an investment of time and money: spend less on beer and more on books, spend less time lazing around and more reading literature, for example. Sacrifice leisure today in exchange for security and leisure tomorrow.
That's very good. But if you give them a discount, you're sacrificing your leisure today for their success tomorrow. Please, give me a break.
Anything for a discount
Clients will do anything for a discount. There was a guy who wanted me to translate a gigantic report over a weekend. I quoted him with the rates, plus a good 50% urgency premium. The guy was surprised and complained that he expected a discount instead of a premium. After all, I was going to earn a lot of money in a short period of two days.
Sometimes they ask for discounts because the job is easy, which I also always refuse, as a matter of principle. Is there any client willing to pay you a premium for difficult jobs? And how can the client guarantee that the job is easy? But, let's face it, it's a fair attempt. However, a client once asked me for a discount on a difficult job. He complained that I was going to learn a lot from the job, as I would acquire knowledge that would be very useful to me in the future.
Conclusion
I could write reams, you know, but there must be a limit to everything and there is to the length of these articles. However, I don't think I should leave you without addressing the worst discount of all: the discount some clients give themselves without your permission.
That is, if the client asks for a discount and you grant it, that's fine by me. But some clients agree to a certain rate and then delay payment for weeks or months. Do you realise that if the client agrees to pay on January 30th and pays on March 15th, they are actually getting a forced 45-day loan from you? In fact, if you calculate the interest rates and all applicable bank charges, as well as the cost of reciprocity, you'll see that late payers—regardless of how they handle the matter—are getting a considerable discount without your permission.
This is an unfair practice, a very difficult practice to deal with. You send the client a reminder when they are seven days late. They don't respond. You send a second reminder, absolute silence. You call the project manager and hassle them. They can't do anything: they don't make the payments, but they'll see what they can do. They write to you a few days later saying something, but there's still no money. And so it goes on and on. Apologies, excuses, claims that it will never happen again and so on. But it goes on and on the same. It's a common practice in some agencies. And, if the issue is raised with them, they pretend to be offended in their dignity and try to shame you. They know all the tricks.
That's why you should always be looking for better clients. Find a decent client who pays promptly for prompt work and give the bad ones the GTTB treatment. GTTB means give them the boot.
Author: Danilo and Vera Nogueira
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