When you start working as a freelance translator, there are several things you need to think about. One of the most important things is to find out what you know about the world and this has nothing to do with the language degree you have just earned at university.
Before studying a language or languages, what were you good at in school? Were you good at Maths, Physics, Biology? Or were you better at amateur dramatics or at editing the school or university magazine. Are you interested in religion or in history?
Art books often need to be translated and a knowledge of art is something that can be developed and enhanced over an entire life-time.
What are your interests now, apart from languages?
It will be no good your advertising yourself as a freelance translator unless you tell the translation agencies what are your specialities.
If you have an easy writing style, you could be what agencies need for commercial and advertising translation. If you are interested in ecology and the environment, you need to study those subjects in your spare time, to keep up with the latest changes.
The same applies to technical translation, where change occurs at an ever-increasing rate. Technical translators have often been working in a particular industry for several years and have spent some of those years in a foreign country, where they learned a foreign language. They were trained as engineers but after ten or twenty years they have decided to work as freelance translators (no more boss to tell them what to do) and their previous experience and training opens the door to technical translation. Their previous working experience has taught them the correct industrial vocabulary in both languages.
Other technical translators are people whose main education was in languages but who are also interested in technical subjects - maybe as a hobby - and this can be developed.
There are other translators who specialize in medical, legal or financial translation. Here again, they have usually worked in the profession concerned, often abroad, but after half a lifetime have decided to free themselves from the organisational constraints. These people are particularly valuable to the translation industry, because they are professionally qualified as doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.
Freelance translation gives a lot of freedom on the one hand - you can choose what time of day you are going to work - and you need on occasion to work until 2 o'clock in the morning and at weekends, but the great thing is that you can decide what you are going to do and when.
When starting out as a freelancer, if an end customer or a translation agency sends you a translation which is beyond your competence (and don't worry, this also happens to translators who have been twenty years or more in the business) you should politely tell the customer that you can't do it and why. You can send the customer an email next week, showing your specialties.
This brings us to advertising. Almost all freelance translators have to advertise in one way or another. Sometimes being registered with one of the big translation institutes is enough to bring in a sufficient amount of work, but that applies mostly to people who have been in the translation business for several years. For people starting out as freelancers, it is usually better to be registered with translation and/or interpreting directories, where customers can find you and from which you can obtain a list of translation agencies in order to send emails to the agencies, showing your languages, your specialties and the customers you have worked with.
As the manager of a translation agency I usually receive anything from one to ten emails from freelancers every day and I reply, often asking for further details. If you send a CV with your email, make sure that your include on the CV your mailing address, telephone number, email address and your price per source word in one of the world currencies (Euro, British pound, US dollar). Of course, don't forget to include your specialties in your CV and a list of customer names for any large translations you have recently done.
A translation agency which is interested in your application will probably ask you to translate a short sample text, about one page of 200 to 300 words.
Some new freelancers telephone to translation agencies, looking for work, but it is usually better to use email. Agencies prefer something in black and white - they find it easier to put your details on their databases.
I don't know how many thousands or hundreds of thousands of freelance translators there are in the world today, but there is always room for another one. So keep going - send out your emails !
John Hadfield spent a lot of his life living in the Middle and Far East, working for automotive manufacturers in Greece, Lebann and the Philippines and he then lived for five years in South Korea, administrating a joint venture between one of the largest Korean manufacturers and a French construction equipment company. He started his own translation agency in 1980 in France and recently also formed a translation agency in the UK, http://www.technical-translation.co.uk
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