Charging customers, adjusting rates, writing contracts, and related issues. This area is mainly devoted to free-lancers and agencies as business players. For information on jobs, see section Directories of agencies and translators.

Translation and trademark tend to be considered as two unrelated issues; however, a closer look at the topic may make you think differently.
Contributed by our Correspondent Sabine Cretella.

The issue of who owns translation memory data and for what purposes can it be used is starting to raise in different maganizines and mailing lists. We intend to follow it in its professional, legal and economic dimensions.

This article has been compiled with opinions and contributions from translators and contractors. We don't seem to have a clear common position about the issue, but different views. Besides, legal information is rather scarce. All these factors make the topic highly relevant for the profession.

Their motto stresses their commitment to helping translators in the business side of work: "helping translators do better business". It focuses on the free-lance translator as a business unit and contains a rather useful section on payment practices.

Useful article about two basic questions: How do I set my fees? And how do I make sure I get paid?"

Registered users can send a payment to anybody with an e-mail address just by writing a dollar amount into an online form. When the e-mail is sent, the payment is charged to the sender's credit card or bank account. Registration takes five minutes. If the person on the other end isn't a registered PayPal user, that's OK. The receiver just fills out the form attached to the e-payment to tap the money, which is already waiting in a PayPal.com account in the receiver's name.

Many agencies and translators make their rates public on the internet. It is always interesting to check them in order to contrast what parameters are used to fix prices (word count, languages, urgency). Doing a search for "translation rates" brings a set of public rates. We present two surveys from 1997 and 1998 (to the extent of our knowledge, there is no other survey available. Please let us know if you have different information).

Back in 1997, Michael Benis published this survey; it was answered by more than 330 translators.

We include here a few models of contracts for translation jobs. They provide only a general framework to set up a legal relationship and they are not tailored for special cases. They should not be used as ready-made documents.

The ATA provides this model contract as a way of considering all interests involved in a translation contract.

Mind the ATIO warning: "This document is very general in scope and does not claim to cover all situations."

See their initial warning: "This contract is very general and is not intended to cover all possible circumstances. You may add or remove sections as needed. It should be used sensibly."