Which is better, working for translation agencies or finding your own clients directly? Every translator has an opinion on this, and the debate sometimes gets contentious. But there are pros and cons to each kind of working arrangement.

Working for direct clients can be very lucrative, although you do have to take into account the extra work involved. Unlike with work acquired via a translation agency, you have no project manager to handle communication with the client, so you will be the one sending all those emails, marketing yourself, finding outsourcers and doing a million other administrative tasks that can distract from your true passion: translating. By the time you add up the hours spent on these ‘unpaid’ tasks, you might find your total hourly rate doesn’t look so lucrative after all. Nonetheless, working for companies directly is a great way of feeling plugged in to your industry of choice, and allows you to hunt down the work you find most interesting.

Plenty of translators love agency work however, because it’s much more simple and straightforward. Your only concern is the quality of your work, meeting deadlines and billing on time, because the project manager takes care of everything else. Many translators find that they form strong working relationships with agency staff that can last for many years, and enjoy opportunities for professional development that they might not otherwise have heard about. Agency work is often very varied as well. If you only like one form of translation you might find this dull, but many people love the variety and say it makes every day interesting.

Of course there’s nothing to say you have to choose one or the other, and plenty of people are happy with a mix of both. In your ideal world, which working style suits you better?

This is the summary of an article published in the translation blog of Translators Family, under the title Is it better to work with agencies or direct clients?, by Oleg Semerikov and Translators Family.