So far I do not experience any recession or even slowdown in my translation business (English-Russian and English-Belarusian pairs). The only thing which seems to show the symptoms of the global crisis is that most of the clients take longer to make a decision and give a go-ahead for their translation projects. Still I hope things would get even better further this year.
Yes, I agree with this point. Here is an article that says that translators are among 9 “Recession-Proof Careers”: http://transubstantiation.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/good-news-for-translators/
Really good news!
I believe experienced translators would experience no slowdown (in fact, might be willing to have at least a short break between assignments). However, people new to the translation market (for example, recent graduates) may have a harder time trying to find customers.
Arianavoto, yes, you can use any posts from here. Thank you for reading my blog and adding the backlink to it!
I’m an experience translator and I experience a huge slowdown. I had to leave the freelance for an in-house work in another field.
“To whom how”
Looking back to the year 2009 now I can say that there was a slight decline in orders in the 2nd half of the year, specially compared to 2008 (that one was really fat!), but nothing dramatic.
Yes, 2009 was a difficult year – I also slowed down somewhat and had to use my ‘fall-back’ clients more than I would have liked to. But 2010 got off to a very robust start. So, though I may feel like cracking down under the pressure of multiple projects and tight deadlines, I welcome it.
Here is a good article on this subject: http://translationjournal.blogspot.com/2009/08/translators-and-recession.html