Set up your freelancer profile

Any customer wants to receive high-quality services. At Smartcat, potential clients carefully review translators’ profiles to ensure that the candidate has the required skills and sufficient experience.

Read on for suggestions on how to make sure your profile attracts potential customers and land exciting jobs on a regular basis.

Be sure to use your real name. For a potential client, anonymity means lack of accountability. Experienced translators work hard to make a name for themselves, which, in turn, helps them get new clients.

According to our statistics, profiles with a photo get 14 times more views. Go for a portrait photo that looks professional.

Specify the services you provide, the language pairs you work in, and your per-word rate. Once you do that, your profile will become visible in the search results. You will also be able to apply to job offers and receive invitations to participate in tests.

The four basic language services provided in Smartcat are:

• Translation. A translator reproduces the source text written in one language by means of another language.

• Editing. An editor reviews the adequacy and literacy of the translation, as well as the consistency of terminology, checks if the translation is in line with the source text, and corrects stylistic errors.

• Proofreading. A proofreader checks if the translation is complete and eliminates spelling and punctuation errors.

• Post-editing. A post-editor edits AI translation output and ensures it is in line with the required quality level, correcting incorrectly rendered words and coordination errors.

We also recommend that you add additional services if you’re confident that you will be able to ensure high-quality performance of such tasks. Often, clients are urgently looking for suppliers of additional services. This may be your chance to get your first order.

Language pairs

Specify which language pairs you work in. You can specify a language version as well, such as “Spanish (Mexico)” or “Spanish (Argentina)”. Don’t specify language pairs in which you are not able to provide high quality results. If you only translate in one direction, for example, from English to Spanish, specify only that language pair. If you have experience translating from Spanish to English as well, you can also add a separate service for that direction.

Rates 

Enter your rate per word in local currency. If you are unsure about your rate, browse the profiles of other specialists working with the same language pairs and subjects as you. This way, you will be able to determine how much you should charge for your services on average.

Subjects

Define up to five subjects in which you specialize. Selecting all available topics is not a good idea and is unlikely to bring you more work. Adding too many subjects may cause you to be seen as less trustworthy as a specialist. Try to make sure that the subjects you add align with each other in a logical way.

It is important for clients to know where in the world you are located and in what time zone you work in order to understand when they can expect a response and the result from you. Your location can also make a difference if the client needs a specialist with a native level of the target language.

By filling in this field, you will let potential clients know that you are a native speaker of the target language you work with. Some clients need translators that come from a particular culture, understand its subtleties, and are able to reproduce them accurately.

Specify how long you have worked in the language industry. For some clients, this information is important in order to determine your level of proficiency.

Describe the services you provide in a free-form manner. This is the information potential clients will see in a pop-up window that appears when they hover over your name in the search results.

We recommend that you specify here the main language pair you work in, as well as the specialization and types of projects you are most competent in.

Your contact details can only be seen by you and our technical support specialists. They are not available to Smartcat customers. Clients and suppliers should communicate only in the project chat within the platform. However, be sure to provide your email address or phone number in order to receive notifications about invitations to projects.

Actually, not all good translators have a degree related to translation or linguistics. Many professionals have gained skills and experience through work in other fields.

However, some jobs require special knowledge such as medicine or engineering. If you have a specialized education, and you use this knowledge in your work as a translator, please indicate this.

The most sought-after translators are those who have expert knowledge in a particular field. If you specified in the “Services” section that you specialize in, for example, technical or engineering translations, it is assumed that in this section you will describe the relevant experience in order to confirm your knowledge in the subject matter. Be sure to only add the previous positions and experiences that are related to the services you provide.

If you are unable to disclose the names of any companies you worked at, describe your experience in general terms, for example: “English-to-Spanish translator in a large oil & gas company” or “Legal translations”.

Your rate is expected to be in line with your experience. If you are a beginner, set a lower rate for now. Sooner or later, a client will invite you to participate in some small, simple project, you will get a good review thus securing a higher position in the search results and later will be able to score a larger, more profitable project. If you are a top-quality expert and your rate is above the market rate, be sure to provide evidence here.

Examples of your previous work should correspond to the language pairs and subjects you have specified in the “Services” section. Be sure to remove any confidential and personal information from the samples or replace them with pseudonyms, such as “Company X” or “Person Z”. You can also upload any diplomas and certificates you have.

After you have delivered a project to the client, they will be asked to review your work. Clients can rate suppliers based on two parameters: quality of work and compliance with deadlines. In addition, the client can add a free-form comment to the rating.

• Three stars — “Recommended”. The client was satisfied.

• Two stars — “Satisfactory”. There were some issues.

• One star — “Not recommended”. The client was not satisfied.

Your rankings and position in the search results are composed of the following indicators:

• Quality of services based on client ratings

• Compliance with deadlines based on client ratings

• Number of words translated on the platform

• Number of projects completed on the platform

• Activity index

For many potential clients, feedback from other customers is the most important piece of information they can learn about you. This is a guarantee that other customers have previously trusted you with their tasks and were satisfied with the outcome.

Another important indicator is how many words you have translated in Smartcat. If a translator has plenty of work, she is likely to have good skills as well as experience using the platform.

If you have not yet received your first job in Smartcat, you can use it free of charge to complete orders you receive outside the platform. Simply create a project by uploading any document you got from a client. Open the document. Smartcat Editor breaks down any text into segments and creates a table with two columns, the left one contains source text and the right one contains fields in which translations should be inserted. Translations are automatically saved to a translation memory so that you can later reuse them for similar documents and even other projects. You can download the completed translation in any of the available formats.

With each completed project, the number of words indicated in your profile will increase. Your rating will grow accordingly. In addition, you will get a better understanding of the platform’s features in the process.

Use our recommendations to complete your profile to 100%, be active, respond to job openings, participate in tests and sooner than you know you will get your first Smartcat job.

Good luck!