eleonorang Great questions, @eleonorang! I think it's very important to have honest and open conversations about money, income, revenues and various methods that help you generate even more of those nice things.
Unfortunately, in today's society the topic of money is could be quite tricky, depending on where you live. Here, in Canada, the things are kinda mixed (because Canada is one giant melting pot with hundreds of nationalities). For example, when I talk to my Russian and Ukrainian friends we have absolutely no problem when talking about our salaries and how much money we make.
I think those conversations are important and can be eye-opening to some people. Interestingly enough, my Canadian friends are very weary of the topic and try to avoid spitting out real numbers. Which is kinda odd to me because I can tell they make enough money to be able to afford to by houses, cars, etc.
Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with sharing openly how much money you make or don't make. It doesn't make you more vulnerable in my humble opinion.
eleonorang I also wonder if more disclosure on how much translators earn would be good for our industry, e.g. contributing to higher rates, or rather make things worse, such as showing those agencies who want to exploit the market that you can indeed pay translators less.
No matter if we talk about money or not, there will always be people who will try to bully you into unfavorable working conditions. You just have to learn to say no AND figure out a way how to find those who will treat you with respect and pay your rates.
KarenMontaldi I think that perhaps it all comes down to having proper business training, which we seem to be lacking in our industry
This is exactly why we have all those so called "bottom-feeders" and large corporations who squeeze every last cent out of translators. If more people acquired better business and sales skills, they wouldn't have to work for peanuts.
