Should You Choose a Translation Agency or a Freelance Translator?

Is your company in need of translation services? Whether you need an Italian translator or a Japanese translator online, it is super important to find someone with the right language skills for the job. And usually, this means either hiring a freelance translator or going through an agency. But how exactly do you decide whether to choose a translation agency or a freelance translator? There are a number of pros and cons to each option:

Freelance Translators

There are many pros and cons to hiring a freelance translator. The pros of freelance translators include:

● You don’t need to pay any agency fees. Hiring a freelance translator is usually less expensive than hiring a translation agency since you don’t need to pay any agency fees. So if your company doesn’t have much of a budget for translation services, it’s probably best to go with a freelance translator.

● You get to work directly with the translator. Another great benefit of hiring a freelance translator is that you get to work with them directly rather than going through the agency.

That being said, there are a few cons of hiring freelance translators, including:

● You have to find them yourself. Unfortunately, you need to search for freelance translators yourself, whereas, with translation agencies, you have a number of translators at your fingertips.

● You don’t always know what you’re getting. You also don’t always know what you’re getting with freelance translators until you start working with them.

● There’s a limit to how much one freelancer can do. Freelance translators only have so many hours in a day, but when you hire an agency, you can have multiple translators working on one project.

● A translator might not be able to provide additional skills. If you need additional skills beyond translation, you might want to hire an agency, since a freelance translator might not be able to provide the additional skills that you need.

The biggest disadvantage to working with freelancers is that you need to find them on your own. We recommend hiring a freelance translator if you already have one in mind with the language skills and availability that you need. Also, if you only need a small amount of translation done, freelancers are probably the way to go.

Translation Agencies

There are a number of pros to using translation agencies, including:

● They find the right translator for your needs. It’s much easier for a translation agency to find the right translator for your specific needs.

● They can handle high-volume projects and quicker turnaround times. If you have a large project or need something to be turned around quickly, a translation agency is probably the way to go.

That being said, there are still a couple of disadvantages to using translation agencies. You still have to pay agency fees, which are usually more expensive. And you need to find the right translation agency.

If you need more than just translation, a freelancer probably won’t give you the combined services you need, so it’s probably best to hire a translation agency. We recommend speaking to translation agencies first if you’re unsure because they are more qualified to tell you what your project requires.