Sending your CV to translation agencies - Is it a waste of time?

Most new translators start off by sending out CV’s to translation agencies. This strategy is both time consuming and actually quite ineffective, many because few translation agencies actually pay attention to them let alone respond to them.

To be fair some agencies receive as many at 70 CV’s a day, ranging from nothing more than a blank e-mail with a CV attachment to “all-singing-all dancing” CV’s with colours, photos you name it! Responding to them requires a significant amount of labour, something that most companies cannot afford.

Of course, you could argue that agencies should invest more time in finding qualified linguists - after all every agency website seems to claim that they are “the fastest growing agency in the country” using only “the most qualified linguists”. Such claims are a ridiculous marketing tactic designed to attract clients who know nothing about the translation process. If such claims were really true all of these translation agencies would be industry leaders, there would be a massive shortage of qualified translators and agencies would meticulously check CV’s just in case they were losing a potentially amazing translator.

Despite claiming that they work with “thousands” of freelancers the reality is that most agencies actually work with a small number of skilled - but preferred - translators who are the first port of call when a job comes in. When this small group is working to full capacity or the source document is out with their translation speciality then the agency will look further afield and other translators might have a chance.

Sadly translation agencies seem to forget that many new translators are not necessarily new professionals but are individuals who may have spent decades working in other fields. As such their lack of experience as translators is outweighed by their knowledge of their specialist subjects.

So is it worth even sending your CV to agencies in the first place? Is there a better way to break into the industry? Should the new translator use their time more productively to get better results?