From the 1st September, the following new rules will apply with my business activity:
• Potential customers must state payment terms and intended method of payment when offering me a project (or at least before finally asking me whether or not I’m interested in doing it). I will absolutely refuse to accept any work from potential customers who don’t do this, or who pay later than agreed, for at least six months.
• Up-front payments: if a project offered to me is worth £300 or more, 20% must be paid up-front (no later than within a week of me accepting it).
• Guarantee: if you find that any work I do is not to your satisfaction, I will reimburse you for having it proofread by someone else IF you provide their name and contact details and I approve before the proofreading work starts. I will only pay such fees on a per-word basis – the number of words in the translated product I created – I don’t do per-hour fees. I keep records of how long it takes me to do each project (brief notes of when I start, stop and restart it) and I expect the proofreader to do the same and provide me with their own such notes. If I agree that the initial proofreading work done by a proofreader took more than one quarter of the time it took me to do the original copy of my work (i.e. more than 15 minutes per hour), then I will reimburse 40-50% of the value of my translation project.