Last Friday, I lost my main source of income. Or they lost me. Maybe a bit of both.
I received an e-mail from my oldest, most faithful client, who used to basically make my monthly income all by itself, telling me that their client, despite being exceedingly supercilious when it comes to accuracy and quality, had decided to rely on machine translation instead of actual, quality human work, but they would still keep humans just in case the AI made mistakes … at a reduced rate, of course. I did not take it kindly, as I never did post-editing before, and I am not at all convinced that it would increase my productivity (as they use the worst professional online CAT tool ever to be developed, which already decreased my productivity compared to working offline, and won’t switch to anything better as the company is quasi-monopolistic and they bought it last year anyway), and I haven’t upgraded my rates for that agency for 18 years.
My self-esteem took a dent, as did the value I put into doing a quality job, while being treated like nothing better than a speck of dust.
And then I realised that maybe that admittedly terrifying loss of income was exactly what I needed, that I should have known the day would come, and that now I could and should focus on maybe finding clients who treated their providers like people, agreed to reasonable rates, and would not ask me to debase myself.
The time needed to improve my clientele will allow me to take some courses in editing, non-sexist writing, etc. I might even be so bold as to try to get state-funded courses to become a lace maker, as I noticed practising an activity is the best way to acquire the appropriate terminology.
So it’s not all that bad, but it’s going to be a hard few months, until I can build myself the clientele I maybe not dream of, but at least aspire to work with.