For some translators in certain niches, it's just another day at the office: they only translate a few long manuscripts, books, reports or theses a year.
I used to get a few of them, too. Especially when I worked mainly for the EU institutions and international bodies.
For the last few years though, I've been specialising more in marketing, transcreation and copywriting. My assignments rarely exceed 10 to 15k words.
And then, sometimes, it still happens. I'm asked to quote for a bigger project, which I usually get.
This time, it's a 66k plus text due not so far down the road. Paid in three instalments over July, August and September.
150 pages of hard labour with all that it entails: good money but also great pain.
It won't make up the two next months of revenue. Not entirely.
But it means I can take my kids to Marocco late October with reasonable assurance that I'm not spending money I don't have.
So yesterday, I took them to a nice modern restaurant in one of my favourite towns in the whole world: the pretty and famously overrated Collioure, which I've been hopelessly in love with since I was 13.
Btw, if you have a few hundred thousand euros to spare and you want to buy me an artist flat there for my future writing retreats, please feel free to do so.