Uma palavra difícil

De vez em quando, todo tradutor se depara com alguma palavra complicada. No dia a dia, porém, talvez a palavra mais difícil para o profissional freelancer não seja um termo técnico em alemão com trezentas sílabas, mas sim, um simples monossílabo: "Não".

No post de 31 de outubro/2007 do seu ótimo blog Brave New Words, B. J. Epstein fala dessa questão.

Ao ler o post e os comentários, confesso que me senti consolada por saber que outros tradutores também se afligem quando precisam dizer "não" e acabam desenvolvendo vários "jeitinhos" de usar essa palavra o mínimo possível ao lidar com seus clientes / editores.
Ao que parece, a tirania do "sim" se deve em grande parte, a um medo crônico de perder clientes e não ter trabalho suficiente para manter a cabeça fora da água.

Mas como explicar a dificuldade de dizer "não" quando se tem projetos fechados para vários meses e clientes na lista de espera? Tenho minhas suspeitas, mas prefiro tratar delas num post separado...

Você também tem dificuldade em dizer "não"? Por quê? Como lida com isso?

Just Say…A) Yes or B) No

It’s time for me to come clean about my biggest problem as a freelancer – saying “no”. I confess that I am terrible at it. I have a lot of energy and I manage to get many things done, and that combined with my desire to please makes me accept many of the projects people offer me, no matter how much else I have going on in my life. When a customer contacts me about a job that I know I have the skills for, I tend to just say “yes,” even if I know I have many other things to do or if I have planned to take a day off.

Some other freelancers I’ve spoken to have mentioned that they have a similar problem. After all, since most of us freelancers support ourselves with the income we bring in from our work and since we never know if assignments might stop coming in, we tend to take on jobs when they are offered. We worry that if we say “no” to a customer now, that person will find another translator and never return to us, and thus we will have lost more than just the one assignment. Friends and relatives of mine who are not freelancers do not understand what it is like to not have a steady paycheck, and these are the people who always say to me, “But it’s so easy to say “no.” Just do it!” I can point out, though, that this concern about having a steady income is in fact what stops many wannabe-translators from achieving their dreams.
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The only situations in which I confidently turn down assignments are if I know I do not have the knowledge or qualifications necessary for a particular job or if the potential customer refuses to pay a reasonable fee or in any other way treats me disrespectfully. When it comes to my own priorities, however, they tend to come last.

So, I ask you other freelancers: When do you say “no” to assignments? How do you do it? And have you noticed whether clients you say “no” to in regard to one particular job still ask you to do other work for them?

I know many of us would benefit from saying “no” more often, but somehow my “no”s tend to turn into “yes”es.