| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | How is it possible to make a decent living when working at the low rates offered by some agencies? Thread poster: Andrew Howarth
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| Surprisingly, no one did any calculations | Feb 8, 2022 |
The rate of $0.05/word is indeed very low, but let's make a conservative assumption that a translator can't find any better rate. The usual daily throughput assumed by most agencies is about 2500 words, give or take, and let's make another conservative assumption that the translator in question can't work any faster. Thus, working full time will bring $125 daily, or for an average of 21 working days per month, $2625 monthly. Won't exactly suffice for a lavish lifestyle, but certainly livable. So... See more The rate of $0.05/word is indeed very low, but let's make a conservative assumption that a translator can't find any better rate. The usual daily throughput assumed by most agencies is about 2500 words, give or take, and let's make another conservative assumption that the translator in question can't work any faster. Thus, working full time will bring $125 daily, or for an average of 21 working days per month, $2625 monthly. Won't exactly suffice for a lavish lifestyle, but certainly livable. So, one should either market oneself well enough to be busy all the time, or improve one's translation skills to work faster and be able to command higher rates. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Edward Potter 
Spain
Local time: 19:28
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
It is possible. Here are a few ways:
1. You could run your texts through a translation engine.
2. Relocate to a cheaper place.
3. As someone else said, just get a spouse who pays for everything. Okay, okay, one who helps pick up the slack.
In any case, these are the trials and tribulations of any profession. If your market gets saturated, prices will go down until people start leaving. If too many pe... See more It is possible. Here are a few ways:
1. You could run your texts through a translation engine.
2. Relocate to a cheaper place.
3. As someone else said, just get a spouse who pays for everything. Okay, okay, one who helps pick up the slack.
In any case, these are the trials and tribulations of any profession. If your market gets saturated, prices will go down until people start leaving. If too many people leave, pay will go up again, but then more people will will jump back in, making the prices go down again, making people leave again, etc. This is generally how it works.
[Edited at 2022-02-08 20:31 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Edward Potter
Spain
Local time: 19:28
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Anton Konashenok wrote:
The rate of $0.05/word is indeed very low, but let's make a conservative assumption that a translator can't find any better rate. The usual daily throughput assumed by most agencies is about 2500 words, give or take, and let's make another conservative assumption that the translator in question can't work any faster. Thus, working full time will bring $125 daily, or for an average of 21 working days per month, $2625 monthly. Won't exactly suffice for a lavish lifestyle, but certainly livable. So, one should either market oneself well enough to be busy all the time, or improve one's translation skills to work faster and be able to command higher rates.
This is assuming you are actually working full time. In practice, freelance translation is sporadic. You will have fat times and lean times. I would say divide by two for a more typical situation. If you are making $1312.50 monthly you could survive, but not in Northern Europe.
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Edward Potter wrote:
This is assuming you are actually working full time. In practice, freelance translation is sporadic. You will have fat times and lean times. I would say divide by two for a more typical situation. If you are making $1312.50 monthly you could survive, but not in Northern Europe.
It can certainly be more sporadic at higher rates, but at low rates I’d say you would be constantly inundated with work. That’s the natural trade-off.
Now my kids have gone, I could survive on 5 cents a word, 10,000 words a week, 45 weeks a year, no problem.
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Daniel Frisano
Italy
Local time: 19:28
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
Andrew Howarth wrote:
Does anybody actually succeed in making a decent living working at these rates in such specialist fields?
Yes, if your business is registered in a convenient fiscal jurisdiction (see e-residency), if you live in a country where living expenses are moderate, if you work fast, if your personal and familiar situation allows, and a couple other ifs.
Since your question is "does ANYbody" (as opposed to "does EVERYbody"), the answer is a clear yes, somebody does succeed (and sustain), when the stars align.
Note also that taking occasional or even regular jobs at 5 cents doesn't mean you'll *always* work at 5 cents. You'll still get your 8- or 10-cent jobs somewhere else.
[Edited at 2022-02-09 12:37 GMT]
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Tom in London wrote:
There's an inherent contradiction in your question, since it is not possible to make a decent living when working at the low rates offered by some agencies,
You would need to be working continuously for very long hours, including weekends and holidays (assuming that these agencies were feeding you continuous work) - so your quality of life would not be "decent".
After a period of reduced activity in translation as I had returned to full-time study, i contacted a couple of agencies to make up for clients who had gone elsewhere. The rates on offer were often around 0.06€/word. This was just a few years ago 2015 and matched the rate I was invoicing when I had started, back in 1994. (In 1994, agencies in Paris were paying 0.08-0.10 euros/word). I was (almost) amused to see that when registering with some agencies, they asked you to enter the rate per word you were seeking, but the online registration was set up to accept no entry above 0.06€/word. Why ask, I wondered?!
I contacted the agency who replied that they would be able to give me a large amount of work. They acted as if they failed to see the lack of logic in their argument or they genuinely failed to understand: the less they pay, the more work they provide, the longer I work. More than 20 years' experience made no difference. A sign of the times but also the fact that on certain types of texts, you can be more productive if you use a CAT tool. Once again, I challenge that logic as being skewed, in part, anyway. I would argue that yes, greater terminological harmony, supposedly increased accuracy, greater volume in a given period of time. Basically better, yet cheaper? After all, human skill is what the client is paying for at the end of the day. Sooner or later, there has to be some recognition for that in the business relationship you have with your client. Better quality work provided faster theoretically means less servicing upon its return. Time is money in, time is money out. But there are inevitable cut-off points when you are at risk of no longer being able to meet essential needs. Low rates from an irregular source makes you very vulnerable. You might be able to make some concessions, but not too many for too long.
Some agencies are genuinely echoing arguments they receive from their clients and/or find themselves under pressure to be overly competitive to keep the jobs coming in and rates can stagnate or even decline. Both have been happening over the past decade. It's not set to stop tomorrow.
[Edited at 2022-02-10 00:20 GMT]
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Kevin Fulton wrote:
When I started translating full time in the 1980s I was never offered less than $.06/word by agencies, and even then I was underpaid. Nowadays translators making twice that in the US have a hard time making ends meet without working 50 hours/week, unless they have a couple of better-paying direct clients..
[Edited at 2022-02-07 13:41 GMT]
... not just in the US unfortunately.
| | | | S_G_C
Romania
Local time: 20:28
English to Romanian
SOME agencies? I'd say MANY agencies...
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S_G_C
Romania
Local time: 20:28
English to Romanian
A lot will depend on where you live, of course.
0.05 USD would be considered a high rate for my country.
I haven't been offered this rate in years (meaning that the offers I get are below it).
| | | | Magali Fabre
Ireland
Local time: 18:28
English to French
+ ...
| Hard to know how to set your rates | Feb 17, 2022 |
When I started I just didn't know what my prices should be, so I based myself on one of the ridiculously low rates from my first agency. Ended up selling myself short, big time!
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
| Find EU clients | Feb 17, 2022 |
I don't do Romanian, but I can guarantee you from personal experience that several other less-than-rich-country Eastern European languages, big and small, pay more than that.
In unbalanced rich-poor language pairs, the market naturally settles on two sets of rates, with economy clients hiring through the poorer country, and premium clients going through the richer one.
Fortunately, your actual location doesn't much matter.
For Eastern European languages, th... See more I don't do Romanian, but I can guarantee you from personal experience that several other less-than-rich-country Eastern European languages, big and small, pay more than that.
In unbalanced rich-poor language pairs, the market naturally settles on two sets of rates, with economy clients hiring through the poorer country, and premium clients going through the richer one.
Fortunately, your actual location doesn't much matter.
For Eastern European languages, the trick is simple: don't fish on the local market. Look for global clients. If they communicate/post in English or another Western European language, that's who you want. Locals will only pay a local the local rate.
Sorana_M. wrote:
A lot will depend on where you live, of course.
0.05 USD would be considered a high rate for my country. I haven't been offered this rate in years (meaning that the offers I get are below it). ▲ Collapse
| | | | Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 19:28
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
+ ...
It's not because an agency offers only low rates, that they find somebody to do it.
If an agency offers low rates, we often have the feeling that if we don't take it on, somebody else will.
But that's not necessarily the case.
It's possible that nobody takes it, and that the job never gets placed at that agency.
It's even possible that the job never gets done, and that the end client never finds somebody who's prepared to work at such low wages.
What willl the end c... See more It's not because an agency offers only low rates, that they find somebody to do it.
If an agency offers low rates, we often have the feeling that if we don't take it on, somebody else will.
But that's not necessarily the case.
It's possible that nobody takes it, and that the job never gets placed at that agency.
It's even possible that the job never gets done, and that the end client never finds somebody who's prepared to work at such low wages.
What willl the end client do?
Simple: not introduce that product on the market for which the translation was ment.
Their idea was simply we want to sell it at such a price, and we want to have that much profit, so we only want to pay that much for various elements of the production process.
If one of those elements is not possible at the prices they want to pay, they simple are not producing.
In our situation: the just don't introduce their product on the market of our target language.
We shouldn't always thank that they will always find somebody who's willing to work at the price. ▲ Collapse
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 18:28
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Uselessness of CAT tools | Feb 18, 2022 |
Nikki Scott-Despaigne wrote:
......on certain types of texts, you can be more productive if you use a CAT tool....
Only a few types. 90% of the time I find that after running a text through a CAT tool I still need to work very hard before it becomes presentable as a translation.
| | | | | My advice for (future) German freelancers: | Feb 19, 2022 |
You just need SDL Studio, Deepl, and a proz account, where you can ask all relevant questions you might have with your translation jobs you are obviously so qualified for, in the KudoZ area. You don't even need to assign points to the answerers or to say "Thank you!". Just take their answers, be cheaper than your colleagues, ruin their reputation, when reviewing their work for agencies, avoid taxes, and have a nice time on a tropical island with cheaper living costs. When your business model fai... See more You just need SDL Studio, Deepl, and a proz account, where you can ask all relevant questions you might have with your translation jobs you are obviously so qualified for, in the KudoZ area. You don't even need to assign points to the answerers or to say "Thank you!". Just take their answers, be cheaper than your colleagues, ruin their reputation, when reviewing their work for agencies, avoid taxes, and have a nice time on a tropical island with cheaper living costs. When your business model fails, because others are (even) cheaper than you, too cheap to keep a living in an underdeveloped tropical country, than you (as a native German) can always go back to Germany and benefit (again?) from the (compared to other countries) generous social system. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 19:28
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
+ ...
| A bit amazing | Feb 19, 2022 |
Tom in London wrote: Nikki Scott-Despaigne wrote:
......on certain types of texts, you can be more productive if you use a CAT tool.... Only a few types. 90% of the time I find that after running a text through a CAT tool I still need to work very hard before it becomes presentable as a translation.
I wonder what kind of texts you do.
I've taken a look at your specialities, but that doesn't give a clue.
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