A Day in My Life as a Translator

I start my work day around 7:30 A.M., in part because I live and work in California but have clients on the East Coast that are still grappling with the concept of time zones, and in part because by starting early I am assured an hour of two of considerable quiet during which I can work at full concentration and without distraction.

First, a word about time zones. Freelance translators almost inevitably work for businesses hours ahead or behind them, sometimes even a day ahead if the International Date Line is involved. As such, some businesses may come to expect their freelancer to be on call 24 hours a day, not only able to accept faxes or email, a relatively automatic process, but to confirm on the telephone receipt of such faxes or email, and even to discuss a project, if not actually work on it. This is not a practice I support or recommend; I am willing to work hard for my clients, but I am also protective of my life outside of work and so discourage clients from thinking of me as being on-call at all times. Whether you choose to be available for your clients at all times or to ignore your business phone, fax, and email at certain times is up to you, but I strongly suggest the latter so as to prevent excess stress (will they never leave me alone!?), job dissatisfaction (all I do is work, work, work!), and burn out (I can’t take it any more). A career is like a marathon: only by pacing yourself will you be able to retire with grace and poise.

If, by the way, you are awoken by your business phone at six in the morning, you are better off not answering it. You will not, regardless of how quickly you think you wake up, sound particularly coherent or give intelligent answers to questions. I made this mistake enough times that I now hope to help others avoid it; let your answering machine take the call, then call the client back once you are fully awake and aware, ready to work.

As said above, I like to start my day early so that I can work uninterrupted for a couple of hours. I find translation to require considerable concentration, particularly if I am working on a document with sticky syntax or troublesome terminology, with concepts that are new or unfamiliar to me, or with printing of such poor quality that the job turns into an exercise in archaeological decipherment. Phone calls and faxes can interrupt the flow I get in once I get started on a text, so I all but guarantee myself a couple of hours in which, except for rare cases, I can crank along at a steady, productive pace.

As an aside, organizing and tracking your jobs will make your life much easier. I do this by putting each job into its own folder, specifically a clear plastic folder that allows me to see what the job is and how far along I am in working on it. Any new job gets a folder, even if the job is merely pending and not yet confirmed (meaning that I don’t yet have the go-ahead to work on the job). All active jobs are kept in a drawer so that I know where they all are at any given time, and with a glance in that drawer, I can see how much work there is to be done. When a job is finished, I remove the material from the clear plastic folder and place all documents related to the job into a large manila envelope, writing on the front the client’s name, a description of the job, and the date the job was finished. That folder is then archived, and roughly three years later I shred and recycle the paper. Of course I also keep electronic copies of all material, archived on Zip discs. Enough of that aside; all I am suggesting here is that you keep your jobs organized so that you don’t spend your days trying to figure out what you are supposed to do.

The rest of my day can unfold in one of a few ways, depending on how much work I have and when the work has to be done. I’ll tell you about each, one at a time. On days when I have a lot of work, I spend the rest of the day working on the translation until either it is done, or at least far enough along. Whenever I receive an assignment, I check the length of the source text, do a quick calculation, and figure out how many words I have to do every day. I then do a little more than that per day.

As I translate, when I find words or phrases I don’t know, I note them on a separate page and then look them up later. Sometimes, my search for these words takes me to one of the libraries nearby or has me on the phone, checking with someone who can either tell me the word, or at least explain the concept to me. I have spent up to four hours on a single day in the library sifting through dictionaries, encyclopedias, almanacs, and maps, looking for the words I need to finish an assignment.

On days when I have only a little work, I still begin the day by translating. Once finished with the day’s quota, I work on finding more work. This means sending letters to agencies, calling my clients, and most importantly, looking for new sources of work. I also spend time studying my languages and subject areas, working on articles such as the one you are reading now, updating and improving my web site, and keeping on contact with fellow translators and clients.

If I don’t have any work, I work on finding work. Unfortunately, I still have the occasional day when I don’t have any work. Translators generally say that the business is one of "feast or famine." You are either drowning in work, translating from dawn until late at night, trying to meet your impossible deadlines and fretting over carpal tunnel syndrome as you do so, or you are waiting by the phone, praying to the patron saint of translators, St. Jerome, or perhaps the patron saint of lost causes.

You probably noted the paradox here. When translators have lots of work, they have no time to market themselves for the upcoming and inevitable dry spell. When they have no work, it is too late to do the necessary marketing. Which leads to a truism for translators and all other free-lancers: market always!

Income

Income in translation, particularly freelance translation, varies over a considerable range. At the lower end, a freelance translator can have negative income, a result of spending more for business purposes than earning from translation in a given year. The upper end of the range is filled with rumors, from stories of individuals earning over $150,000 per year to claims by duos or small teams of generating in excess of $200,000 per year.

Realistically, few translators ever have negative income, except perhaps during their first year of business. This is most likely to happen if this first business year consists of the last two months of the calendar year, during which considerable funds are spent on computers and other office essentials. Also, few translators ever make over $60,000 per year, and you should be very skeptical of claims of income above $75,000. Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part translators can expect to make between $35,000 and $45,000 per year. If you hear stories about income levels much higher than that, just smile and bear in mind that most people exaggerate their income, consciously or unconsciously, at least to some extent.

So if you are asked if you make a lot of money as a translator, your answer will probably be no, though that does depend on what you consider a lot of money. And it also depends on what month or year you are in, as translation, like all businesses, is not perfectly stable or predictable.

To be more specific, translators are almost always paid by the word in the United States (between $0.04 and $0.25, though sometimes higher) or by the line or page in other countries. Few translators can do more than about 3,000 words per day, though some do achieve far higher levels of productivity. Regardless, annual income can be calculated with a simple equation:

Annual income = Average Word Rate x Words Translated

If you are charging $0.20 per word and are doing 2,500 words per day, six days a week, 52 weeks per year, you’d earn $156,000. An impressive sum, to be sure, but let’s examine what you’d have to do to reach that level of earnings.

First, you’d have to find all your own clients, since no agency is going to pay you $0.20 per word except under extremely extenuating circumstances that could not possibly continue for a year’s time. Even direct clients rarely pay that much these days, unless you are providing desktop publishing and other ancillary services, which themselves can take a lot of time and require expensive software and other technology. And direct clients generally expect a completed translation, one that has been edited, proof-read, and perhaps even prepared for printing. So you either have to do all of that yourself, or you have to pay someone else to do it. Either way, your overall income will fall.

Second, you’d have to be very fast and efficient to maintain that level of productivity over a year’s time. There are people who do it. There are even people who claim to do in excess of 7,000 words per day regularly, some of whom simply dictate their translation into a tape recorder, then pay others to transcribe and edit their work. As above though, your income will fall as you pay some of your gross earnings to the people who do this work for you. And as for doing it all yourself, that leads to...

Third, you’d spend a great deal of your time working, probably in excess of ninety hours per week. Remember that for every hour of translation you do, you will likely have five to ten minutes worth of other office work, including marketing, invoicing, accounts receivable and payable, banking, purchasing office supplies and equipment, maintaining and upgrading your computer system, evaluating and acquiring new dictionaries and other language resources, and doing taxes, to name a few possibilities. This is a part of running a business, and you can certainly pay other people to do this work for you, but again, what you pay others comes out of your income.

To reiterate, starting freelance translators can reasonably expect to make $25,000 in their first year, perhaps more, sometimes even considerably more, depending on their language combination and subject specialization. The average in the industry seems to be around $40,000 per year, with some people making in excess of $100,000 per year. But those that do rarely have time for little else but eating and sleeping. There are far easier, faster, and more humane ways to get rich. With the right education, such as in international law or finance, and a few languages, one can go very far and very high in industry, or so I’m told. In other words, translation is not a way to get rich quickly or make the Forbes’ 400.

For those of you that dream of translating a great novel or book and living off the royalties, doing so will be extraordinarily difficult. Authors generally get about 10% of the hardback sales and 4% or the paperback sales in royalties and they have to fight very hard to get that. They’re not going to yield part of it to some translator unless they absolutely have to. I’ve translated books and gotten paid the same way I did for everything else: by the word. Many years ago, different relations existed between publishers and translators, but nowadays, the only advantage to translating a book is that you have a lot of work for a long time. Also, royalty payments generally are paid starting six to twelve months after the book hits the bookstores, which will likely be six to twelve months after you finish translating it. That is too long to wait for a substantial amount of income, though this may be offset by an advance from the publisher, should you be able to get one. In sum, translating books can be a fascinating process, but approach it as a business proposition. Do the math if you are offered multiple payment options and make a strategic business and financial decision about the job.

If you’re thinking of translating literature, think twice. It takes a long time to translate a work of art, and even more for it to be published. You might get some kind of royalty out of it, but hardly enough to justify the time and effort you’ll expend cultivating the necessary relations with the publishers, editors, and of course, the writer (if alive). You really need to love literature if you want to do this. It can be very rewarding, I say so having done a bit of that work myself, but it is also quite demanding. Enter into such projects slowly and carefully, if at all.

So if you think $35,000 to $45,000 a year is enough to live on, to raise your family, and to prepare for retirement, then you’ll be fine financially in translation. Of course, there is the theoretical maximum, and you can increase your income by finding your own clients, or providing other services. And, when you consider that the average individual income in the U.S. in 1998 was roughly $25,000, translation looks all right.

However, this varies from month to month and year to year. Translation is a very fickle industry, subject to the vagaries of politics and economics like few other professions are. In 1988, the demand for Arabic translators was minimal, but thanks to Sadaam Hussein, in 1990, the demand soared. Now, the demand is low again. Before the fall of the Soviet Union, most Eastern European languages saw low demand, but now, the demand is much higher and growing. Japanese was in very high demand until the economic bubble burst. Things haven’t been the same for Japanese translators since.

Your income in one year is not a good indication of your income for the next year. In fact, it is no indication at all, unless you are so well established and work in such an esoteric (but still in high demand) field that you can somehow count on work always.

Furthermore, your income from month to month fluctuates. While you will never make so little as to have to choose between feeding yourself or your cat, you may well have little left over after basic expenses in some months. Other months will leave you with enough to take a luxurious vacation, though you should save at least some of that extra income in preparation for the months with less income.

In sum, if you can handle variety and unpredictability in your income, freelance translation is the profession for you. If you want a paycheck every month with the same amount on it, and you want to see that amount go up incrementally over the years, then look for an in-house position or a new profession.