![]() In addition, machine translation is getting better all the time, and translators working for agencies are expected to post-edit at an even lower rate than they are paid for translation. I won’t go into them in depth here, except to state the obvious: market forces dictate how much you can charge for your services, and ours is an oversubscribed industry, particularly for translators with a common language pair. There are myriad reasons for lower pay in the language professions. ![]() In considering this issue, I will focus on freelance agency work, because that is how most translators work. Lower earning translators are thereby given knowledge they can use to raise themselves up financially. It stands to reason, then, that when translators disclose what they charge, especially those earning in excess of £50,000 a year, awareness about rates increases. 2 Of course, many translators earn far less than that, particularly those working in emerging economies. However, it is important to consider why, in a global industry that had grown to £35 billion by 2018, with the top 25 language service providers (LSPs) in the UK growing at a rate of 40% a year, 1 the average translator’s income in the UK is just £24,702. ![]() I fully acknowledge that there are many translators who earn decent money, even six-figure sums. Pointing out the tendency for earnings to be on the paltry side in our profession seems to be controversial (some translators react with hostility when the topic is raised), but it is not my intention to court controversy or to be unduly negative. Justine Raymond argues that change will only come when translators start to openly discuss their ratesĪ recent conversation with a well-known translator about the reluctance of people generally to talk about how much they earn got me thinking about the pervasiveness of poor remuneration in the translation profession.
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