The GITS Blog

A job offer was recently posted to the Honyaku mailing list, looking for a translator for a book by a Japanese researcher into English. The offered rate was ¥7,600 per 200 English words. That works out to ¥38 per word, or according to the XE.com Universal Currency Converter, US $0.42/word at today's exchange rate (31 [...]

Photo by Steve Wampler

A lot of translators charge lower rates than they could otherwise get, especially when they're starting out. There are a few possible reasons for this; here are a couple.

Lack of knowledge about the market
Desire to get more work
Desire to avoid haggling
Lack of confidence

Lack of knowledge about the market
Information isn't evenly distributed in [...]

There's a trade-off between rates and quality. Although rates don't guarantee quality, you generally get what you pay for; higher rates get you better quality, and lower rates worse.
Over on the Honyaku mailing list, Matt Stanton has a rather unique take on this topic: he believes in providing the entire spectrum himself.
Then all you do [...]

When you're first starting out as a freelancer, it can be tough to figure out what rates to charge. This is especially true because once you settle on rates with a client, it's generally very hard to move them upward. The conventional wisdom is that if you want higher rates, you need to find different [...]