US $0.42/word certainly sounds a lot more enticing than the $0.10/word or so I see bandied about on sites like proz (and sometimes much less). Of course, this translation is going to require a very skilled translator, with a high level of knowledge of the field. From the offer:

The University of Tokyo has embarked on a project to make outstanding work by its faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences available in English translation. The titles selected will be published by leading academic publishers in the English-speaking world.

The translator is also going to have to work closely with the publisher, probably going through several revisions and proofing the camera-ready copy prior to printing. That's more work than the "fire and forget" mode of translation that's common when you go through agencies.

This rate isn't all that unusual. ¥38/word is about on a par with what the top translation agencies in Japan charge (about 50-75% of which makes it to the translator). It's middling for direct clients with highly demanding work. The University of Tokyo seems to be trying to cut out the middleman, thereby attracting a higher caliber of talent for the same money as going through an agency. An institution like UT has the administrative and publishing capabilities to handle such a task on its own.

I hope this can serve as another point on the graph to those wondering what freelance translators (especially Japanese-to-English) actually charge. Beginning translators especially tend to only see the bottom end of the rate scale, offered by the low-end agencies willing to hire inexperienced translators. But there's quite a large range available, depending on your talent, experience, knowledge, and marketing skills.

The cutoff age is generally taken to be around puberty, so at 22 I kind of missed the boat. The only area of language acquisition where this really holds, though, is pronunciation. People who learn a second language after puberty generally have a foreign accent their whole lives, while those learning it before puberty will have a native accent.

Built-in cutoff switch?

One linguistics professor of mine had an interesting hypothesis as to why this was so. As we know, our use of language identifies us culturally, socially, and regionally. He reasoned that when we're children, our job is to assimilate into the surrounding culture(s); but when we're adults, our job is to be productive members of the community, and identify ourselves as members of it. He thought this was why the ability to pick up foreign accents "shuts off" after puberty. At this point we're supposed to be identifying ourselves as members of our group, not haring off to join those guys over in the next valley.

I should also note that some rare people learn a second language as adults, and don't have a notable foreign accent. But they will tend to make very occasional slips, which become more frequent when tired or stressed. There have also been some inconclusive studies suggesting that adult second-language learners process their second language in a different part of the brain than early language learners.

But aside from pronunciation, adults actually learn the grammar (syntax and morphology) and usage (semantics and pragmatics) of the language just as quickly as children, given the same amount of stimulus. That, of course, is the problem: adults tend to have all sorts of responsibilities that prevent them from devoting as much time to language acquisition as children.

Another problem is "fossilization" — when the learner stops making progress in the second language. This is more common in adults, whose brains aren't as flexible and who don't pick up new ways of thinking as readily as children.

How hard is it?

Obviously, it's possible to become a translator even after learning the B language as an adult. I'm one example. Since we don't use the spoken language directly in our jobs (although it helps when trying to get work from foreign clients), pronunciation really doesn't come into play.

My pronunciation of Japanese actually isn't that bad. I suspect this is partly thanks to my degree in linguistics, which helped me learn to analyze and mimic the accent of Japanese. But my accent hasn't really come into play professionally. Knowledge of spoken Japanese, yes — but not my own pronunciation of it.

I'd say it takes two main qualities to learn the B language well enough to translate it as an adult:

1. An open mind and a desire to continually learn
2. The perseverance and dedication to spend a lot of time mastering it

Assuming you've got the first one, what it really boils down to is perseverance: being willing and able to put in the time necessary to learn the B language well, when all those pesky adult responsibilities like earning your rent money are intruding on your time.

How much time do you have to spend? Various studies seem to show that no matter what the field, it takes about 10,000 hours to master it. This would mean using the B language 20 hours a week for roughly ten years, or 40 hours a week for roughly five years. That's a lot of time to put in!

And then, of course, you've got to master the skill of translation — pile on another five years of working full time — plus another five years full-time to learn a specialty! Fifteen years to become an expert translator? Might as well give up at this point and do something easy, like become a cardiologist. They have worse hours but better social status and make more money.

So add two more necessary qualities: a deep love of the craft of translation, and a certain stubborn streak.

Conclusion

It's difficult but not impossible to become a professional translator after learning your "B" language as an adult. What it requires is perseverance, an open mind, and a constant desire to keep learning.

Subject: High Quality Translation

I haven't seen you for weeks

I need this document translated, and the translation is to be of high quality.
The attorney asked me to be especially careful with page 2. As I need to submit the document tomorrow, please have it checked and translated for me today.

I have deposited $150 to your credit card account that you gave me the last time.
Let me know if any questions occur.

P.S. The document is in the ZIP-compressed MS Word file attached to this message.
I look forward to getting the result ASAP.

So long
Irene Sutherland

It came with the attachment "Document.zip," which as you might expect contains a rather new virus (some anti-virus software is apparently failing to pick it up).

Several other translators have reported receiving it. The attack is somewhat novel in that it specifically targets translators. I used to get a lot of scam emails along the lines of "my daughter requires an interpreter near your hometown on date X"; presumably to be followed with a request for funds to "facilitate" the process. In my memory, however, this is the first time I've received a virus scam with a "translate this" angle. Beware, translators!

As I see it, there are seven main areas where we can improve or expand as translators.

1. Target-language ability
2. Source-language ability
3. Subject expertise
4. Translation ability
5. New field
6. Soft (people) skills
7. Sales and marketing skills

I try to be improving in at least one of these areas at all times.

1. Target-language ability

I read extensively in my target language. I pay attention to good writing, and ask myself why it's good.

I also write outside of translation. This was the main reason why I started this blog — to force myself to write natural English without the tether of a Japanese source text.

2. Source-language ability

I've been studying Japanese for a while, and as these things go I think I've learned it fairly well. But compared to a native Japanese speaker, there are so many gaps in my knowledge that it's embarrassing.

I can't let myself get complacent about my Japanese abilities, because if I do then I'll stop progressing. There's actually a term for this in the second-language acquisition lingo: fossilization.

I try to push myself in Japanese, reading in new topics, writing in Japanese as much as possible, and speaking with new people. I'm always on the lookout for new turns of phrase or expressions. I've also got a touch of the "translator's curse": constantly asking myself how I would translate some particularly idiomatic bit of Japanese into English.

3. Subject expertise

I'm actually fortunate in that I work professionally in the field I translate. Even so, my knowledge is incomplete. I'm not working full time in my field, and there are so many sub-fields and specialties that there's no realistic way I can become an expert in all of them.

So while I need to continually study in my chosen field of specialization, I also need to maintain humility when dealing with the engineers who work in some niche field day in and day out. Even if their English ability is sub-par, I can learn from them on the technical side.

4. Translation ability

No matter how good your grasp of the source and target languages, if you can't accurately reproduce the effect of the original, then you're not a translator; you're just a bilingual.

I look for good translations, and study them. When I read English, I'm on alert for pithy turns of phrase that can work for tough-to-translate Japanese terms. As I mentioned above, I also have the translator's curse: always thinking about how I would translate a particular Japanese phrase, and critiquing translations I see. It makes it very hard to enjoy subtitled movies, but it does put me in the mindset of thinking about translation.

Degrees and other courses in translation are one way to improve in this area. I'm sure that they can be valuable, although I'm personally self taught (notwithstanding, I've actually taught a few seminars on translation myself). If I were to do some postgraduate study now, I'd much rather go for a degree in a technical field like intelligent systems than a degree in translation. But it's certainly a viable alternative.

5. New field

In addition to deepening your knowledge of fields where you already specialize, you could branch out to a new field. It could be a small step — for example, expanding from automobiles into construction machines — or it could be a big step, like moving from finance to biochemistry.

A medical translator once offered to show me the ropes of medical translation. She was earning roughly twice what I was, working less, and was booked out for 6 months or more at all times. So it looked like a pretty good gig. But after about my third rat study, sacrificing poor little furry animals and examining the tumors that had been induced in various organs, I figured I'd stick with software, where mice only get clicked, never sliced.

6. Soft (people) skills

This is an incredibly important, yet oft-overlooked skill. Being pleasant to work with; projecting yourself as an expert without seeming cocky; projecting yourself as a professional without seeming like a jerk. I know it sounds corny, but I found How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnagie) to be a valuable book on improving people skills.

7. Sales and marketing skills

As they say, you can have the best "skillz" in the business, but if nobody knows about them you might as well not have bothered. Sales and marketing skills can help you get your name at the top of the list, and be waiting in the wings when that next big project comes in.

I think that being the quintessential technocrats, a lot of translators are adverse to marketing. I know I was/am. Whenever I think of salespeople or marketers, I can't help picturing something along the lines of Glengarry Glen Ross.

But one of the great advances of the Internet age is that it's now very easy to market yourself without resorting to scumbaggery. Instead of the Glengarry Glen Ross approach of tricking people into buying your services, you can market yourself simply by putting your CV online, blogging, handing out business cards.

Conclusion

My final word of advice would be to look at the list above, and choose the area you'd least like to work on as one of your targets for improvement. We tend to like to work on things we're already good at, and let others languish. So the area you're least interested in improving is probably the area where you need the most improvement. For me, it's a toss-up between people skills and marketing. How about you?

So it's pretty obvious that you don't want to set your rates too low at first. On the other hand, getting translation work generally means taking that work away from some other translator, and when you're inexperienced, price is one of the ways you can convince clients to give work to you instead of Tracy Translator.

One piece of advice I've heard is to charge 10-25% lower than the "going" rate until you've got as much work as you can handle, then progressively replace your cheapest clients with higher-paying ones. I'm not sure if I fully buy into this (what if you find a really great client at first; do you want to have to dump them in a year or two?), but it can serve as a rule of thumb.

How much other translators charge

The best way to figure out how much to charge is to find out how much other translators are charging. But such information can be hard to come by. Firstly, translators tend to be a bit coy about such matters, and avoid giving out rate information on the Internet. One reason is competitive advantage, but a big reason is probably that they charge different clients different rates, and they don't want that information made public.

Another reason why it's hard to find out what other translators charge is translation consumer interests. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the United States the American Translators Association has run afoul of the IRS on this matter for antitrust violation, and ATA members are therefore not allowed to discuss rates amongst themselves.

One way to get at such information is to go to translator conferences (like IJET), and ask people face to face — perhaps prefacing any questions with "Are you, or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party ATA?" My first IJET was an invaluable source of information on how much to charge, and I've tried to share this information with new translators at subsequent IJETs.

Given the ATA's survey result that freelance translators make around $65,000/year on average, a back-of-the-envelope calculation says that freelance translators probably charge around US $0.11/word on average*.

* $65,000 / 12 months / 20 days per month / 6 hours per day = $45/hour; assuming 400 words/hour of output, that's $0.11/word

I'll go out on a limb here and say that for Japanese-to-English translation by native English speakers, rates are generally around US $0.10 to $0.30 per English word.

How much translation agencies charge

Another less direct way of finding out the going rates for translators is to find out what translation agencies charge. Many agencies don't list their rates, and you've got to keep in mind that even if rates are listed, the agencies will almost always negotiate specific rates for each job. But it's a good starting point.

This will give you an idea of what end-clients are paying for translation, as well as what agencies are paying. In my experience, about 50-75% of what agencies charge goes to the translator. So if the agency is charging $0.20/word, the translators are probably getting around $0.10-0.15/word.

Conclusion

Figuring out how much to charge is one of the toughest problems that new freelance translators face. Arming yourself with information on rates is a good way to figure out how much to charge so that you're a) busy enough and b) can feed yourself. Charging a rate that both you and your clients are satisfied with is essential for building a lasting business relationship.