About Freelance Translation Business
The translation industry in the United States is moving more and more toward the independent contractor model. In the past, many large companies and even many translation agencies had staffs of in-house translators, but these jobs are now few and far between, and when they do exist would rarely be given to a beginner.
In contrast to other professions where newcomers are expected to pay their dues as in-house employees and then enjoy the "reward" of freelancing, the translation industry usually works in the opposite way. Most translators start out as freelancers and may even remain self-employed for their whole careers, while most well-paid in-house translators are hired with years or even decades of experience.
It's important to be realistic about whether the life of a freelancer is for you. While you'll have a great degree of control over where, when and how much you work, you'll also give up the security of a steady paycheck, benefits, paid time off, and a pension or employer-sponsored 40IK.
Most freelance translators in the U.S. work from a home office, and there is no stigma attached to working from home; translators who rent office space outside the home are definitely the exception rather than the rule. The vast majority of a translator's work is done on the computer, using either a word processing program or text editor, and possibly a computer-assisted translation program. Translators make extensive use of reference materials such as print and online dictionaries, terminology databases, and discussion with other translators. The almost constant use of a computer makes repetitive strain injury one of the few work-related injuries that translators are at risk for.
There are many positive sides to a translator's work environment. Compared to other work-from-home jobs, translation can be very interesting and well-paying. Although you probably won't get lavishly rich working as a freelance translator, translation industry compensation surveys report that the average self-employed freelance translator earns about S52,000 per year. Translators who are highly specialized in technical fields, or work with in-demand language pairs may earn much more than this, and in-house translators for certain branches of the U.S. government or international financial institutions may earn $70,000 a year and up.
At the same time, it is important to be realistic about the time and effort involved in reaching this level of income. Unless you work in a language pair and/or specialization that is extremely in demand, it may take a year or more to develop a regular client base that will allow you to replace the income from a previous full-time job, and you will probably need to send out several hundred resumes during that time. Before starting your freelance translation business, it's important to determine if you have the financial resources, time and energy to get through the startup period to the point where you are earning a reasonable and steady income.
Starting a translation business is a fairly inexpensive proposition. If you already have a home computer and high speed Internet access, you might make do with business cards, computerized fax service and a modest reference library, for a startup cost of only a few hundred dollars. To a large extent, freelancers can determine when and how much they want to work. While it probably makes good business sense to accept as much work as possible from your regular clients, on a day-to-day basis many translators work on their own schedule rather than from 9 to 5. A translator's eight hour day might run from 7:30-11:30 AM and 4:30-8:30 PM.
This flexibility makes translation an excellent career option for people who have young children, are semi-retired, or just want to work part-time. Today, most translation work happens remotely, and translators can live almost anywhere. The up and down nature of most freelancers' work loads also lends itself to using free time to take classes, pursue hobbies, travel or spend time with family.
Questions and Answers
Article Tags:
translator
As more organisations pursue global business strategies, the need to conduct market research on an international scale is rapidly increasingly. International market research projects require multilingual surveys and therefore multilingual professional language translation and localisation. Ideally, a translation company shall be involved in the market study design process.
Selecting an accurate translation expert is critical to companies serving the energy sector, but oil and gas translation is one of the most difficult types of technical translation. When translating documents for the oil and gas industry, an extensive expertise in technical oil and gas terminology is required, along with certain economic and legal knowledge.
The EU report on the translation industry blames failure of companies to successfully expand on foreign markets to the savings performed on translating the relevant material and specifies that these failures are unfairly blamed on the local management services. In other words, they imply that local management, in order to succeed with the translated material they are provided with, are in fact require to rely on monkey's work to get results.
If you have no idea about the differece between Machine Translation (MT), Computer Assisted Translation (AT) and human translation, this article will help you choose the best system to meet your needs.
Many people approach translation in a very light manner and think it is no big deal. This may be the situation if you are translating personal correspondence or a brief email but translating business documents of anything to be printed can be very serious. Translating documents is far from being easy, quick, and straightforward. Translation needs to be approached in a serious and sensible manner in order to get the quality of document that will be effective. Before beginning a translation proje
Media, marketing, advertising and literature translations take special expertise, and a skill set that is entirely different than other forms of translations.
Teaching English abroad in Vietnam is a unique experience for anyone who seeks to explore a beautiful country with a rich heritage. You may find people who say that it is not difficult to find jobs in Saigon, but the converse is true. It depends on where and how you conduct your search.
Thailand is a beautiful country with an expanding opportunity to teachers seeking opportunities to travel and teach. The steady demand for native English speakers means that any confident applicant with basic teaching skills can secure employment without difficulties.
Doctor jobs are growing in demand. Canadian research discovered that over four million Canadians lack a family physician Because four million Canadians don't have a family physician, the need for physicians is enormous Provinces throughout Canada are desperate to fill these vacancies.
Although Singapore is an island nation, it has grown to become a modern and efficient first world model country in Asia too. The infrastructure is remarkable and education sector largely successful.
Malaysia is a beautiful country with a thriving tourism industry. Like other emerging countries in Asia, the education sector spurs the knowledge-based economy. The education reforms have been instrumental in producing a quality workforce that satisfies the professional demands of various industries.
Many clients will ask their freelance translators to sign contracts or work for hire agreements before beginning work. While these are often quite harmless in nature and not something to be concerned about, it's important to read what you're signing and to make sure that you're not agreeing to a...
Discuss this Article
