Ken Subedi August 5, 2020

How can I increase my freelance translation income?

Aside from the nine to five job, translation is now seen as a lucrative job by freelancers who tend to earn a little cash on the side doing freelance translation works. Of course for a full time job there is a separate pay rate but still freelance translation jobs have now been a lot easier to find and work on. But with the rise in the number of freelance translation jobs, there also has been increase in the number of freelance translators. This is the reason freelance translators now have to work smarter than harder to make more income.

There is a simple economics to this game. The easier the language, the easier it is for the clients to find translators and bargain on the per word rate. But if you as a freelancer specialize in a much scarce language then you can easily bargain for a higher rate for the same amount of work. Meaning the scarcer the language the more the pay rate.

Another thing, what a freelancer translator can do is specialize in different languages. That way, you don’t have to look for one particular job as there will be plenty in the market to choose from. There will be plenty of fish in the sea to choose from and the more time you can manage the more you can earn. The major advantage of specialization in different languages is the opportunity to choose the work. So as a freelance translator, you can choose the work which pays more per word and thus don’t have to compromise your time for a lower pay. With digital platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, there will be no scarcity of translation jobs but the ones who specialize in different languages will certainly have a competitive advantage.

Choosing the right kind of industry also helps when it comes to increasing the income. If you focus more on a sector where there is not much need of translation then there is not going to be a whole lot of income. But choosing a more profitable field such as law, pharmaceuticals, IT where translation is necessary to do business with other cultures and countries can be very useful. Also, industries like tourism and hospitality where they hope that good translation will bring in greater business.

There are long-terms ways to increase the freelance translation income as well. These are ways of streamlining your life to accommodating more time in order to work longer work hours which then lead to higher pay checks. You could adjust your lifestyle to sneak a bit of addition time for translation here and there. This might be waking up a little earlier, reaching home a little faster and brainstorming while eating just to save some time on the words for the ongoing project .

In the holiday season you could take up some extra work and utilize the time you spend at home to make a little more cash .If you continue to this for a longer period of time you will accumulate more income as well as enough experience to negotiate a better pay. Experienced translators can easily ask for higher  per word/ per hour rate  and earn more which  a newbie translator cannot do. But this is what counts. Companies and agencies can find translators but they need assurances that the freelancer translator is good at is his/her work for which they are ready to pay higher.