Translation Blog

The demand for freelance translators is growing as businesses increasingly need to communicate with clients worldwide. They need someone professional to translate their content, and finding freelance translators online is a straightforward solution. Freelance translators have a wide variety of options according to their expertise, and there is always someone with the experience needed.

Due to this surge in demand, the number of professional translators online is expected to grow by 20% in the United States. Therefore, it is almost guaranteed that you will get good work when working as a freelance translator. Freelancing also carries many other benefits, including schedule flexibility and control over the type of work you take on.

The average salary for a freelance translator in the United Kingdom is around £33,000 per year or about £13.84 per hour. However, the amount of money you receive for your translations depends on your skills. Here we look at how much translators online earn, tips for making more money in the translation industry, and why working for a translation agency is an excellent option for freelancers.

Full-time vs Part-time Freelance Translators

Freelance translators online have two basic options: quit their current job and work as a translator full time, or combine their current employment with a freelancing “side hustle”. If choosing the former, you work exclusively for a translation network or a freelance platform. You find clients and work eight hours per day to make a suitable amount of money.

The second option is to combine your regular full-time job and translate content to professional quality as a side hustle. Freelance translators need to work online in the evenings and weekends but can end up working an extra 18 hours per week. In terms of earnings, this second option is more lucrative. You’re working more hours to see more significant financial rewards.

However, the first option seems good for people who like flexibility as you can work any time at your place. You are not restricted to the conventional Monday to Friday routine with office timings from 9 am to 5 pm. Sometimes, freelance translators can also get clients paying much more beyond your expectations. However, it all depends on your skill level and translation expertise.

Types of Translation Tasks to Earn Money

The type of translations you do will influence the amount of money you make when working as a freelance translator online. Basic document translations are the lowest paid, with many online freelance translators able to offer these services. This means you’re competing with low prices, and it can be challenging to source high-paying clients.

However, more technical translations and niche content types come at a higher price. It is harder for businesses to find someone with the right skill set to handle these projects, and they’ll pay a premium if you can translate to a professional standard. Examples of specialised translations include:

• Speech translation, such as lectures and telephonic conversations
• Technical translation, such as engineering translations
• Localisation, such as localising mobile applications, video games, or websites
• Movile subtitling or providing professional voiceover services

How to Charge Freelance Translation Clients

As mentioned, a freelance translator typically earns around £33,000 per year. This assumes the online translators are working freelance as their full-time employment. However, salaries increase to between £50,000 and £150,000 per year for people offering more specialised services.

When it comes to translation rates, professional freelance translators usually translate 500 words within an hour. This means your daily output is about 2,000-3,000 words a day. You can use this approximation to work out your base rate. Some freelancers charge per word, whereas others charge per hour. For example, a rate of £0.10 per word works out to approximately £50,000 annually.

If you can’t make that money initially, don’t worry. You can always increase your translation rates by getting more certificates and proving your worth. With the right attitude and dedication, you can make good earnings from freelance translation jobs with the right attitude and commitment. Start low and build a good reputation in the industry before transferring to higher rates.

Tips for Freelance Translators to Maximise Their Earnings

If you work as a freelance translator, you must be accurate and consistent with your work. This helps you build an excellent reputation that puts you above other online freelance translators. Here are some tips that you can improve to win more translation projects:

• Always provide an accurate translation that renders the exact meaning of the source
• Ensure your deliverables have no grammatical errors, formatting issues, or typos
• Maintain consistent and professional quality for all content you translate
• Accept jobs in your domain only. For example, if you are specialised in legal translation, you should not accept a job in marketing translation
• Meet your deadlines in every possible way, as late delivery will affect your profile on the database of the translation agency

A Network of the Most Professional Experts

Freelance translators can earn handsome money. All you have to do is work with dedication to fulfil your client’s demands to get maximum earnings. You can choose to translate on flexible timings or become a full-time professional translator, but keep in mind that the more you work, the more payments you will receive.

Although you can source projects and clients yourself, it is advisable to join a translation agency. These translation agencies hire freelance translators and match their skill sets to projects that come in from global clients. At Renaissance Translations, we are always looking for new freelance translators to work with! If you would like to join our team of experts, please see below our requirements:

• Have at least five years of translation experience
• Hold a degree in translation from a reputable institution
• Complete our online translators’ test to confirm translation proficiency
• Membership with a professional translation institution such as ITI, CIOL or ATA
• Apply to work with us using the recruitment page

We look forward to hearing from you and hope to receive your application shortly! In the meantime, discover more about our translation services or contact our team if you have any questions.

In order to accurately translate an Information Technology (IT) project, the use of technical translators is required. Depending on the size of the project, an entire team of technical Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) may need to work together to translate technical materials through the entire product life cycle. Whether this covers user guides, owner manuals, or IT software, technical document translation, undertaken by highly skilled and experienced technical translators, is the best route to go down when dealing with IT projects requiring specialist knowledge.

Why can’t I hire a general translator?

There are many circumstances where a general translator is more than suitable for the task at hand. However, when you need technical document translation, you should turn to specialised technical translators. It is tempting to hire a general translator to save some money on the project especially when underestimating the skill required to translate technical documents. You may also hire one when assuming that the translator has resources to assist in translating technical terms. Unfortunately, using industry glossaries or technical dictionaries is not an adequate substitute for industry experience. Word-for-word translation without a thorough understanding of the specialism will likely result in mistranslations. Moreover, an experienced IT translation specialist can translate technical coding, whilst ensuring that the product will still work as expected. Therefore, working with technical translators is the best option for IT projects.

Why should I hire specialised technical translators for my IT projects?

1. IT is a rapidly changing industry: Technology is constantly changing and evolving. With the modification of the products and services, businesses must constantly update supporting materials for end users, across all supported languages. Translating such revised content of new versions into multiple languages will help customers use more features. Hiring a technical translator will ensure accuracy, and will help you gain a reputation as a high-quality service provider.
2. IT markets are expanding globally: As global infrastructure improves, so does the availability of personal computers (PCs) and mobile devices. Technology use is growing worldwide. Increasing the number of languages in your app or programme will increase its potential user base. Not only do the applications themselves need technical document translation, but the graphic user interface (GUI) also needs localisation for appropriate use and understanding across cultures and dialects.
3. IT is a competitive industry: Digital markets are getting crowded for designers and developers of hardware, software, software as a service (SaaS), mobile devices, and apps. The sheer number of digital options consumers must choose from can be overwhelming. One clear way to stand out from the crowd, and to gain new customers from diverse markets, is to offer your service in a choice of language options. Hiring a technical translator for your content, user manuals, training materials, and marketing materials can help you to launch.
4. IT is a Risky Business: All industries require business risk mitigation when translating content. Ineffective communication can result not only in misunderstandings but also in unintentionally offensive content. Moreover, some information technology applications inherently involve additional risks. For example, failing to hire a competent professional technical translator can result in mistranslations of fundamental instructions and functionality capabilities. Technical document translation should be taken seriously, as a mistake in a manual can have significant repercussions; something that companies definitely want to avoid. Therefore, hiring a highly competent professional technical translation team with professional indemnity insurance to translate technical materialis imperative to work on your IT translation projects.

Renaissance Translations’ Professional IT Translation Services 

Renaissance Translations offers a range of technical translation services. Our translation experts can translate technical documents in numerous areas including IT translation, scientific translation, medical translation, and engineering translation. With over 5,000 translators, we can match you with a technical translator to suit your project’s requirements. Your partnership with us comes with professional memberships such as ATC and SDL LSP Partner Programme. Contact us today to discuss your upcoming technical document translation project.

Like any recruitment decision, evaluating the qualifications and the skills of online translators is very important. So, how can you evaluate the abilities of professional translators without speaking several languages yourself? After all, that is why you are hiring a freelance translation expert: to have your text accurately and appropriately translated for you. Being fluent in both the source language and target language is the most obvious trait a translator should have, but there are other traits that professional translators should demonstrate too. It is also important to remember that requirements, especially industry specialisms, can vary significantly by project. Below we discuss 11 considerations to make when choosing professional translators to work with.

Professional Translators’ Language Proficiency

1. Native Speakers: Professional translators must be able to fully understand the context in the source language. Otherwise, linguistic slip-ups and mistranslations are more likely. Therefore, translators should always be native speakers, translating into their strongest language or mother tongue.
2. Education: Professional translators should ideally hold a degree in translation and languages, or other equivalent qualifications.
3. Skills Assessments: It is common for language service providers to verify the skills of their translators. Typically, the translator must pass a translation test prior to employment. Choosing freelance translation providers that require their online translators to pass a skills assessment helps to ensure a quality product.
4. Experience: Real life project experience is another thing to look for when hiring professional translators. Many translation agencies require translators to have a minimum amount of professional experience and will detail their minimum standards on their websites.
5. Writing Talent & Style: Good writing goes beyond just the technical understanding of vocabulary and grammar, especially when translating between languages. Ideally, a professional translator will write translations that match the tone and other requirements of the project. Ask for writing samples in a language you read and write well. This will help you assess the overall writing talent, tone of voice, and style.

Other Factors

1. Professional Affiliations: Many professional translators are members of professional translation associations. This includes the Institute of Translation & Interpreting (ITI), Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) and American Translators Association (ATA).
2. References: When in doubt ask for references that have worked with the translator on a similar project in the past. Finding out whether a client would work with the translator again can tell you a lot about their skills, as well as their business practices.
3. Soft Skills: Sometimes soft skills and even personality can be deciding factors when choosing online translators for your unique needs.
4. Cultural Intelligence: As discussed above, professional translators must be native speakers of the target language. The person working on your project should understand the cultural nuances of your target audience. This is even more important if your freelance translation project requires localisation or transcreation.
5. Subject Matter Expertise: Understanding industry-specific terminology is the difference between a good translator and a professional translator. For example, a general translator should never translate medical, scientific or legal documents without having experience in these industries. Professional translators with subject matter expertise often charge more for their services, but if your document requires specialisation, it is important to hire a knowledgable translator.
6. Technology: Translation technology has advanced; some professional translators are skilled in using various translation memory software tools harmoniously alongside human translation. Using translation memory tools ensures fast and accurate content output. When translating large projects, these digital tools can decrease costs and can help to ensure the consistency of translations. However, we recommend leaving translation software to the professionals, as it is best used in conjunction with a human touch.

Conclusion

In summary, partnering with professional translators is more than just providing content for translation. Working with a freelance translation partner who provide excellent communication, time management and customer service will improve your overall experience. You can often assess the skills of online translators while you are in the contracting phase. Ask yourself:

• How quickly do they respond to your requests?
• Do they listen carefully to understand all your requirements?
• Are their responses complete and easy to understand?
• Do they seem credible and trustworthy to complete your project to your satisfaction?
• Have they offered clear information on the project cost and delivery dates?

Renaissance Translations’ Professional Translators

Choosing the right translation partner for your important projects is a big decision. Consider the above criteria will help to ensure that you choose not only a highly skilled translator, but the right one for your individual project. We recommend working with a highly rated and respected translation agency, so that they can do the vetting for you.

At Renaissance Translations, we hold our online translators to the high standards detailed above. We only work with professional translators who have passed our translation skills test, have the relevant qualifications, and have at least five years of relevant experience. With a team of over 5000 freelance translation experts, Renaissance Translations are poised to your translation needs, no matter what language combination. Get in touch to discuss your upcoming project.

The world is becoming increasingly globalised, and many businesses translate English into other languages to communicate internationally. In fact, the languages translator market was valued at around $55 billion in 2022 and continues to expand. Currently, an estimated 330,000 translators worldwide help governments, businesses, and individuals translate language.

The Language Service Provider (LSP) industry is indeed a respected profession and a long-standing career choice. But the languages translator industry would never have scaled this rapidly were it not for the works of notable languages translators throughout history. It’s time to recognise these professional translators for their contributions to society.

Nowadays, there are numerous lists and rankings of the “Most Famous Translators of All Time” and “Top Translators in History” to be found online. However, we would like to honour a small sampling of our favourite historic translators from the past two millennia. Each English translator on this list is no longer living, but their legacies live on each time we read their translated words.

1. St Jerome: “The Patron Saint of Famous Language Translators”

• Born: 347 CE
• Died: 420 CE
• Source Languages: Greek, Hebrew
• Target Language: Latin
• Famous Translation: The Vulgate (Catholic Bible)

The first languages translator on our list is St Jerome, famous for translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew into Latin. His translation remained the official Catholic Bible for around 1000 years. It is down to him that we often see pictures of Moses with horns on his head. He used the Hebrew word “keren” as “grew horns” instead of “radiated light.” We all make mistakes, even saints!

Rather than translating word-for-word, St Jerome was the first translator to translate language “sense-for-sense.” This idea is still used by every good English translator today when they translate English. It helps text retain context and meaning rather than literally translating each word or phrase.

Thanks to St Jerome’s fantastic advance in the languages translator sector, enthusiasts worldwide celebrate International Translation Day on September 30th annually. This date marks the anniversary of his death in 420 CE and is also celebrated as the Feast of St Jerome.

2. Constance Garnett

• Born: 1861
• Died: 1946
• Source Language: Russian
• Target Language: English
• Famous Authors Translated: Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky

Constance Garnett is the only female languages translator on our list. As a well-educated British female, Garnett had a rare talent in the late 1800s. As a native English speaker, she studied Latin and Greek at university. Ironically, she didn’t become famous for translating text into her main languages. Instead, the English translator became renowned for her ability to translate English into Russian.

Today, Garnett is famous for translating over 70 volumes of Russian literature into English. Because of her work, significant Russian authors now have their work translated into English for readers worldwide. We are fortunate she continued her passion for years, not retiring from her translation career until she was 73.

Like St Jerome, her ability to accurately translate language was not perfect. If she were unclear of the meaning of a Russian word, or phrase, she would exclude it from what she would translate into English. Therefore, her translations were, and still are, controversial.

3. Jorge Luis Borges

• Born: 1899
• Died: 1986
• Source Languages: English, Old English, French, German, Old Norse
• Target Language: Spanish
• Famous Authors Translated: Edgar Alan Poe, William Faulkner, Walt Whitman, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling, and many more

Jorge Luis Borges was a famous author and languages translator. From Argentina, this native Spanish speaker is a true polyglot and a well-respected linguistic master. He mainly translated works written in English into Spanish, which helped popularise many classics from literature, such as the works of those listed above.

Borges’ passion for converting text from one language to another began to translate language at a very young age. Impressively, he was only 9 years old when he was able to translate The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde from English to Spanish for a Buenos Aires newspaper. This made Borges perhaps the youngest English translator in history.

Although he did not have an advanced degree, he became a linguistic scholar, academic lecturer, and translator expert. Furthermore, he believed that translation is an art, not a science. Perhaps the industry can also thank Borges for the broadly recognised importance of localisation and transcreation, above and beyond being able to simply translate English to Spanish word-for-word.

4. Edward George Seidensticker

• Born: 1921
• Died: 2007
• Source Languages: Japanese
• Target Language: English
• Famous Authors Translated: Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Yukio Mishima, Yasunari Kawabata, Murasaki Shikibu

Seidensticker and his older brother were the only two in his Colorado high school class that went to university. In the 1940s, the US Naval Academy expanded its Japanese Language Training school and moved it from Berkeley to the University of Colorado at Boulder. Seidensticker was admitted to a 14-month intensive training program which taught him to translate language professionally.

By the end of the programme, Seidensticker was able to read a Japanese newspaper and soon learnt to translate English text from Japanese. He lived full-time in Japan from 1948 to 1962 before returning to the US to be a professor. Over his career, he was also able to translate many works into Japanese language and became an infamous languages translator.

Some of the most famous Japanese literary works translated into English included The Tale of Genji by Murasaki and Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. Kawabata was the first Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1968. Many believe that the award would not have been received had it not been for the English translator.

Languages Translator Services You Can Trust

At Renaissance Translations, we are delighted to have the most talented languages translators in our network. We specialise in various areas of expertise to offer our clients a diverse breadth of services. We also offer over 120 languages. Whether you need an English translator to translate English or a linguist specialising in another language, we are here to help!

In fact, we are confident we can find a resource to meet any needs and demand you may have. We translate language accurately and professionally, ensuring you receive the high-quality work you deserve. Your partnership with Renaissance Translations also comes with professional memberships such as ATC, so you can rest assured that you’re in safe hands. Contact us today to learn more about our language translator service and make your content available in multiple languages.