This week’s post topic was suggested by a reader: Is translation a dying profession?
Good question! Short answer: In my opinion, no, but I understand why people ask that.
Longer answer: Let me start with three data points…
- I graduated from undergrad in 1993, and a professor told me then (exactly 30 years ago!), Forget about getting into translation because it’s all being taken over by computers. Annnndddd that still hasn’t happened. I think that MT and AI are changing and will continue to change our profession, but I don’t think they will replace us on a large scale, within the working lifetime of anyone active in the profession today.
- If my university student daughter wanted to become a translator or interpreter, I would feel very positive about that and I would have no problem paying for her education for it (sadly, she wants to be an aerospace engineer but I continue to make my pitch!).
- I’ve been a freelancer for 20+ years and I’m on track to earn my highest-ever income this year, while working slightly less (not a typo) than I did last year.
Given all of that, I definitely don’t see translation as a dying profession, but/and…
- When I started freelancing in 2002, it was possible to earn what I would consider a decent “entry level” living working for big agencies that had a pretty low barrier to entry and based their hiring primarily on their own tests. I earned 10-12 cents per word working for those types of agencies in the early aughts and I knew Spanish translators who made 9-10 cents a word, and my sense is that those rates have now decreased by at least 50%. Perhaps even more for language pairs like English into Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Greek, etc. I’m personally not sure how people survive financially on those rates, unless their cost of living is very low, or they depend heavily on a spouse or partner’s income or another job.
- The amount of work needed to launch a freelance business has greatly increased in the past few decades. When I talk to translators who started their businesses in the 80s and 90s, many of them had a phone number and an AOL address, and within six months to a year with what today’s freelancers would think of as minimal marketing, they had so much work that they had to hire another translator to work with them. That’s not the reality anymore, and I think that a lot of beginning freelancers are disappointed by the marketing-to-translating ratio that they encounter in their first few years of business.
- The main shifts I’ve seen in the past 10ish years are a) the erosion of agency rates in general (see above), and b) a smaller distinction between “mass market” and “boutique” agencies, where the boutique agencies don’t pay dramatically better than the mass market agencies.
- This creates a real crunch in the “good” agency market. Good agencies are who most freelancers want to work for, so when a freelancer gets hired by an agency that pays well, has interesting work, and is easy to work with, they tend to stick with that agency for a long time. This is true of a boutique agency (now closed) that I worked with for a long time: they were “under the radar,” they paid well, and I worked with the exact same group of translators for 10+ years. Premium-market agencies do exist, but they’re rarely recruiting for translators.
- Finding direct clients takes a lot of hustle, and you do a lot of things other than translate. I have very little trouble getting direct clients to accept my rates, and I get the sense that some of my direct clients would pay more than what I’m charging. But to find direct clients, you have to have a clear specialization; you have to have the confidence to put yourself out there; you have to be an excellent translator; you have to know how to include the client in the translation process, not “just translate;” you have to have a partner or backup person who can edit for you, fill in if you’re on vacation, etc. Realistically, many freelancers don’t want to do any of this, or don’t stick with any direct client marketing method long enough to see some results.
- I definitely could not meet my financial goals if I worked only for agencies. According to various compensation surveys, the average US-based freelance translator earns between 55 and 60K (US dollars) per year. My guess is that this is mostly people who are charging around 11 cents a word and translating around 500,000 words per year. If that number fits your financial goals, there’s certainly nothing wrong with it. However, it’s also important to realize that when you deduct self-employment tax, benefits, professional development, office equipment, paid vacation, etc. etc., this is roughly the equivalent of a salaried job paying in the 40s, which is not a level that meets my financial goals. And if you’re working as much as you can or as much as you want to, the only way to increase your income is to work with direct clients. This is the part of the market that I see as very different from when I started, and my sense is that this is where the “dying” concerns come from.
I hope these thoughts are helpful, and I definitely don’t see us as a dying profession!
Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. She holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College, is an ATA-certified French to English translator, and is Colorado court-certified for French interpreting. If you enjoy her posts, consider joining the Training for Translators mailing list!
Hi Corinne, Thanks for that. My entry into translation was a year-long translation internship at the Lutheran World Federation in Geneva from 1983-1984 (!). In addition to what you have observed, I can add that at that point, translators were still able to sustain themselves on translation only. As in, not even typing their own translation. One colleague there dictated his translations and had them typed up by a secretary and hand-delivered them to his clients. I was a maverick because I typed my translations on a computer and the LWF had an internal e-mail system.
I started my freelance career in 1984 in Germany and eventually taught in three different translation programs in Germany (Heidelberg, Germersheim and Cologne). I was invited to hold a talk for students in Heidelberg this past January on “Non-literary translation over the decades” (which I frightfully was authorized to talk about!) in a series hosted by a former student who is now on the faculty there. I initially turned her down because unlike you, I would not encourage my sons or my daughter to study translation (one of them did and has an MA from Kent State…) today. She begged me to come and “tell them like it is”.
One thing I told them is that they must be able to offer expanded services. Not only must they be tech-savvy, but they must be able to offer one-stop services like website design, graphic design, desktop publishing, etc. They must own this software and be able to leverage it. In the past, I could either tell clients I couldn’t handle anything but the translation (which is what I usually did) or could try to put together a package with colleagues with DPT expertise, etc.
I agree that the direct client route is the only way to make a living in this profession. It’s important to note that “direct client” does not just mean working for an individual, but rather without a middleman/middlewoman. I particularly enjoy working for companies with in-house translation departments, because you have the best of both worlds: the “direct client” relationship with “project managers” who tend to be translators themselves and generally offer fair rates and realistic working conditions (deadlines, etc).
BTW, I am a native speaker of US English in Germany, which also makes for a stronger USP.
Curious to see how many people follow in our shoes. Enrollment rates in Germany’s T&I programs are really dropping, so perhaps the pool of trained translators will be so small in the future that the employment opportunities will be better than we think!
Best,
Karen
Really interesting perspective, thanks Karen!! And I agree: working as a “pinch hitter” for companies with in-house translation departments is a great option, thanks for pointing that out. And too funny about being considered a maverick for typing your own translations! A translator here in Colorado told me about purchasing her first fax machine so that she could work with non-local agencies; it cost like $1,500 in 1985!!
Hi Karen,
The translation world is small indeed … my wife works at LWF, though as an admin assistant, because although she’s a translator (Germersheim graduate!) LWF no longer employs in-house translators, getting all their work done by freelancers. Many years ago, I worked at the ICRC with Margrit, whom you may have known when she was a translator at LWF (1980s or 1990s I think).
I just caught the end of the era when translators dictated. As a fellow maverick, I made myself highly unpopular with the head of the typing pool at my first job when I pushed for the translators to get PCs, back in 1989 (so 5 years after your experience in Geneva). She was convinced that they’d all be out on the street, but in fact the typists were successfully converted into admin assistants and enjoyed that far more.
Analogously (?) I’ve been noticing an increasing demand for English editing and a corresponding reduction in demand for translation into English, as more and more non-native-speakers write in English; I probably spend at least as much time editing as I do translating nowadays, but that’s almost certainly specific to English.
Interestingly, I’ve only once had to get heavily into the “production” side of a text, which was when I translated a PhD from Dutch to English and had to learn LaTex, Illustrator and InDesign at high speed! Otherwise, my experience has been that most clients ask me to do as little formatting as possible, but that could be because (with the exception of my PhD client) they have specialists to do the layout, and they’d only have to unpick mine if I did any! Interesting that you’ve often been called upon to provide a one-stop-shop. Maybe German clients are different?
Be that as it may, I always encourage translators to get so thoroughly familiar with their word processor (which means Word in 99% of cases) that they no longer need to think about it and can keep their brainpower for the text. It’s amazing how many folk know Trados inside out but struggle with both Word and Windows File Explorer!
And indeed, Trados Studio has been immensely useful. MultiTerm perhaps even more so; all my texts are chock full of terminology, much of it not contained in technical dictionaries, so having the fruits of my terminological research at my fingertips for the next job saves me hours.
Interesting to hear that fewer students are wanting to study translating or interpreting in Germany and even more interesting to see whether that means there’ll be fewer applicants per job in a few years.
Currently, I think the reports of translation’s demise are an exaggeration!
All the best,
Steve
And after AI there will probably be another erosion process on the rates. Having direct clients is really the only way to survive in the current market.
Thanks for that!
Excellent as usuall! I really enjoy reading your posts, they are very clear, honest, transparent and updated! I think the problem here is not how translation jobs are dying but how translators fail to keep up with the new trends. Being tech savvy is a must as well as being creative in the way we pack our services and offer real value to those direct clients but I think the most important point here is to be really trained on how to market ourselves. I once heard a translator who just opted to teach cause he did not find a decent income in the translation industry and that was about 15 years ago! I now understand why! if you do not know anything about basic and now advanced marketing strategies you are dead! and this applies to every freelancer in any industry out there! Most freelancers in general do very little to train themselves in this area and that’s where these comments really come from.
Hi Corinne,
Totally agree with what you say about direct clients versus agencies.
I’m occupied full-time with a mixture of translating and editing, for a small number of direct clients. Virtually never work for an agency, as my rates are higher than what they charge their clients. Occasionally get one that’s so desperate they’ll accept a loss on a job so as not to lose an important client, but that happens about once every five years 😀
Not only is working direct more lucrative, it’s way more rewarding. I have met virtually all my clients over the years, or at least my contact persons within the client organizations, and have come to know a fair bit about their subject matter. I can contact the authors directly with any queries.
And indeed, I have a couple of specializations and language combinations which, while not wildly exceptional, are sufficiently unusual to place me in a relatively small pool.
However, I’ve never had to do any real marketing. I started off over 30 years ago as a staff translator (and interpreter) and got my first freelance work via a colleague in that organization. Moved to another organization and got more freelance work via that. Left that organization and now do a lot of freelance work for them, though not only. Clients recommend me to colleagues and friends, etc. So my situation is not typical, and I have to admit I’m not sure where I’d start if I had to hunt for clients.
Without wishing to make you jealous, my daughter is currently studying languages at my alma mater, and translation is one of the options she’s considering. We’ve talked about the “will there still be translator’s jobs for me?” question a few times, and my conclusion has been that while MT will take over a lot of technical and general translation, texts in the fields of literature (in the widest sense — one of her foreign languages is Japanese, and she’s heavily into manga!) are likely to require flesh-and-blood translators for some time yet. We recently spent an hour reviewing her translation of two pages of a manga, and the background knowledge you needed about Japan and Japanese (popular) culture was phenomenal. DeepL would struggle, to put it mildly.
All the best,
Steve
Hi Corinne! Excellent article as usual! I have a query though about the last sentence – This is the part of the market that I see as very different from when I started, and my sense is that this is where the “dying” concerns come from.
Do you mean that the direct clients have decreased since you started and therefore it may lead to the dying profession?
Awaiting your reply!
Devaki
Thanks! No, I mean that what’s “dying” is the days of most translators finding tons of agency work that pays, let’s say, 14-16 cents per word without doing a ton of marketing.
Also, when I started a bit over 30 years ago, 15 cents/word would give you an acceptable income if you were fully occupied. At today’s prices, it would not.
Thanks, Steve! I think it depends on where you live and what you pay in taxes; when I worked for the same agencies for years and years, I could reliably do 500 finished words per hour, which at 15 cents is $75 an hour, which wouldn’t meet my financial goals now, but is also not minimum wage. However it’s rates in the single-digits where I really wonder, how are people living on this type of money.
If you can’t decently live off it, it’s an (unpleasant) hobby, not a job, imho.
Hi Corinne,
Yes, we have all survived the hypes about MT in the last 15 years and when I volunteered as mentor for the Colorado Translators Association just a few years back, I told my mentees to not worry, that because of ever increasing content there would always be enough work for everyone.
Today, I would not say that anymore, I really think this time around it is different.
The impact of AI and ChatGPT on language sector jobs will be significant and the only way for translators to remain relevant and competitive, is by retraining themselves for new emerging roles. We may skip translation all together and only generate multilingual content in the future.
I am not worried about myself, I am old enough to survive this, but if a high school or college kid asked me if becoming a translator was worth it, I would say No.
Thanks, Martina! Really interesting perspective!
Hi Corinne,
Thanks a lot for your work and this blog article in particular.
I think that one of the main challenges in translator education (at least here in Germany) is that people still don’t learn how to market their services, how to diversify and how to adapt.
If we manage to use MT/AI for tedious, repetitive tasks (inserting variables/tags, for example, or summarizing reference material) and have more time for research and creative solutions, the outlook isn’t so bad for translators supporting direct clients.
But I admit that I was shocked by the answers to a quick survey on the “going rate” at BP23 Translation Conference (0.05-0.11 EUR, very few with 0.15 EUR). But of course this were colleagues working for agencies, not for direct clients, and people from countries with very different cost of living.
My direct clients (med/medtech/pharma) have accepted that I offer project prices and that I don’t sell words but texts that appeal to the target group. It’s up to us to educate our clients!
All the best
Birgit Hofmann (beomed.de)
Thanks, Birgit! Yes, I totally agree with you about using MT/AI for the things that it’s good at, freeing you up to do the things that only humans can do. *And* I think that the majority of agencies are in more of a “good enough is good enough” market, and are under intense downward price pressure from their own end clients, hence the rates that you heard about at BP, which don’t surprise me. Thanks a lot for your comment!
You’ve all made some very interesting points here. What did Frank Zappa say once? “Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny.” Unfortunately, I think translating is going through a funny smelling phase right now – but it’s just a phase (I just knocked on wood). Good luck to all of you!
Well, I believe that translation is not an easy profession and may take a long time to settle, but I don’t feel it’s dying in any way. Still, I would appreciate the way you have explained the other side of the profession.