2026: The halftime report

Greetings, subscribers! I hope all of you in the U.S. had a great Fourth of July weekend!

I’m writing this on July 2 before taking the long weekend off, and as of now there are four spots left in the July session of Direct client research lab, my class that gives you personalized direct client marketing help. Registration is $195, all past sessions have sold out, and registration is open until July 9 or when all of the spots are taken! 

Registration is also open for this month’s master class; I’m really looking forward to guest instructor Lee Densmer’s tips on Breaking into the content writing and content strategy market. She’ll teach us how to use our translation and subject-matter skills as a starting point for offering writing services, perhaps even to your existing clients! Registration is $75 and the live class is on Tuesday, July 21. 

2026: The halftime report!

Well, here we are at the mid-point of 2026. Kind of crazy, but it’s a good opportunity to look at how things are going, what’s working, what’s not, and where we’re headed for the second half of the year. 

First, a few reminders! Lately I’ve been really enjoying Amelia Hruby’s podcast Off the Grid, and her approach to talking about money and income as a freelancer. Remember that:

• My money situation is about me, not about you. If you find it helpful to read about other freelancers’ income profiles, read on! If it stresses you out and makes you feel bad about yourself, stop here! 
• People will have different reactions to my income report, ranging from “How do you even spend all of that money??” (actual quote from someone on LinkedIn), to “That’s it??? Shouldn’t you be earning more than that??” 
•   I talk about my income because I teach other freelancers how to make more money, and I want to show that it’s possible to earn six figures as a solopreneur in the language business, without working crazy hours or outsourcing a ton of work. That’s my motivation; and I think that in the spirit of transparency, if I’m going to tell you that this is possible, I need to show you how I do it. 
• I tend to consider three factors when I do this analysis: how much I earned, how much I enjoyed the work, and how life is going in general. That might serve as a jumping-off point for your own analysis! 

The first half of 2026, by the numbers 

As I wrote about in my 2025 year-end wrapup post, last year was my highest-earning year in 23 years of freelancing. Finally, I reached the freelance equivalent of a six-figure income (which I would estimate to be about 140K). And yet, I did it partially by doing what I tell everyone else not to do: working slightly too much, having a scarcity mindset, and sacrificing time for my creative interests. 

I also realize that complaining about having too much work is a privilege. When I finished my conference interpreting Master’s five years ago, my dream was to interpret maybe 50 days a year. In reality, last year I interpreted about 180 days, and this year will be somewhat less (by choice), but still well over 100 because I’m already at 79 total. So I don’t want to come off as a whiner who doesn’t appreciate what she’s got. I love my work and I feel fortunate to be doing so much of it. 

 In the first half of 2026:

• I earned US $68,000 after subcontracting. If you’ve read these posts before, you know that when I say “I earned…,” I mean the total amount, minus what I paid out to my guest online course instructors. 
• Of that, $38,000 was from direct language work (interpreting, translating, and writing), and $30,000 was from teaching, writing, and consulting. 
• As compared to the first half of 2025, I did slightly more court interpreting, slightly less conference interpreting, slightly more interpreting for direct clients, slightly less translating for direct clients, and a lot more writing for direct clients 

This is not at the level I was earning last year. I’m guessing I’m going to end this year between 130 and 135K, but my only hard and fast goal is to earn more than 125K. And:

• Life feels good. This is what’s most important to me. I’m on a pretty constant quest to earn more money, because I think that as freelancers, we have a lot of “under” going on. Undervaluing our services, undercharging for them, underestimating what we’re capable of. I’d really like to have a 200K year at some point. Probably not this year, but I have some new ideas for the future that may get my income to that level. 
• As planned, I’m working less by choice. So far this year, I’ve taken two 10-day blocks where I worked an hour a day or less. One was a true vacation (family ski trip in January) and one was my daughter’s university graduation and job move. And I’ve got a two-week true vacation coming up in late August/early September. I’ve also been doing less “working for the sake of working” and allocating more time to my creative interests. I’m happy! 
• I’m feeling more confident about my own resilience. Guess what, the techniques that I teach to all of you actually work, because I landed a large new client through a cold-pitch e-mail about six months ago. This gave me confidence that if I were to lose a major client, I could find a new one to replace them. 

What next? 

Goals for the rest of the year:

• Conference interpreting work slows way down in the summer, so I’m devoting most of August to writing the 20th anniversary edition of How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator
• I’m working on an Interpreter Basic Training class for T4T. This will take a while to put together. Maybe launching in September? 
• I recently took two literary translation classes (yay for ALTA’s summer series!) and I have a book in the public domain that I want to get going on translating 
• I’m finally committing to time tracking!! This has been a big gap in my business data for a long time. I time-tracked at the end of 2024 when I did individual business coaching, and haven’t logged on to Toggl since. Until today, friends! It’s running right now, telling me that so far today, I’ve spent 73 minutes on e-mail and administrative work, and 21 minutes revising this newsletter. I’m also using Toggle as a de facto Pomodoro timer, where I watch it count up to 25 minutes on a specific task and then take a break. 

The bigger picture

No question, the language business has been on a serious rollercoaster ride since the arrival of ChatGPT. And I still believe that there is a lot of really good work out there for us: the key is to adapt, when most of us would rather keep doing what we’ve been doing. 

Most of us also don’t deal that well with situations where multiple conflicting things are true at once.

I’ve talked to a good handful of established translators who I really respect, and who are Just Done. As in, “I’m starting school in September to become an X-ray technician.” “My husband’s family owns a vacation rental business and I’m going to work for them.” While simultaneously, I’ve heard things like, “A year ago I was ready to give up; today I worked for four different clients.” “Pursuing direct clients was really, really hard at first, and now I’m happier and earning more money than at any time in my freelance career.” 

It’s possible. I’m not here to tell you that adapting and reinventing are easy or comfortable, but I’m here to tell you that you can do it. 

That’s it! Over to you! Hopefully this helps you with your own analysis, and you can respond and tell me how it’s going if you want to.