What is the going rate for C-E translators in Beijing?

[mrtoga]

Seems like we have a number of C-E translators browsing these boards. I have been offered some translation work (legal / corporate reporting etc.) from a company in Beijing. Can anyone give me an idea of what I should be charging? I will essentially be freelance, but it will be a large volume - possibly taking up most of my working days for the forseeable future. Is anyone getting paid a monthly wage as a C-E translator in Beijing?

The guy wants me to name a price - I don't want to high-ball him to the extent he just doesn't take the offer seriously, but I don't want to undersell myself either (which is what he is hoping I will do I think).

Thanks for any advice people can give me!

[roddy]

There really isn't much consistency in the market. I've heard of people taking work at anything from 1000Y / 1000 characters to 120Y /1000. Last month I was offered some work at 100Y / 1000 which I turned down on price, and discovered later that they'd ended up getting the work done at 700Y / 1000 - I'd have done it happily at half that, but they didn't come back to me and the original offer made it seem like bargaining would be a waste of time. I also saw the finished product, and it wasn't great.

If you want a monthly figure for what will be effectively full-time work, I'd aim for US$2000 per month, but I'm kind of plucking that figure out of the air and I won't be surprised if someone comes along and tells me I'm wrong (all the people I know who do freelance translation are members here). It's a lot less than you might make charging freelance rates if you had the equivalent amount of work, but if it's all coming from one source a kind of bulk discount needs to be figured in. If you need a per thousand characters figure (which is how freelance work is usually charged) then get a sample and figure out how much you can do per hour then ask for whatever gives you a decent hourly rate.

Not very concrete advice, I'm afraid, but I'm not sure anyone really knows, as the 100Y > 700Y example above shows

[mrtoga]

Thanks Roddy. I was going to ask for more than that monthly figure you quoted based on the fact that it will be work on contract translation - I have quite a bit of experience of that from Japan. Anyway, it is a good starting point. Anyone else have any figures?

[zhwj]

Different fields have different standards, apparently. I went into an interview recently for a long-term job editing academic papers for international publication and seriously low-balled the estimate based on my other translation experience - I was informed that translation companies will shepherd a paper to publication for anywhere between US$500 and US$800, and this for a 3000-word document.

For full-time work, I'd say that Roddy's estimate for a monthly expectation is a fairly good base.

On the other hand, many domestic organizations have unrealistically low price estimates, in my opinion - I quoted someone 150Y/k once, and he reacted like I'd asked him to put me up in a five-star business suite while I worked on the job - he was thinking more along the lines of 70Y, or at the highest 80Y per 1000 characters.

[mrtoga]

That is just such a huge contrast with Japanese - English translations. Oh well, I may have to settle for less but I will at least try to highball him. Got a trial translation to do now so may be on here with the odd question.........

[roddy]

Yeah, expectations of local clients are often for very low prices, probably because there are so many local firms offering those prices with corresponding quality. It really is an unregulated market with no publically acknowledged norms, and that means anything goes. It's basically an 'ask for what you can get' situation.

Let us know what transpires . . .

[mrtoga]

Well this company is a WFOE so may pay more. The reports I am translating will have to go to top accounting firms and investment banks so the client knows they cannot be half-assed (half-arsed??).

Do you guys ever have any translator get togethers, or are there particular bars popular with the "translator scene" in Beijing? I know these on-line forums sometimes spill over into the "real world" - is any of that happening with Chinese-forums??

[mlomker]

One of my favorite blogs is http://johnbiesnecker.com/

He recently got a job as a full-time translator in Shanghai at US $2k/month. Perhaps salaries are a little higher Shanghai...I don't know.

[rose~]

I was offered 12,000 RMB as a full-time salaried translator in Shanghai, rising to 15,000 after 6 months, for legal translation. Legal tranlsation seems to be paid higher.

People I have told think that was a high offer, I think the firm was slightly desperate at the time which I knew and so it was a bargaining tool for me. You can gauge this by asking around and searching for how long they have had an advertisment out for.

Anyway I didn't accept as I got an offer from somewhere better.

Yes, both salaries and living costs seem to be higher in SH.

[roddy]

Interesting to know that there are these full-time jobs out there. I don't think I know of anyone doing only translation in a full-time role - I can think of people who do a lot of translation as a part of their job, but their actual function is more research / analysis and the translation is just a necessary part of that. Are these jobs with translation firms, or with other types of companies that can justify an in-house translator?

[rose~]

Sorry, I should have said, I do other stuff as well, which is not surprising cos I don't have a degree in translation or anything.

Having said that, I have seen full-time translation positions advertised, but most of them did not sepcify native English speakers which means that there are thousands of over-qualified Chinese people available...

[opper567]

I am considering becoming a translator one day myself. Would I be able to make more money or get different jobs in China since I can speak a few European languages (Russian, Spanish, Portuguese) and eventually Chinese? Or is English the only important language?

[jbiesnecker]

Sorry I'm a latecomer to the thread.

The company I work for, a pretty well-respected foreign-owned translation house in Shanghai, pays a flat rate of 160RMB per thousand characters of source material to freelance translators. There are some multipliers for very rushed jobs and such, but 160RMB is what you're going to get most of the time.

For full-timers like myself, the salary is anywhere from about 12K-18K per month, depending on experience and the like. The company I work for is particularly good and counts a number of Fortune 50 (50, not 500) companies as their regular clients.

It beats the holy hell out of teaching English, too

[roddy]

Thanks, interesing. Do you have any idea what rate they are charging clients?

[wiley]

Hey Everyone,

Love this thread, finally something I can contribute to.

I started doing freelance translation back in 2003, and in 2004 got hired as a fulltime translator at a local hospital in Beijing by making a cold call. The benefits package was very good, and the before-tax salary was US2k/m.

Since then I've gone back to school to improve my chinese, but have been following friends who are doing translations and watching the market. Right now I would not consider anything lower than RMB200/1000 chars, unless the volume was head-turning, like 20,000 chars or up. Under no circumstances would I go below RMB160/1000. Over several years of translation I've also garnered a few "fun" observations for budding would-be translators who want to get an idea of what the field is like.

1.) A professional translator can do between 3,000-5,000 chars per day (C->E) depending on several factors: difficulty of the material, area expertise of the translator, and format of the document (pdfs and paper docs are MUCH slower than editable electronic docs). If someone is doing more than 5,000c/d then quality control starts to become a concern, you need to be fresh, and need time to proofread.

2.) With C->E translations, you get what you pay for. As was mentioned before in this thread, you can get C->E translation for 60 kuai/1000 chars. but the product will be unusable chinglish. Unusuable for the purposes of selling to a foreign company anyway.

3.) The tactic of many local (and foreign!) employers is to ask a potential hire or contractor what they would LIKE to make for a job. This is a function of an immature and unregulated market (as a previous post aptly noted.) A smart, experienced foreigner with better than decent language skills should be commanding a salary of no less than US $2,000/m in Beijing after their first year of work regardless of what they're doing. Bringing it back to translation, a good C->E translator should have no qualms about asking for 200kuai /1000 chars with a straight face. That is a starting price for relatively low volume. People who really need publishable quality english will pay for it, I recently saw an academic journal needing translators that was paying 400rmb/1000chars for 15,000 char articles. That's a great price, and for that price, they are going to attract talented people who can deliver a quality product.

4.) As a freelance translator it is possible to build up a portfolio of steady clients that pay well, but your ability to make money is bottlenecked at that 3,000-5,000 characters a day mark. It's simple math. 3 chars*5 days a week*4 weeks a month @ .2kuai/char = 12,000RMB/m. And remember, thats if you get STEADY work, and it takes a fair amount of time to find that number of clients. The only way to make a lot of money as a translator is to start a company, and that has its own risks and mafans associated with it. OR alternately find a job with a company that requires some translation and some other duties, duties with growth potential.

I could talk about this forever, excited to hear what everyone else has to say (if it hasn't already been said.)

Wiley

[mr.stinky]

what about the going rate for straight english-english transcription of television broadcasts?

(en-ch translation done later). can't give a word count, depends on speed of the talker.

what would be a good rate per minute of recording?

long ago, i did german-english translation in berlin.

rate was DM1.50/line, which worked out to an average of $50/page.

[roddy]

That's great info Wiley, thanks. I'm surprised you were able to get a full-time translating job on spec like that.

I think your comments on ability to make money being bottlenecked are a little pessimistic. You are assuming work is all at 200/1000, but I think over time you are likely to build up better paying clients - if you can get even half of your work at the 400Y/1000 rate you saw advertised, then that's what, 18,000Y a month? And as you get more clients, the number of rush and special-attention jobs coming in increases.

I don't get the equivalent of full-time work, but very rarely indeed do any work at less than 300 / per.

Also, you mention USD2000 / month as a starting rate for a full-time translator. It seems reasonable to me that an experienced freelancer with a good client base will be making much more than that new in-house guy (or gal).

I'd agree with what you say about quantity per day and quality control - I just knocked back a job which would undoubtably have paid well, but it was 16 pages of technical documentation, PDF format, in traditional characters. It would have been worth doing, but would have taken so long I'd need to delay stuff for regular clients which isn't wise.

Anyone do any interpretation? I'd love to do it but still haven't fixed my pronunciation.

[mrtoga]

Great info guys. I am in a position where the client has a lot of volume that needs to be of publishing quality, but I would do it on a freelance basis rather than being directly employed (I have my own company here in China). In this way the client would not have the hassle of paying me a flat rate every month, no holiday pay, no employment contract and visa issues, and of course I can easily be disposed of if the quality / quantity of my translations are not up to scratch.

So I am thinking of trying for a fair bit more than US$2000 per month. Anyway have sent in a trial translation and will see what they come back with.

Roddy, is it not possible to use software to "read" the pdf into Word format and then convert to simplified?

[roddy]

Sounds like you might go from zero freelance work to full-time freelancer in one fell swoop. Git.

Off-topic aside - the pdf was only passable quality scans of charts, so I'd have had to extract jpg's from the pdf and run that through a Chinese OCR and I find it hard to believe the result would have been great. He also wanted a 24 hour turnaround and frankly I have better things to do today.

[wiley]

My estimates are conservative, I guess that its a personality trait of mine to low-ball, budget around the low estimate, then be pleasantly surprised if my expectations are exceeded. I am surprised, however, that you are regularly finding jobs at 300yuan/1000chars. For labor in china that's getting to be a very decent price, and yeah, if you can get 3000 chars a day at that price as a freelancer, you are beating 2000us/month.

Maybe this leads into the question of where you find work as a freelancer? When I was actively looking I had several contacts who would call me with work when they were overloaded, and occasionally I would get something off of proz.com. I'm curious as to where other people are finding clients - mostly through personal contacts? Cold calls? Advertising?