Are we the only ones?
In the translation and interpreting industry we like to complain: the workload is less compared to the good old days, it’s poorly paid, we have to struggle against bottom-feeding agencies who are the evil incarnate, and clients are trying to buy our services for free. In top of this, there is an ever-present figure that no one has actually even seen, this mythological creature “who accepts peanuts and destroys the market”. Now it is true that the situation is less than idyllic, but I am wondering: is the world trying to run translators and interpreters out of business on purpose, in a sort of professional vendetta for something our ancestors did that started a feud we don’t even know about, or is it that maybe we are not the only ones?
-Are we all alone or is there someone out there?-
This is a question that has been on my mind for a few months now, and I have finally decided to get down to it, do some research and find out whether we’re actively discriminated against or if we’re in good company. Firstly, I’ve selected a few professions that present similar traits to ours: freelance-based, possibly working in the humanities/editorial industry, and most importantly, you should really need a qualification or degree to work properly, but anyone with some basic knowledge of the trade can claim they’re professional. I’ve therefore selected the followings: (copy)writers, graphic designers and web developers. Secondly, I have searched the web to find out how much people should get paid in these sectors, how and how much they advise each other and newcomers to charge, and what is the general state of the industry according to insiders. Once I had gathered sufficient data to have a good enough idea of the average fee, I moved on to the final step: finding out how much they were actually charging in the various sectors. Lacking a wide-enough professional network I had to resort to freelance platforms, which if not totally ideal, have provided me with a good panorama of on the one hand, the people finding work on these platforms, and on the other, the clients looking for freelancers.
This is what I have found
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All of these professions share a fair few common traits and issues with us: a LOW end of the market is mentioned, newcomers will charge towards the low-end of the acceptable bracket, and this last one varies immensely, going in cases from an hourly rate of £75 to double the amount! The issue of how to charge is also very common, with the per hour-per project duality splitting most freelancers. One thing that made me reflect was that the general advice for writers and copywriter was NOT TO CHARGE PER WORD, as this creates in the mind of the client the perception of buying a commodity rather than a service, diminishing the value of our craft. One thing all the other sectors mention and in comparison, is not enough stressed in our industry, is the value of the work we are doing and how to charge accordingly: we are not selling words on a page, instead we are creating meaningful content that at the end of the day will help that client make more money, or create value itself.
Talking about concrete figures, here’s what I have found to be the average charged for every profession:
-(Copy)writers: average daily rate £339,
-Graphic designers: average daily rate £220, but should actually be around £300
-Web developers: average hourly rate £40, with people known to charge as little as £12
Now, let’s have a look to what the market, at least that of freelance platforms, offers in terms of freelancers, jobs and clients. You can find the figures of the number of freelances providing their services for the different price brackets (fee per hour) here below:
On Peopleperhours
Writers:
- Less than £10: 3769
£10/30: 4413
£30/50: 791
More than £50: 226
Copywriters:
Less than £10: 1682
£10/30: 3620
330/50: 971
Graphic designers
Less than £10: 5358
£10/30: 6853
£30/50: 1387
More than £50: 346 (one person chargin £999)
Web developers
Less than £10: 8360
£10/30: 8042
£30/50: 1754
More than £50: 618
On Upwork (in dollars):
Writers:
Less than $10: 24864
$10/30: 31432
$30/60: 7692
More than $60: 2495
Copywriters
Less than $10: 316
$10/30: 569
$30/60: 336
More than $60: 218
Graphic designers
Less than $10: +40000 (yes, you read that right)
$10/30: 61846 (yes, you read that right, again)
$30/60: 21007
More than $60:7085
Web developers
Less than $10: 59129
$10/30: 85369
$30/60: 25644
More than $60: 9643
Translators, in terms of people working in the expected/acceptable/average fee bracket, did actually better:
People per hour:
Less than £10: 549
£10/30: 869
£30/50: 81
More than £50: 17
Upwork
Less than $10: 37224
$10/30: 44826
$30/60: 7023
More than $60: 1889
These numbers show us that even in other professions there is a low-end market, with unqualified or under-qualified individuals performing work for less than what they should be paid (which is sometimes less than the minimum wage in the UK) and there are clients offering work without having any idea of what they should expect to pay, and of course underestimating the budget and ending up offering peanuts. All of the above inevitably ends up affecting, as in our case, the middle and high-ends of the market in ways we know way too well.
To be honest, I was not surprised by my discovery, but it has certainly deepened my concerns as to why all of this is happening. Of course, part of it lies in the downsides of the gig economy where cheap labour is thriving, and we can clearly see that this is not something dictated by the culture of the source or target market that we work with, I fear that the problem is more structural. As I mentioned before all professions investigated require a qualification or degree to be practiced properly, but anyone who thinks they master two languages, or are good at photoshop, or know how to write even the most basic code, can claim “I am a *insert profession here*”. Conversely, a client who is not educated on what is required to do the job and boils translation down to “know two languages” or writing an article as “write well in English”, will expect and look for no more than those skills, offering what he or she thinks suitable.
The problems with these professions is the de-professionalisation they are suffering, and in a certain way, promoting. Until the client knows who we are, what we do, how we do it and why we do it like that, we can have little hope to be recognised as a fully-fledged profession like solicitors, doctors and plumbers. Now, you might say to me: “but the client doesn’t want to know all this stuff, they just want the job done”. I think this is where value kicks in, together with quality. There is only so much you can do when you’re paid an x amount of money and you’re given a y amount of time to perform a job: show it to them, and show what they’re actually gaining and why they should be paying more – I don’t think they would expect to casually enter a car dealer wanting a Ferrari but “due to budget limitation” pretend to pay the price of a Fiat Duna.
This is a type of rhetoric that needs to be used by everyone, not just us freelancers: agencies, professional associations and bodies, as well as people working in-house. We need to start reaffirming our professionalism and empower ourselves: we have studied a degree like everyone else, we act as professionals like everyone else, we pay taxes like everyone else, it’s time we get paid and treated like everyone else. So, it’s time to stop blaming “those who accept peanuts” and accusing the whole system of perpetrating a world-wide discrimination against your kind, it’s time to show the world who you are, and what you and your work are worth!
What is your view on this? Where does the problem lie?
