I receive a lot of emails from people
looking to get into translation and many of the questions I’m asked are common.
So occasionally I try to answer them here.
One that I get asked is how long the hours
are. This is one of the hardest questions to answer, because it depends. How
many hours you work depends on how much work you get asked to do, how much work
you want to do, what type of projects you take on, and how much time and energy
each assignment requires.
You could take on one short translation job
each month or you could work more than full-time as a translator.
Personally, I’ve been at both extremes, and
it’s depended on my circumstances (i.e. how dependent I am on the income from
translation and what other jobs I have). You can fairly easily build up a
career as a freelance non-fiction translator, but to work full-time as a
literary translator is generally harder.
How many hours a week do other translators
work?
2 comments:
I always work the same amount of time every week, regardless of the number of projects I have.
My philosophy is that there is always something I can do, even if I'm not translating: catching up on accounting, doing marketing tasks, learning all sorts of things to improve my translation skills, cleaning my computer, rearranging/updating my glossaries and so on.
Anthony
I think that's a great philosophy. I always try to improve and learn new things too! I also try to instil that view in my students!
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