Suggestions Greatly Appreciated

Business Money
1

What is the going rate for proof reading per word in Taiwan?

  • 2NT Per Word
  • 3NT Per Word
  • 4NT Per Word
  • 5NT Per Word
  • More

0 voters

:help: I work in Taipei as a Technical Writer and at certain times I have a lot of free time. My dilemma is these times are not predictale to a large extent. If anyone out there could recommend things to do on-line to earn some extra cash please let me know.

I have heard of proofreading, editing…etc. can’t find the links!!!

Also, I’ve seen those sites you pay a registration fee to, then complete surveys and get paid for…anyone out there who gave it a try???

Awaiting your responses…

:notworthy: Thanks!

2

Those look more like rates for translation than for proofreading. Proofreading would pay less than NT$2 per word. But then again, proofreading is a much less intensive task than translation.

3

It really depends on the original quality of the writing. You could spend an evening fixing some badly written tripe and wind up with 400 NT, or you could end up tweaking a few sentences in a 10,000 word report and earn 20,000 NT.

In the first case, you get screwed; in the second, the client does. Unless you know the quality ahead of time or have dealt with that client before, a blind per word rate is risky.

An hourly rate is good, but many people who have one-off projects that need editing won’t like the uncertainty, unless you already have a good reputation or have been referred to them, etc.

In my opinion, the best thing to do is to quote a range (e.g. 1-4 NT per word) with the actual charge depending on how much work you have to do. At the same time ask for a one page sample. See how bad/good it is, and then offer a fixed price for the whole project. If the writing is really poor and you end up going to the higher end of your range, you might want to be diplomatic when you tell them (i.e., it’s a really complicated subject, etc).

4

Be aware that some people try (and fail) to avoid paying translation fees by running material through a machine translator and then sending it to a proofreader, who will charge them less. Such stuff is generally undecipherable gibberish and should be rejected with the advice to contact a translator.

And I’m not saying this just because I happen to be a translator!!