I once got paid NT$1000 per page, but that was from English into Danish, and that was a decade ago.
Well, I donât do German, so I canât say for sure, but work into Spanish runs about NT$1.6 to NT$2 per word these days. Iâm sure you can get more from certain clients, particularly if you are working directly for the company instead of through an agency (which typically takes minimum 50% of what the client pays). Most of what Iâve seen into Spanish is from English, not from Chinese, though.
Why not register on a translatorsâ site like ProZ.com and see what you can get there? You will probably make a lot more money even accepting âlow-paidâ jobs there (on the international market) versus the pathetic rates paid in Taiwan. :x 
:shock:
Sorry for having opened a new thread on this subject and thanks for merging it.
Ironlady, so can I as a beginner just register at the mentioned website and start translating? Sounds pretty easy, whereâs the snag?
Sure, no problem with anyone registering there. Itâs free. Unless you pay the fee, you will be a ânormalâ member, not a âplatinumâ member â which means you get certain job notifications later and canât look at the agencies ratings board for free. There might be other differences, I donât know. I forked out the money during the famous Glossika flap last year because that estimable âcompanyâ was using the board to send e-mails to clients of a certain agency in Taipei, and we needed to find out whatâs going on. I stay with it because one good job will pay for the membership fee (well, actually all the sites say thatâŚbut I have picked up a couple of good clients from this site.) A lot of the jobs offered there are low-paid (for the international market) but a) the rates might look good compared with Taipei, and b) you donât have to accept anything you donât want to accept. In my experience, usually when the client rejects your bid because he wants to take somebody who charges half what you offered, he comes back later and you re-translate the whole thing from scratch. (Donât agree to âfixâ the bad translation, though!!! 
)
Try ProZ, or thereâs another one called TranslatorsCafe (there might be a hyphen in the middle, I canât remember. Theyâre more for chatting and the message board than actual jobs, but they might gain momentum in the future.) The people at TC were mostly originally on ProZ and got disgruntled (not all of them but I think there is a major anti-ProZ sentiment on TC). There are a couple of other sites too. Just be careful what you pay for until you see if you want to spend the money or not.
You might also apply for membership in the Institute of Linguists (IOL) in Britain. Itâs unbelievably easy to get in (the main obstacle is getting the payment done in British pounds, IMHO) and it would look good to customers, particularly in certificate-conscious Taiwan! And see if the translatorsâ association in Germany would be an option as well.
The one in TaiwanâŚwellâŚ
And now theyâre talking about certification tests here in Taiwan (guess why â because the Mainland is going to do it!) Canât WAIT to see what thatâs going to look like. I went to one meeting at which a white-haired Taida professor said that he wanted things to go ahead as rapidly as posisble, and anyway there was plenty of good stuff in the New York Times that would be good for testing material. He seemed to think that giving people a newspaper article on a topic was the same as having them translate in that topic â i.e., legal translation just means knowing a few legal terms. Nothing easier!! 
Thanks Ironlady for your help. I hope you donât mind if I ask you more silly questions in a pm in the future⌠
First silly question:
Quote from ironlady
Donât I need a degree for that. Something that proofs, that Iâm a ârealâ translator and not just an MA graduate, who has nothing else to do?
Second silly question:
When you guys are talking about payment per word, would that be the words of the source text or the translation? It seems to me, that my payment would be about tree times higher, if it was the translated words, that are counted for payment⌠
There are no silly questions, only silly translators. Wait a minute, that didnât come out quite rightâŚ??? Well, anywayâŚ
There are various routes to entry to the IOL. Itâs really a sort of low-level organization in terms of translation, but clients donât know that â so itâs great for those who have not that much in the line of credentials but need something with letters after their name! If I remember correctly there are various âroutesâ you can take to gain membership. Most of them, as I said, involve figuring out how to get a payment to them in GBP as the main obstacle.
Now, if you want totally unregulated membership, the American Translatorsâ Association is the one for you. Itâs a bit over US$100 per year (thatâs without belonging to any âdivisionsâ outside your basic membership) and that puts you in the directory, which is on-line and searchable. I get quite a few jobs from them each year, but then again Iâm on it in Chinese>English, a combination in which they do not (unbelievably) have an accreditation/certification exam. If itâs English>German, for example (I think they have an exam in that one) you might not seem as attractive on the directory because people who have sat for that exam and passed it would have some kind of notation to that effect next to their names. But for Chinese>German â I donât think youâd have all that much competition!! 
And âno competitionâ is definitely good!
ProZ is anâŚinterestingâŚplace to get your feet wet, read the profiles of thousands of translators, and get a feel for what seems good and what seems stupid in terms of marketing (itâs all there, believe me!) And itâs free until/unless you decide to upgrade.
You might also want to subscribe to some of the payment practices lists or newsletters out there, not that Iâd pay actual money for them (there are free ones). ProZ also offers the âBlue Boardâ which lists translatorsâ assessments of agency performance, particularly with regard to whether or not they forked over the money on time. However as I know at least one case where an âagencyâ listed as a bad payer actually does not exist (and has never existed in any way, shape or form) I would be cautious about believing every word these lists say. Sometimes people are just pissed off and want to strike back at a client.
As for the pricing question â it depends on the language combination, of course. I donât know about Chinese>German word counts and the normal ratios of one to the other. Iâm not the worldâs greatest accountant, thatâs for sure, and usually I charge on source text (per Chinese character) because the ratio is better for Chinese>English, usually, and because it avoids arguments with the client, lets them budget better, etc. Basically you can negotiate any price both parties feel is agreeable. In Europe they often charge per line, not per word (take an average number of words or characters per line through the document to figure out how much you should price this atâŚalthough I canât deal with âper lineâ, too weird for me!!) Some jobs are done at a flat rate (like certificates). Most translators also have a minimum job price â even if itâs just a few words, it takes effort to set up the job, do it, send it out, bill it and follow it up. Itâs not cost-effective if you donât get a basic amount of money for it.
Maybe we should start up some kind of organization, like âNon-Native-Chinese-Speaking Translators and Interpreters in Taiwanâ. The title isnât too catchy, but something along those lines might actually be a pretty good idea. We could trade ideas on âclient educationâ (convincing clients that itâs worthwhile to pay a decent price to get a decent translation into someoneâs native language, instead of turning out the CRAP I was treated to last night while waiting for a friend in the MRT â WHO in the world thought it was a good idea to have those huge stickers of the rules for the MRT made up without at least having a native speaker proofread them!! Shame, shame, shame!!), figure out where the clients are, talk about marketing, and cooperate to offer more languages than we could individuallyâŚstuff like thatâŚbut we need a better name â any ideas??
[quote=âironladyâ]
Maybe we should start up some kind of organization, like âNon-Native-Chinese-Speaking Translators and Interpreters in Taiwanâ. The title isnât too catchy, but something along those lines might actually be a pretty good idea. We could trade ideas on âclient education,â figure out where the clients are, talk about marketing, and cooperate to offer more languages than we could individuallyâŚstuff like thatâŚbut we need a better name â any ideas??[/quote]
Something along the lines of "Native Target Language Translators and Interpreters in Taiwan? "
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Reflects the focus of the organization â promoting value of translations done by native speakers of the target language
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Doesnât exclude native-Chinese speakers. Seems as if the interests of native Chinese speakers translating into Chinese would fall in line with the goals of the organization. It would also provide a chance to spread the sense of ânative target language onlyâ professionalism to current/potential offenders.
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However, probably wouldnât attract many native-Chinese speakers anyway, given the widespread belief that non-Chinese cannot possibly master the complexities of the language. As far as their interests are concerned, theyâd feel they were just preaching to the choir.
HmmâŚI like your idea for this kind of focus. As you say, itâs more inclusive, yet the nature of the people involved will act as a natural filter. And, of course, if there ARE Chinese native speakers who believe they should really only translate into their native language, Iâd love to have them on board!!
SoâŚanyone for a genuine laminated membership card? (Of course weâll need a spiffy design!!)
Maybe you could call yourselves âNon-Oriental Bilingual Translaters and Interpreters in Taiwanâ
The downside is that your acronym is NOBTITs.
I guess thatâs better than âNon-Oriental Bilingual Inclusive Group of Translaters and Interpreters in Taiwanâ â NOBIGTITs. :?
Definitely â because based on a former description of me on this board during the Glossika debacle, that title would exclude my participation. 
Almost everyone I know who does C>E translation complains about the difficulty in educating the client. No need to rehash here every misconception that clients might have about getting good translation services.
On the American Translatorâs Association website, there is a guide for buyers of translation:
http://www.atnet.org/Getting_it_right.pdf
After reading this guide, I was left wondering if there is anything similar in Chinese out there on the internet. Have any of the professional translators here come across any client education materials in Chinese? Do you think such materials would be useful for you to give to clients?
Perhaps customers who donât bother to find out about translation themselves before buying it are a lost cause. Iâm not a professional translator. I work for a manufacturing company in Guangdong. I sometimes go to trade fairs or to visit potential suppliers. Companies are always sending us their promotion materials, and most of them are âbilingual.â Only the companies owned by MNCâs from N. America, Europe or Japan bother with getting decent translations done for their materials. All the rest are complete garbage. Not only are they not done by native English speakers; it is obvious that the person who did the âtranslationâ doesnât even understand the Chinese source material. These companies usually have a university student do it.
For 90% of these companies, I donât think they should even bother with English translations for their materials. For some of them, their margins are already pretty tight, and a lot of them are just supplying Hong Kong or Taiwanese companies. It seems that they think having English on their materials is just for image purposes. However, I see the same low standard on the promotional materials from Taiwanese and HK firms that deal mostly with foreign buyers. Since these companies have a bit more money to spend on marketing and because they are marketing themselves to foreigners, they might be educable. Could a âtranslation buying guideâ in Chinese sway any of these companies? [/url]
To me
Translating is not about substiution of an English word for a Chiense or vice versa
You also got to look into who the audience is you are translating for, blah blah blah. In that respect, I would not charge a flat fee per word but would also load it with a fudge factor . This fudge factor would be for the bit that goes beyond the transaltion and into conveying the concept and idea to the audience.
Maybe you should come up with some pricing per type i.e technical, business etc and add this an an overall percentage to the translation. This way anyone with good English can literally translate what the Chinese means ( you can hire some student to do this cheaply if your Chinese is not up to it), but then you can keep the money made on the markup made on you conveying the meaning or instruction to the audience. I would also do a markup on the actual translation to skim a little off this.
However here in taiwan based on what I have seen, some translation not necessarily done by Native speakers is poor and inconsistent. I think sometimes the locals are not to worried about the details of the translation but instead like to see the english alphabet strung together on their brochures etc.
PS My company got a contract translated into Chinese by a well known transalation company. My wife who studied law in college ( or at least did a couple of modules of it related to business) asked was it a high school kid that translated this. The intent of the contract was totally lost, and some of the Chinese made no sense (netither grammitcal or logical sense)
[quote=âJive Turkeyâ]Perhaps customers who donât bother to find out about translation themselves before buying it are a lost cause. Iâm not a professional translator. I work for a manufacturing company in Guangdong. I sometimes go to trade fairs or to visit potential suppliers. Companies are always sending us their promotion materials, and most of them are âbilingual.â Only the companies owned by MNCâs from N. America, Europe or Japan bother with getting decent translations done for their materials. All the rest are complete garbage. Not only are they not done by native English speakers; it is obvious that the person who did the âtranslationâ doesnât even understand the Chinese source material. These companies usually have a university student do it.
For 90% of these companies, I donât think they should even bother with English translations for their materials. For some of them, their margins are already pretty tight, and a lot of them are just supplying Hong Kong or Taiwanese companies. It seems that they think having English on their materials is just for image purposes. However, I see the same low standard on the promotional materials from Taiwanese and HK firms that deal mostly with foreign buyers. Since these companies have a bit more money to spend on marketing and because they are marketing themselves to foreigners, they might be educable. Could a âtranslation buying guideâ in Chinese sway any of these companies? [/url][/quote]
Thatâs blinkers thinking
if they do not translate it into a different language (the material related to a product) then how can they every expect to sell it outside the boundaries where their language is used
They should be doing this and seeing it as a marketing tool, instead of looking at it as more an expense that they grudgingly have to spend, and then just do it have assed because of this 
Question: I went to Eslite the other day to look for a book of poems by a famous English-language poet and they only had a chinese translation, which got me thinking. I wouldnât buy that book because I canât read Chinese. But even if I could, a Chinese translation of English-language poems couldnât possibly be comparable, could it? Even if one were fluent in Chinese and English, and wrote literature in both languages, a poem basically cannot be translated can it? Even more than a novel, it just seems to have too many subleties. Itâs like speaking of translating a painting. It simply isnât possible. Isnât that true?
its possible but I think you can never translate or convey the actually meaning⌠since poems and that are a liitle subjective, open to interpreation and peopleâs understanding, sometimes the translation is the translation interrrupation on their understanding of what he/she thinks is being said or implied or given
Poems you cannot translate I think⌠sometimes what is dais is said and you cannot can it in any shape or form else the whole point is missed
I could never understand Shakespeare being translated into Chinese, when the language was everything, and the plots simple re-hashes. But one thing that is utterly nonsensical is the English translation of 300 Tang poems I had at university. Like that works.
[quote=âTNTâ][quote=âJive Turkeyâ]Perhaps customers who donât bother to find out about translation themselves before buying it are a lost cause. Iâm not a professional translator. I work for a manufacturing company in Guangdong. I sometimes go to trade fairs or to visit potential suppliers. Companies are always sending us their promotion materials, and most of them are âbilingual.â Only the companies owned by MNCâs from N. America, Europe or Japan bother with getting decent translations done for their materials. All the rest are complete garbage. Not only are they not done by native English speakers; it is obvious that the person who did the âtranslationâ doesnât even understand the Chinese source material. These companies usually have a university student do it.
For 90% of these companies, I donât think they should even bother with English translations for their materials. For some of them, their margins are already pretty tight, and a lot of them are just supplying Hong Kong or Taiwanese companies. It seems that they think having English on their materials is just for image purposes. However, I see the same low standard on the promotional materials from Taiwanese and HK firms that deal mostly with foreign buyers. Since these companies have a bit more money to spend on marketing and because they are marketing themselves to foreigners, they might be educable. Could a âtranslation buying guideâ in Chinese sway any of these companies? [/url][/quote]
Thatâs blinkers thinking
if they do not translate it into a different language (the material related to a product) then how can they every expect to sell it outside the boundaries where their language is used
They should be doing this and seeing it as a marketing tool, instead of looking at it as more an expense that they grudgingly have to spend, and then just do it have assed because of this [/quote]
Why would they need to sell outside the boundaries where their language is used? Are you sure there is even a market for the things they do/produce outside of China? When promoting your company or deciding what services/products to provide, you canât be all things to all people. It seems you arenât familiar with the structure of the supply chain for most things exported from China. The poorly translated brochures I described above are from companies that are quite far back in the supply chain. They will never have the opportunity to sell to first world English speaking buyers because those buyers donât exist.
Iâll describe a product my company (HK owned) makes: multimedia speakers. Letâs just consider the plastic casing, not the circuit boards or the speaker driver (those are slightly higher value-added things that might be exported on there own, but probably just to another developing country for further processing). Suppose my company is Taiwan or HK owned and managed. A company like this would probably have an office in Hong Kong or Taiwan, but most of its workforce will be over the border. The company would sell its speakers to companies like Sony, Philips, Panasonic-National, Altec Lansing, Logitech, etc. Those companiesâ staffs in Hong Kong/China are ALL Chinese. If there are any gweilos, they are high up enough that they arenât going to be dealing directly with suppliers.
So my HK/Taiwan company might assemble the speakers. To get the plastic casing, we might do the tooling and injection ourselves if we are one of the bigger companies in the business. More often than not, though, a company like ours would outsource that plastic casing to a plastic injection factory. Such a plastic injection factory would rarely have the opportunity to sell directly to a foreignerâforeigners would rarely have the need to just purchase plastic parts to take back to their country for further processing. If that plastic injection factory is bigger, it will make its own injection molds or tooling. If the plastic injection factory is smaller, it will outsource the tooling to an independent tooling shop. The plastic injection factory will also need to buy raw plastic from a plastics supplier. All of these stages are in China. Why would a tooling shop or plastics supplier need to advertise in English if the supply chain is: plastics supplier>tooling shop/injection factory>speaker assembly factory>HK/Taiwan parent company>HK/Taiwan/Chinese managed subsidiary of an MNC (Altec Lansing, Logitech)>retailer such as Walmart, Carefour, etc? Why should a company market itself to the wrong audience?
The only time when a plastic or tooling company is going to deal with a foreigner is when a.) a Chinese company one, two or three steps down the supply chain brings its foreign buyer by for a quick visit/inspection; or b.) a HK/Taiwan trading company doing sourcing for foreigners brings a client by for a short inspection. I meet lots of foreingers this way, and I can assure you that they donât give a sh!t if the tooling factoryâs brochure has readable Engish. They want to see the details on the factory floor. They donât expect slick advertising from a tooler or a supplier of big bags of plastic beeds. They expect decent advertising and communication from the HK/Taiwan parent comany or trading company, not from the steps above them in the supply chain. For most mainland companies, the reason they canât sell directly to foreign buyers isnât because their advertising is poor; itâs because they donât have anything to sell to them. Once they actually have a product that a foreign company needs to directly source from them, then they will need better advertising. At the present stage of economic development in China, Taiwan and HK, the people who need to concentrate on how to improve their marketing or how to build a brand are the HK/Taiwan run companies that deal directly with foreigners or foreign owned companies.