Is the human translation expensive? It can be said that different people have different views on it. Some people think it is expensive and some people think it is not expensive.
As for me, I have been engaged in translating English to Chinese and Chinese to English for many years. I graduated from college with an English major and selected the computer outsourcing as another major. So, I can be considered a translator who is compatible with arts and sciences. After graduation, my first job was an English teacher in an English training center. Because this job was not good for my throat, I jumped into the translation industry. In the beginning, I translated patents. Later, I started to translate other types of documents, such as manual translation, mechanical translation, website translation, IT translation, legal translation, contract translation, etc.
As a full-time English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translator, my monthly income is the basic salary plus commission. The latter is calculated by combining the number and quality of my translations. Certainly, for different companies, I will get different rewards each month.
In 2015, I resigned from the job and returned to my family. Afterwards, I signed agreements with various translation companies to work as a part-time English-to-Chinese and Chinese-to-English translator at home. At this time, I was only cooperating with domestic translation companies and the remuneration was settled in RMB. After working in such a way for about two years, I officially entered the international market and have been doing like this until now.
For more than a decade, I have witnessed the changes in the translation industry and translation prices over the years. Overall, the price remains stable, but the customer demands for higher and higher quality.
Whether it is a company that needs translation services or an individual who needs translation services, the translated documents are often used internationally. Generally speaking, these customers don’t really care about the price. To be precise, they want better quality with more reasonable prices. Although the current unit prices in the translation market vary from high to low, they are generally stable and are relatively comparable to the level of the translator who takes the task.
Therefore, for human translation, if the customer wants to obtain good quality with reasonable price, it is best to find a translator who meets the conditions. Actually, it does not matter whether the translator is one part of a translation company or works alone.
In conclusion, I personally think that the price of the human translation is actually not expensive.