How Much Do Translators Earn?
The job site Indeed reported in May 2025 that UK translators earned an average £30,501 per year.
As the graph above suggests: translation salaries vary considerably. They depend on a number of factors including the country of employment, language pair, language direction, specialisation and whether the translator works as a freelancer or in-house employee.
Earning Variables for Translators
Language Pair and Direction
Language pair refers to the language being translated to and from. For example, a translator may convert Chinese into English, French into German, or Vietnamese into Spanish. The direction of translation between two languages is also an earning variable. Translating Chinese to English is more valuable than English to Chinese because there is a lower supply of English speakers proficient in Chinese than there are Chinese speakers proficient in English. Language pair and direction influence the earning potential of a translator because of supply and demand. Languages like French and German are in high demand but there are also lots of professionals that can translate them. For languages where demand exceeds supply, such as Vietnamese, translators tend to earn more.
Evening and Weekend Work
It is possible for translators to charge more when they work evenings and weekends. A freelancer may choose, for example, to add a 25% surcharge to their normal rate. In reality, not everybody does, nor is it necessarily a good idea.
Speed
The length of a project depends on its specific requirements, but as a general rule, a faster translator can get more work done in less time, and thus has the potential to earn more money. This isn’t always true. Quantity without quality is a sure-fire way for a translator to lose clients and earn less in the long term.
Freelance Translator Salary
The salary of a freelance translator is much harder to determine than that of an in-house translator because they have more control over the type, quantity, and price of the work that they do.
As a translator, freelancing has its financial advantages and disadvantages. A highly skilled and experienced translator could earn over £40,000 per year as a company employee. As a freelance translator, they could earn as little as £10,000 per year or as much as £100,000 per year. Simply, freelance translators must have the ability and skills to run their own business.
Earning Variables for Freelance Translators
Clients
Freelancers can work directly with clients or through an agency. An agency is responsible for finding and communicating with clients. They then ask a freelancer, or a team of translators, to work on the client’s project. Working with an agency is perhaps the less risky employment type, but it may mean lower pay, as the agency earns a proportion of the client’s budget. Working directly with clients has its advantages and disadvantages. It could mean working on higher value projects, but to do so requires better sales, marketing, and communication skills. Without these, the salary could easily be much lower than working with an agency or as an employee.
Business Skills
Freelance translators are essentially self-employed business owners. They are responsible for finding their own work, marketing themselves, and selling their services — directly to clients or through an agency. As previously discussed, this has its financial pros and cons when compared to working as an in-house translator. Ultimately, the better one’s business acumen, the more likely they are to earn a high salary. Some freelance translators need a job on top of their translation work, others earn hundreds of thousands of pounds per year.
