I hear stories of translators making $125,000 or more per year. Whats the deal?
First, people tend to lie about two things in life: money and sex. They usually claim to have or get more of it than they really do. That said, I suggest you adjust any claims you hear downward by 10% or so, then consider the difference between gross and net income. For a technical translator working from English to languages like German, Chinese, or Japanese for direct clients, providing editing, proofreading, DTP, and printing services, the gross income for a given year could well exceed $125,000. After expenses though, particularly associated with hiring people to do the editing, proofreading, etc., chances are this person would be making around $80,000. To put this another way, I have only heard one credible claim of a person making over $100,000 per year, and that translator made clear the fact that he did nothing but translate for 365 days straight, in technical areas of defense technology from English to Russian. So yes, in principle, such income is possible, but in practice, yo
