Are you bilingual or multilingual? Do you know how to speak, read and write in two or more languages? If so, then you have the main skill needed to make money as a translator.
Nowadays, more and more translation jobs are moving online. Clients from all over the world are preferring to hire online translators to translate audio, video, and written media from one language to the next.
The online translation industry is valued at about forty billion dollars. Translators are getting paid hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars for their services.
You too can start making money online as a translator. Follow the guide below to learn how:
- Register as an online translator on online translation job sites
There are many companies that allow translators to sign up, provide translation services, and get paid for their work. They include Upwork, ProZ, Gengo, Verbalizeit, Language Line, Apen, and TextMaster.
The easiest ones to register on as a new translator are Upwork and ProZ. They are easy to register on but their pay is modest.
However, you should still register on either of them as a beginner to gain experience as an online translator before attempting to register on the other more advanced translation job sites.
Doing this will increase your chances of getting accepted as a translator on the advanced translation job sites.
- Sharpen your translation skills/ knowledge
Once you have established yourself as an online translator and built your profile on one or two online translation job sites, you should sharpen your translation skills.
You can do this by taking courses preferably on all the languages you translate frequently. Make sure the courses come with certificates.
If you do this and display the certification on your profile, you will have positioned yourself as an expert in both languages. This will enable you to charge premium fees as an advanced/ expert translator.
- Start your own translation service website
As an online translator on an online translation job site such as Gengo or Apen, part of your income will be cut and retained by the company as a fee for their third-party role in connecting you with the client.
To earn the full amount from clients, you should start your own online translation service website. Although you will need to market it to get a good number of clients, once it starts getting enough traffic, you will love the amount of income it will generate for you.
You can hire other translators in case the workload becomes too much for you to handle and retain a small fraction of their salaries as a commission for your role in giving them work.
Final word
As you can see, you can make money online in several ways as an online translator. The ways include registering on online translation job sites, positioning yourself as an expert translator, and starting your own translation services website.Other ways you can make money as an online translator include teaching a language to foreign students whose language you speak. You can do this for an hourly charge. You can also create a translation course or a language course and sell it on Udemy.com for a small fee.
