Translator/House Cleaner. A golden opportunity if there ever was one.

Tradutores reclamam maiores honorários na Justiça.

Ladies and gentlemen, time for our commercials again...

Localization News and Jobs.

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DN on the TJ. Danilo Nogueira writes about pricing in the Translation Journal.

The embarrassment about charging for our work or being considered too much of a mercenary--and what is a free lance but a mercenary soldier?--is pure rubbish. There is no way you can "overcharge" an agency: agencies know the market and cannot be fooled.

There is no way you can overcharge a direct client either: they will ask for quotes from several other people, before making their decision. Of course, you can fool your neighbor into believing translators are paid ten dollars a word, provided the neighbor has not seen your car, but that is a different story.

(...)

Professional advance requires a two-pronged approach: you must both invest heavily in the profession and market your services as actively as you can. You may also have to make some difficult choices. For instance, there is no such a thing as a well-paid translator of philosophy books. This may be very frustrating to many of us and, at a certain point of my life, frustrated me too, because of my love for the history of music, which is not exactly a cornucopia of translatorial income. No more. I have come to the conclusion that I want to be a translator, and a well paid one, regardless of the subject to be translated.

This, perhaps, is the first step to climb in the professional ladder...

Even Under Saddam Pay Was Better Than This.
The revolt of Basra began when a printed notice was pinned to the front gate of the former presidential palace, now the headquarters of the Desert Rats.
The British Army was slashing its rates of pay for locally hired staff “due to circumstances beyond our control”, it announced.

The wages of skilled workers were to be cut to $22 (£13.80) a month, those of the unskilled to $10. Graduates and trained professionals, who had been working as translators and drivers for about £1.30 a day, found themselves being paid 50p or less. The effect was immediate: less than three weeks after liberating Iraq’s second-largest city, the British forces had a strike on their hands.

(Read more)

Translation, a Market in Crisis? Article by Danilo Nogueira at the latest edition of Translation Journal.