Hi.  It’s been a while since I came through here, but pending changes in my situation (economic and otherwise) have me pondering more seriously the chances of finding some English checking and/or editing opportunities on a freelance basis.  I am employed full-time as an assistant professor at a university a few hours away from the Tokyo area.  My weekends are my own, and I generally have no classes to teach during the January-March term each year.  I would very much like to put some of those free hours to use doing some work that I can do from my home or office.  So far, I have only managed to land a one-off transcription job.  However, I hope to find a way to make some modest supplemental income doing what I am often asked to do by professors for free on a personal-request basis.  Apart from the obvious question of how and where to find such opportunities, can anyone offer guidance concerning reasonable or “going” rates, presumably on a “per-word” or “per-page” basis?  For what it’s worth, I have included some personal background information in my SWET profile.  I was a lawyer for 7 years, and I am in my 6th year of employment teaching English at a university of science and technology.

Thank you in advance for whatever advice you might offer.

Sincerely,

Brian Drier

Hello, Brian.

Sorry if this response comes too late to do you any good, but here it is nonetheless. If you are interested in doing this kind of work on a freelance basis, I think there are certainly opportunities available, but you’ll need to do a bit of legwork finding agencies or other sources of work (like direct clients). As far as what to charge is concerned, that depends on a number of factors, among them:

1.) What kind of work are we talking about? Specialized subject matter commands better rates than general material.

2.) How much demand is there for your services? If the phone never stops ringing, that’s a sure sign that your rates are too low, but if you’ve only had a single “one-off transcription job,” I would imagine that you could offer somewhat lower rates in the beginning to attract new clients. (Be careful about this, though, because once you’ve set a specific rate for a given client, they usually don’t like it very much if you increase that rate later on. In many cases, the only way to increase your rates is to acquire new clients and simply let the older ones know that you can no longer accept work at the rates they have come to expect.)

3.) Are you getting work from translation agencies or directly from specific clients? Agency work inevitably pays less, because the agency is taking a cut of the fees it charges for your work, but with direct clients you can often charge quite a bit more. The downside of working with direct clients, though, is that they are often less flexible.

In light of what little I know about your situation, I would imagine that you could probably get a few yen per word (a mid-range, single-digit number) for work done for agencies and perhaps even a bit more (maybe a low double-digit number) for work done for direct clients. The range of what you can charge for this kind of work varies quite a bit, and it is ultimately dependent upon how well you can negotiate (and what kind of budget the client has), so a concrete figure is hard to provide, but I hope this gives you some idea of what you might ask for starting out.

Note that if you also have other skills, like translation or the ability to handle DTP work, you might be able to negotiate a better rate on the editing work by offering it as part of a package deal with some of your other skills.

Good luck!

Thanks for a useful reply with some concrete suggestions.  I wouldn’t be averse to dealing with agencies, rather than directly with clients.  I imagine that, if I put some experience together, then I might be able to parlay that into some direct-client opportunities.  Again, I’m not looking for large amounts of work or considerable sums of money, just something supplemental that might also provide a modest base for post-retirement income.  I’d like to do as my father has done, on a personal note, doing some private work (in his case, tax preparations) now into his 80’s as a way to make post-retirement life more comfortable.  (In my case, I’m also concerned about the here-and-now issue of paying back housing loans that will take effect this year, as I’ve just bought land and am having a house built.)

Again, I appreciate your advice, and I’ll take it to heart.

Sincerely,

Brian Drier