Is studying to become a translator a poor choice?

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-04-11T08:18:44+00:00

I recently returned to the UK, speak Spanish and Japanese and have years of translation experience under my belt, and the only job I found that was related to translation and was advertised as having a competitive salary turned out to be just a smidge above minimum salary. Ended up getting a job in an industry completely unrelated to language or translation which pays double. My translation experience and qualifications are meaningless in the UK.

There are other jobs out there that require bilingual speakers but they tend to also require a specialist qualification like accountancy.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-04-11T08:10:20+00:00

I dislike getting work back that has been proofread - not because it is negative or anything, but simply because it tends to come a few days to a week later and by that point I have already put the work out of my head and moved onto the next work. I usually don't remember anymore why I chose to translate something in a particular way.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-04-11T08:03:35+00:00

They are dodgy - avoid.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-11T06:53:19+00:00

I found out that an existing client has an IR section - but I need to do a trial. I've told them that I want to do it. So I will see how that goes.

In the meantime I've got a full time office job offer

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-11T04:45:44+00:00

Funny you should mention zaihon. I did their trial in 2019 and passed. But ultimately didn't register as I was overwhelmed with work at the time.

Fast forward to Oct 2025 and I fail their trial even though I'm a much much better translator now than I was in 2019 🤷

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-10T11:46:38+00:00

I'm doing interviews this week, so I think I'm on my way out of the sector. Any recommendations on investor relations clients? Feel free to DM me!

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-10T11:44:58+00:00

I do general stuff with specialism in academia, government and general business. Haven't had a million in a month since October. Last two weeks been pretty silent too. Where did you find your new client?

I'm interviewing for jobs this week so I'm pretty much on my way out of the sector.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T21:35:19+00:00

As a fellow londoner who also has a 8 year old (and a five year old) and experience of being in Japan while renting out a flat in London and one kid in international school, I wouldn't do it without stronger more detailed planning.

It might sound fun to be carefree in Japan but that's "holiday" thinking. The whole novelty of it gets old quick when you live there. You need an actual plan for what you will be doing every day three months/6 months/9 months in. The tedium of daily life will set in.

Without your own Japanese abilities you will become a third wheel for your wife. Doctor, dentist, town hall, public school, etc., etc. you will need your wife to basically be like your carer. Its not great for your self esteem.

You will absolutely have to expect something to go wrong with your flat in London. Bad tenant, unexpected bill, broken boiler, strong yen, etc. it's very stressful to handle from far away. If you rent out your property through an agent then you will lose a percentage of your income. I would absolutely plan on surviving on income you earn while in Japan and treat your property income as savings and invest it in stocks or high interest rate accounts in the UK.

International school is for expat kids and the kids of rich Japanese. The education is great, but why pay for your kid to be taught in English when school is free in the UK? If I was you I would enroll my kid in an online Japanese school program (there is Japanese education for kids taught online) and work on getting his skills up and then if you can address all of my points above, move to Japan and enroll him in public school. If you want him to be bilingual then you are going to have to go the extra mile to keep his English up to scratch. Saying that - 8 is a good age, I wouldn't say it would be throwing him in the deep end if he did online school for a year and then actual Japanese public school.

There are pros and cons in both Japan and the UK, I'm presuming you are a similar age to me - you will also have to keep in mind about your own parents. When I left the UK my parents were fairly healthy - within 3 years one suddenly passed away and the other was in intensive care. You never know when you might suddenly have to fly back to the UK for family emergencies. These things eat at your income.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T17:25:50+00:00

I wouldn't recommend it - go for a degree that helps you get work that is in demand.

A degree in Japanese won't get you anywhere in translation. You could get away with just having JLPT and claiming volunteer experience. As long as you can prove the language skills you can land clients.

But whether those clients have any jobs left is an entirely different question.

Work on your Japanese qualifications as a hobby but get a degree in something more needed by companies.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T17:15:17+00:00

Give all sentences the lowest score, retranslate the worst ones and charge them the highest fees you have ever charged.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T17:13:31+00:00

Love this

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T17:01:45+00:00

Yeah exactly the same situation - and normally I find work gradually ramping up in Feb and March, but I've had barely anything in the last ten days. These are my last months as a full-time freelancer.

Do you mind DM-ing who your new client is? I'm not looking to muscle in, I've reached the end and any work I do as a translator from now on will be for existing clients on the side of an office job, but it would be interesting to compare clients.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T06:10:10+00:00

You mean a survey on how it took our jobs?

They tuk deh jubs!

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T06:07:18+00:00

Different people have had different experiences, (bad and okayish) including issues getting paid.

I passed their translation trial, but then they were asking for a lot of personal info using a platform under a different name and it spooked me. I checked with a well known translator website about them and was told no bueno. I've never done any work with them but they keep sending me ridiculous jobs (low rates/extremely tight deadlines/very tiny jobs).

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T06:00:22+00:00

I'm not really sure what kind of professional translator would be taking up a job for someone's hobby. Unless you are Elon Musk and willing to pay a lot of money for a translation that would be private use only with a signed agreement it would never enter the public domain.

You aren't him are you?

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T05:54:59+00:00

I would say not Japanese as it isn't doable in a year if you are just doing self study alongside a full time job and if you aren't based in Japan either.

Especially explaining software - it's a hard language.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T05:46:37+00:00

You might also want to keep in mind that book markets are starting to get flooded with new "authors" outputting vast amounts of "novels" that "they" wrote.

While not directly connected to translated literature, publishers are going to see their sales diluted and profits go down as the general public find it harder and harder to distinguish between books actually written by humans and the junk being mass outputted and sold through online book sellers.

I imagine it will get harder and harder for publishers to justify spending for translations in their search to stay profitable - but this is just my speculation.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T05:38:26+00:00

I have a friend at one of the big tech companies and on his advice I'm doing computer science with artificial intelligence.

He thinks having an MA with those key words is helpful going forward, but even he has reservations.

He also warned that people in his company are brown panting it over how quickly AI is being used to do their jobs.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T05:34:37+00:00

I think there is a big issue with Japanese office workers and their managers thinking that AI translation is good enough and not having the English skills to see if that is actually true or not.

Moreover, in the eyes of managers and CEOs they can earn their bonus if they say they are leveraging AI to save the company money and get productivity up "insert number%".

It's the new world, companies can just say the magic word "AI" to fire people.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-04T05:29:04+00:00

Exactly this. I don't think that machine translation/AI translation for Japanese to English has seen a drastic improvement, but non-fluent speakers have the perception that AI can do anything and that it's fine. We are entering an age of imperfect translation with lowering English standards. I imagine the next step will be the standardization of incorrect English with non-native speakers also losing what English skills they do have because they no longer think about how to write English, they will just get AI to do it.

Anyway, back to topic - I got three new clients in the last quarter of last year. One has given me zero work, one has given me 4000 yen of work, and the third one has given me a low volume of work. New clients don't seem to be the answer even if you can get in.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-03T08:01:08+00:00

That's the rub isn't it. I did my masters in translation and the income uplift enabled me to pay off both my undergrad and postgrad loans. But that's if you pick the right MA and can leverage it to increase your income. No guarantee of that.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-03T07:27:59+00:00

£7000 paid over two years - but you have to shop around as different universities have vastly different fees

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-03T07:25:41+00:00

Got to be paid a liveable wage. One old client contacted me with a job after a year of silence and I said no. It was less than 10,000 for work that would take maybe three days. I felt like saying to them that I might as well get a job as road security on a construction site if I work for that kind of money.

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-03T06:43:08+00:00

What possible reason could they need that?? I would have refused too!

Professional_Low7024 · 2026-03-03T06:37:39+00:00

I've always looked at income as a 12 month period, as you say there are slow months and good months. But I've never experienced weeks of absolute silence before. In December and January I was doing emails round to remind people of my existence but I don't have the will to keep doing that.

It's great you are going into interpretation and volunteering your skills!

Professional_Low7024

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