Rate of pay for French to English translation work

[gonegrey56]

I would be grateful for any guidance please. My student dd has done some translation work for a European fashion company - she basically translated their catalogue of clothes into an appealing English language website . Sales have gone up ! The company (very small) now want her to do further work, on an ad hoc basis. She has no idea what to charge - I think they gave her 200 euros for the previous work (which took about 20 hrs, it was complicated and she did the work very well).
Any thoughts on a reasonable rate to request? Is such work usually calculated on a cost per word or page basis? She would welcome the work but does not want to be exploited or charge too much ! ( and it needs to be properly invoiced etc for tax reasons I assume )...

Translation is normally charged per 1000 words (of the source text). Rates can vary wildly, but for French>English would generally be around EUR 80-100 per 1000 words.

Hope this helps and good luck to your dd :)

She may find that having done the first batch of work for what I would consider a rock-bottom price, the customer is now unwilling to hike the price up to something reasonable. But equally, I assume she has no actual qualifications so couldn't necessarily demand a market price.

Tell her to take a look at www.proz.com. While not definitive, it does have guideline prices for each language combination.

Thank you both, that is very helpful . I have passed the advice on . All good experience for her of the sometimes tricky world of work!