12 TheLinguistAPRIL/MAY www.iol.org.ukFEATURESJohn Gardam, Udo Jorg and Christine Pocockreport on the results of the long-awaited CIOL/ITI 2011Rates and Salaries Survey for translators and interpretersPlans to carry out a joint ITI/CIOL Rates andSalaries Survey had been afoot for manyyears. Eventually, in the spring of 2010, aWorking Group (WG) was set up by bothCouncils and tasked with design andimplementation of the project. After a greatdeal of work, the online survey went live inAugust 2011 and, by the closing date of 8 October 2011, more than 1,750 responseshad been submitted. This figure isconsiderably higher than anything achievedin previous surveys of either institute andlooks good even by international comparison. As this is the first joint survey, comparingresults with previous surveys might beproblematic, as this time the survey coveragewas much larger and it might be difficult toevaluate whether significant changes are dueto market developments or differences in thesurvey population; in other words, onewould not necessarily be comparing like withlike. This needs to be borne in mindwhenever comparisons are made with the2001 ITI or the 1999 IoL survey. It is also the first time that such a surveywas open to linguists who are not membersof either ITI or CIOL. As they could not bemore than £40,000. 474 (43%) reportedincome of less than £20,000. The top earners turned out to be translators ratherthan interpreters. Fig. 1: Freelance translators/interpreters,distribution of annual gross income (£) inrespondents' most recent tax year (for a moredetailed analysis see the Master Report). Of the 1,337 who responded to thequestion about translation workload, 44%reported that their translation workload hadincreased compared with five years ago, 30%reported a decrease and 26% no change.The situation was worse for the 510interpreters who responded, where thecorresponding figures were 29% (increase),45% (decrease) and 26% (no change).Of the 1,428 who submitted a response tothe question about working for translationcompanies/agencies, more than 80% saidthey did so on a regular basis. When asked to compare their current rateswith rates charged five years ago, 42% of the1,431 respondents said they were higher,38% indicated that their rates have remainedthe same and 10% reported lower rates; theremaining 10% had ticked 'not applicable',indicating that they had entered theprofession fairly recently.About a third of 1,420 freelancers have a website. In response to a question Your rates revealedspecifically targeted in the pre-surveyadvertising, it is not surprising that they onlymake up 3% of all responses received. The joint survey is considerably morecomprehensive and complex than previoussurveys and this has resulted in a wealth ofdata, which has been published in a verydetailed Master Report (30+ pages), availablefree of charge to members of both institutes.CIOL members have received a copy of thedetailed survey report via email. In this summary report we will focus onsome key findings and hope this will inspirereaders to have a closer look at the fullMaster Report.General90% of respondents were between 30 and 69years of age, with more than half falling intothe 40-59 age bracket. Of the total numberof respondents, just over two-thirds werewomen. English was the mother tongue ofmore than half of the respondents and justunder three-quarters were based in the UK.86% of respondents (interpreters andtranslators) were working on a freelance basisand the median for years of experienceranged from 8 to 13 years (part-time/full-time). In light of the above-mentioned agedistribution, this seems rather low. 1,100 freelance respondents providedfigures on their gross annual income. 35%were part-time freelancers with a mediangross income from translating/interpreting of£8,000. The median annual gross income forthose who reported being full-time translatorsor interpreters was in the region of £31,000. 137 of the freelance translators andinterpreters (just over 12%) reported incomesof more than £50,000, and 232 (21%), of Most interpreters willhave had to cope withlower rates, withoutthe benefit of a tool toboost productivityup to £9,999£10,000-£19,999£20,000-£29,999£30,000-£39,999£40,000-£49,999£50,000and overGross annual income of freelance interpreters/translators

Vol/51 No/2 2012APRIL/MAYTheLinguist13FEATURESThis summary report shows only the medianmost frequent rates, and more experiencedor specialised translators are likely to chargemore. More detailed information on themaximum and median rates, and data onthe lowest, highest and most frequent ratescharged, can be found in the Master Report.Fig. 2: Translation of all languages into English,rates based on source language (£/1,000),medians of most frequently charged rate foragencies and direct clients.Even though we have mentioned that itcan be problematic to compare the jointsurvey with previous surveys, we could notresist putting the results into some historicalperspective. However, we have to reiteratethe proviso that we might not be comparinglike with like. Looking at the data in the 2001 ITI report,we note that in absolute terms, most agencyrates in Fig. 2 have increased (with theexception of Albanian, which, on the basis ofthe 2011 responses, has remained the same,and Chinese and Turkish, which have actuallygone down). The situation for direct clientrates is similar; in absolute terms they allwent up, with the exception of Turkish.However, in real terms, only the languageson the very right in the table managed tokeep pace with inflation (Finnish for bothagency and direct-client rates and Danish fordirect-client rates only). One can only hopethat affected translators will have tackled thedilemma of falling rates in real terms byboosting productivity through the use of CAT.More translation rates are reported in thediagrams below:Fig. 3: Translation from English, rates based onsource language (£/1,000), medians of mostfrequently charged rate for agency and directclients. There was insufficient data to report onagency-client rates for Turkish and direct-clientrates for Finnish and Arabic/Farsi.Fig. 4: Translation into English, rates based ontarget language (£/1,000), medians of mostfrequently charged rate for agencies and directclients. There was insufficient data to report onagency-client rates for Polish and direct-clientrates for Swedish.BOOK-KEEPINGThe majority of freelance translatorsreported that they earnt less than£30,000 a yearabout whether they knew how muchbusiness it generated, two thirds of the 445 who responded could not say and ofthe remaining third, 72% indicated that itgenerated less than 10% of their business.Only 10 respondents stated that theirwebsite generated more than 50% of their workload.77% of 1,268 freelancers reported beingsole traders and of these just 24% wereregistered for VAT. Freelance translatorsThe Master Report gives details of the rates charged per 1,000 words, based onboth source and target language wordcounts for translations into and out ofEnglish for many languages. It providesmedian and maximum rates in threecategories: lowest rate, highest rate andmost frequent rate. These threesubcategories offered respondents thepossibility of indicating a range of rates forany specific language combination.Inspired by another major T&I associationin Europe (thank you BDÜ!), the WGintroduced a 'rule' whereby only rates forlanguage combinations and rate categoriesfor which we received at least five responses,would be reported. It was felt that this wouldensure respondent anonymity and that thepublished data was more representative.Whenever we received fewer than fiveresponses for a particular rate category orlanguage combination, we attempted togroup them in as meaningful a way aspossible and have reported them accordingly. The following diagram shows the medianfigures for the most frequent rate, based onsource-language word-count into English.PolishAgencyclientsDirectclients£160£140£120£100£80£60£40£20£0TurkishRussianSpanishFrenchChineseGermanItalianPortugueseJapanese and KoreanAlbanianPortuguese (Brazilian)SwedishDutchFinnishDanish75756570706579706571717575778585858588909010010010782919089135135130 77 PolishAgencyclientsDirectclients£160£140£120£100£80£60£40£20£0TurkishRomanianSpanishFrenchGermanItalianPortugueseJapanese and KoreanPortuguese (Brazilian)ChineseDutchRussianArabic/Farsi6968656075708080758384851006099103FinnishWelshCzech65707070728080736885708760901407 AgencyclientsDirectclients£90£80£70£60£50£40£30£20£10£0PolishRussianSpanishItalianFrenchGermanSwedish£70£70£65£65£60£73£68£66£80£80£85£70© ISTOCKPHOTO