Speaker 1: Which are the highest-paid languages in the translation industry? Coming up. Hello and welcome back to the Freelanceverse. I hope you're all doing well. As you know, this week was supposed to be the next episode of Specialized about marketing translation. However, I talked to the panelists and we all thought that this week would not be the appropriate time to upload this video in the light of recent events in Ukraine. We didn't feel it's appropriate to upload such an uplifting and motivating video. I hope things will lighten up in some way and I can upload it next week. But of course our thoughts right now are with all the people affected by this horrible tragedy. And I really sincerely hope that soon we will have some kind of diplomatic solution. Until then, I can't do more than just wish a lot of strength to everyone that's affected. So in order to still give you a video today, I thought I would do something a bit more neutral, a bit more just informative to let you guys know about a certain topic. So that's why this week's video will be about the highest-paid languages in the translation industry. Even though most of us get into this industry due to, you know, the love for languages that we all share, promoting intercultural exchange, for example. But let's be honest, money is a big factor whenever you choose a career path. And in translation, that's actually really interesting because the salary you earn can, unfortunately, in my opinion, depend a lot on the languages you work with. And for most of us, the language combinations are not really a choice, right? You just happen to have learned certain languages and then you work with them. But of course, there are people who actually start learning a language in order to translate from or to them, right? Mostly from them because learning a language late in your life and then providing translations into these languages is very hard. I did a lot of research over the weekend to come up with the top 10 highest-paid languages. But I have to say there is so much contradicting information out there. So it's quite hard to find a promising list. So I will put all the links that I used to compile this list down below. But this is not the list from a certain study. This is a list that I compiled myself based on other articles and also not only articles, but also a first-hand experience from other people. Now you will see the language is quite tricky because it's not technically the languages that you can charge the most for, right? Because the languages you can charge the most for are not the languages that you will make the most money with, if that makes sense. An example, if you are in, let's say, an Icelandic to Urdu translator, for example, medical, let's say, first of all, that's amazing because you're probably the only one in the world, right? But it also means that you might get, I don't know, one to five jobs a year, right? Even though you can then charge maybe up to, I don't know, something crazy, 60, 70 cents per word and make a lot of money per job. But if you don't get the necessary amount of jobs, then you can't make a lot of money. So you have to ask yourself, would you rather make five times $1,000 a year or would you rather make 50 times $200, you know? So charging highly doesn't necessarily mean earning a lot. What you want to do is finding the sweet spot, like the perfect middle ground between a lot of demand and little supply, right? If there's a lot of demand for a language, but little translators doing it, then you can charge a lot and have a lot of work. Good examples are Asian languages, English to Chinese, Chinese to English, English-Japanese, Japanese to English. These are very good examples of high demand, but not as many translators doing it. So there's actually very good per word rates in English-Japanese, for example, or Japanese to English. Arabic, on the other hand, is an interesting one. It's always coming up consistently as very high in the most earning languages lists, but there is a high demand, a very high demand, but also a very high supply, right? What this means is that there is a significant amount of people making an extraordinary living with Arabic translations, but at the same time, there is a very big amount of people as well who make very little and undercharge a lot because there's such a big supply, right? So that's an interesting language where it's even more important to find the sweet spot. So after knowing all these facts, take this list that I'm about to show you with a grain of salt. It depends on a lot of factors and you have to really focus on yourself first. These are the top 10 languages that you can make the most money with in the translation industry. We have English, French, German, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Italian and Dutch. There is not much point for me to rank these in terms of which one is number one, which one is number 10, because as I said, it depends on so many factors and you can't really... Yeah, are you employed? Are you a freelancer? Are you selling yourself properly? Which specialization do you work in? So many things come into effect and I see so many numbers now that I did this research. I see so many numbers floating around online about what a translator can make, should make. It all doesn't matter, right? I see that, okay, a translator should make £35,000 or $45,000 a year. That doesn't mean anything, right? For someone in the US, 45,000 a year is not a lot. That's actually quite underpaid to live a good life, at least at the coasts. But however, if you live in a country with a very low cost of living, like Moldova, let's say, 45,000 a year is huge, right? You would be rich there. So it all depends on you. You need to look at your own country, at your own country's economic situation, where you live as well. You don't necessarily live in the country, the language that you work with, right? Like for me, I live in Belgium, but I'm a German translator. So there are a lot of effects that are specific to you. So check what you need in your country to live a very good life. Look up the prices, the normal rates in your language combination, and then go from there. I think it's fair to say, to group the top four languages that I mentioned, English, French, German, and Spanish, into kind of the rank number one in terms of how much money you can make, simply because they are the languages most in demand together with Arabic. But there is not the extreme oversupply that happens in Arabic, right? They are official languages in the EU, in the UN, in a lot of official entities. So these four languages I would put on top. But all the ones that I mentioned in the top ten are very good starting points. So if you have these in your language combinations, that's a great start. If you don't, don't despair, right? If you work from Portuguese, if you work from, as I said, like all the Nordic languages. Nordic languages are interesting because they are usually charged quite highly, right? You can charge decent per word rates, up to 20, 30 cents. But as I said, not a lot of demand, at least not as much demand as for German, Spanish, French, and English. If you are good, if you can specialize, if you can niche down, have a great network, build a lot of connections, then these languages are perfectly fine to make a very good living, right? It doesn't mean if your language is not on this list that you can't make it. That's simply an indication. There you go. That's all I have for today. A rather short video due to the circumstances I explained. I hope I will upload next Monday the marketing translation video. It's a great one and I really want to publish it and build a lot of, you know, hype around it and share it everywhere. But this week is not the time. So I hope you're all safe out there. Take care and see you next week. Bye. Bye.