Paul Gray
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        Like many others, I started in-house at a translation company. I had had a little experience before that, but the experience of, as I have explained it to others, "interning at a major inner-city hospital" made me a better word doctor. There I got to see all kinds of patients, some savable and some not. I was under the pressure you need to develop the arrogance you need to be a translator. (NB: This does not mean arrogance toward the client or arrogance toward the word. It means the ability to decide what the text really means and how you are going to say it -- genuflecting toward the written words along the way -- and then to decide that it is done -- as good as it's going to get -- and it's time to move on to the next patient/text. Unlike in a classroom, real-life translators do not have the time, and should not have the inclination, to spend a lot of time on maybe it means this and maybe it means that. (Which is also why you should specialize and why your specialties should be fields you're interested in so you'll know enough to fill in the gaps and realize what it means and why it's phrased the way it is and how this is actually said in the field.)
        On rates, I agree that working for direct, end-user clients pays better. Yes, you have to do more, but I would end up wanting to do that "more" anyway, and this way I get paid for it. (This is things like sometimes talking with the client-author and making tables look like tables.) On having to talk with the client, I assume that if you are working for an agency, the contact there is the client and you have to talk with that person just the same as I have to talk with my contacts at the end-user clients.
        Further on rates, I would urge people to look at their lifestyles, decide how much they need, divide that by how many pages they feel comfortable doing, and then add another 20% or so (nestegg money) to get the per/page rate. Then adjust that by whatever makes you feel comfortable with it. If you are too busy at that per-page rate -- if you have more work than you are comfortable doing -- raise your rates. If you are in Japan, I would expect you to be pulling down Y5,000 per page for J-to-E, and I would not be surprised if you said you got up to twice that. This assumes, of course, that you know the languages, that you know the field, and that you are working for end-user clients and interacting with them in their source language.
        Fred Uleman
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        I've been enjoying this discussion of how a person should get started as a freelance translator. I notice that people seem to be advising based on their own backgrounds, that is, those who came to translation from hands-on work in technical fields recommend getting hands-on experience in a technical field, those who started out as in-house translators recommend starting out as an in-house translator, etc.
        I would like to put in a good word for not having real-world experience, not working in-house, not having a specialty, etc. That's the way I started out ten years ago, and I've had no problem keeping busy--yes, sometimes too busy--since about the third month, and my rates are at the top of the levels that have been mentioned here.
        The person who started this thread said he "had two years of college Japanese and lived in Japan for a year, " which is not too different from what I had when I started out (zero years of college Japanese and two-and-a-half years in Japan). So while I'm sure being an engineer, working in-house, etc., are all excellent preparation, they are by no means necessary. Find some work, even on a volunteer basis, do it well and on time, and find some more. There's a lot out there.
        Tom Gally
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        As many Honyakkers may remember, I posted a question about getting started back in the summer of 1994. I received many kind, supportive, and helpful personal e-mail messages (thanks again!), many of which offered advice along the lines of that posted here. Based on my own experience, I would have to say that one does not necessarily have to start out as a technical professional or an in-house professional.
        During my academic days, I did a few minor translation projects, and I enjoyed them, because they allowed me to use my language skills at a level about that required to teach college students to say Eki wa doko desu ka. After leaving academia, I worked as a free-lance editor, but I wanted to break into translation. This is the point at which Honyakkers first met me.

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