Guides
Wages and labour costs for a translation agency business
What a translation agency pays linguists, revisers and coordinators, and which labour cost figures to pull from BLS, O*NET and your own payroll.
What to take away
- A translation agency's largest controllable cost is linguist labour: the fee, the revision and the coordination around both.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for interpreters and translators near $58,000, with the middle half between about $45,000 and $77,000.
- Freelance linguists quote per word, per hour, per page or per minimum charge. Convert every quote to dollars per hour before you compare vendors.
- Typical US freelance ranges as of 2026about $0.08 to $0.15 a word for Spanish into English, $0.12 to $0.25 for Japanese or Chinese, and $30 to $75 an hour for hourly work.
- Employer payroll taxes add roughly 8% to 12% of wages, before paid leave, health insurance and retirement.
- Your true labour cost is the fee plus revision plus employer contributions plus coordination plus the cost of waiting to be paid.
The published figures
The occupational data is the only audited wage number in this article.
BLS translator wage figures
- $58,000median annual wage
- $45,000lower middle half
- $77,000upper middle half
The Bureau of Labor Statistics profile of interpreters and translators gives a median annual wage near $58,000 and a middle half of earners between about $45,000 and $77,000. The same page separates spoken interpreting from written translation. Treat them as different jobs with different pay.
Two more public sources cover the gaps. The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program breaks the same occupation down by state and metro area, so you can see what your local market pays. O*NET OnLine lists the job as 27-3091.00, with tasks, tools and its own wage tab.
Two cautions before you use any of it. The BLS figure is a national average for everyone classified in the occupation, not a rate card for your language pairs. It also lags: read the page on the date you need it, not from a summary written two years ago.
What a per-word rate becomes per hour
Freelance quotes arrive in five shapes, and only one of them is already a rate.
Convert quotes to hourly
Rate structure
- Per word
- Source or target count
- Per hour
- Time on task
- Minimum charge
- Floor for short jobs
What it means
- Per word
- Words per hour
- Per hour
- Already hourly
- Minimum charge
- Effective hourly rate
Convert to
- Per word
- Per hour
- Minimum charge
Per-word rate per hour
| Structure | What it means | What to convert it to |
|---|---|---|
| Per word | Source or target word count, usually with a minimum. Typical US market as of 2026: $0.08 to $0.15 for Spanish into English, $0.10 to $0.18 for German or French, $0.12 to $0.25 for Japanese or Chinese, $0.25 to $0.50 for rare pairs | Words per hour, then dollars per hour |
| Per hour | Time on task, including queries and formatting. Typical freelance range $30 to $75 an hour | Nothing, it is already hourly |
| Per page | Certified and notarized documents, typically $25 to $60 a page, sometimes quoted per 250 words | Words per page, then dollars per word |
| Per day | Interpreting assignments, typically $400 to $900 a day for conference or court work, plus travel | Hours on site, then dollars per hour |
| Minimum charge | A floor for short jobs, often one hour or $25 to $50 | Effective hourly rate on your smallest jobs |
Convert every quote to dollars per hour before you compare it. At $0.12 a word, a linguist who delivers 300 words an hour costs $36 an hour, and one who delivers 150 words costs $18.
The slower linguist is cheaper per hour and slower to clear the job. That delay lands in your deadline and your coordination time, and it pushes the invoice further out.
Ask each vendor for their words-per-hour on your own sample, not on their marketing page. That single number turns a per-word quote into a comparable hourly cost.
The six layers of labour cost
Work outward from the linguist fee to the total.
Six layers of labour cost
- Linguist fee
- Revision
- Employer contributions
- Internal coordination
- Cost of waiting
- Non-productive capacity
- Linguist fee.Negotiated per pair, subject and deadline. Rush work, rare pairs and narrow subjects carry more.
- Revision.A second linguist, priced separately. Technical revision typically adds 25% to 50% to the translation fee, so time it on your own content before quoting a percentage.
- Employer contributions.Payroll taxes, required contributions, paid leave and benefits where the person is employed. What applies to you is a question for your accountant.
- Internal coordination.Briefing, query handling, checking, packaging, delivery and invoicing. This is your own time and it is the layer most often costed at zero.
- The cost of waiting.You pay linguists on their terms and collect on the client's. The gap is working capital you finance.
- Non-productive capacity.Retained linguists, reserved slots and pairs kept warm for a client who has not sent work this quarter.
In the US, payroll taxes alone are 6.2% for Social Security up to the wage base ($176,100 in 2025) and 1.45% for Medicare with no cap. Add FUTA at 0.6% on the first $7,000 of each employee's pay, plus state unemployment insurance at rates that vary.
Paid leave, health insurance and retirement sit on top. The BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation series puts benefits near 30% of total compensation for private industry.
On that average, a $58,000 salary works out near $83,000 in total compensation, or about $40 an hour across 2,080 hours. At $0.12 a word, a $40 hourly cost needs about 333 delivered words an hour to break even.
Layers three through six are where an agency that looks profitable per project turns out not to be. The fee is the only one a vendor quotes you.
What moves a rate
| Driver | Direction | What you can do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Rarity of the pair | Fewer available linguists raise the rate. Rare pairs often quote $0.25 to $0.50 a word | Recruit ahead of demand, not during it |
| Subject specialization | Narrow subjects raise the rate, often 20% to 40% above general work | Build long relationships in the subjects you sell |
| Deadline | Compression raises the rate, typically 25% to 50% for same-day delivery | Sell the notice period as part of the service |
| Volume and continuity | Steady work can moderate the rate, often 10% to 20% below list for monthly commitments | Offer predictable pipelines rather than discounts |
| Payment reliability | Prompt payers are quoted better than slow ones | Pay on time, always, and say that you do |
That last row is real and underrated. Linguists talk to each other, and an agency known for paying late is quoted worse or declined outright.
What moves a rate
Driver
- Pair rarity
- Fewer linguists, higher rate
- Specialization
- Narrow subjects cost more
- Deadline
- Compression raises rate
- Volume
- Steady work moderates rate
- Payment reliability
- Prompt payers quoted better
Direction
- Pair rarity
- Recruit ahead of demand
- Specialization
- Build long relationships
- Deadline
- Sell the notice period
- Volume
- Offer predictable pipelines
- Payment reliability
- Pay on time, always
Your move
- Pair rarity
- Specialization
- Deadline
- Volume
- Payment reliability
Reading your own decline rate
You will not see a market rate change announced anywhere. You will see it as a rise in the share of assignments declined in a pair, followed by longer lead times to fill.
Track declines by pair and by month. A pair that starts declining more is a pair where either your rate has fallen behind or your briefs have become unpleasant to work with. Both are worth knowing, and they have different fixes.
Two public sources give a second opinion. ProZ.com publishes community rate data by language pair, and the American Translators Association runs a periodic survey that includes compensation. Neither replaces your own decline data.
Employer obligations, not rates
For obligations rather than data, the Department of Labor compliance assistance material for small businesses is a starting point on wage and hour subjects in that jurisdiction.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission small business resource center covers employer duties around discrimination, including in pay decisions. Neither settles what applies to your business, so ask an employment attorney and your accountant. Ask again if you change how people work for you.
Worked example: one project's labour cost
Take a 10,000-word technical job into a pair you buy at $0.12 per word, with revision at $0.04 per word and two hours of your own coordination.
One project's labour cost
- $1,200linguist fee at $0.12 per word
- $400revision at $0.04 per word
- 10,000words in the job
- 2 hoursyour own coordination
Substitute your own numbers in every line. On this job the linguist fee is $1,200 and revision is $400, so the quoted labour cost is $1,600, or $0.16 a word. Your own time, employer contributions and financing sit on top.
The quoted fee is the number the vendor gives you. It is not the number the job costs.
Where this connects
Who these costs apply to, and how you test and tier them, is in the hiring and training guide. The practical selection method is in hiring for reliability rather than only for skill.
The cost stack feeds into the pricing and profit guide and the break-even arithmetic for the month. Whether a pair earns its retained capacity is a demand question addressed in the marketing and growth guide.
Common questions
What should I pay a translator?
There is no single answer. The BLS median, around $58,000 a year, describes employed interpreters and translators as a group, not your pair.
Typical freelance rates as of 2026 run from about $0.08 to $0.15 a word for Spanish into English, and up to $0.50 for rare pairs. Ask several qualified linguists in the pair you need and treat the range you get as your market.
Why does this article use the BLS figure rather than a rate card?
Because the BLS figure is audited, dated and sourced, and a rate card printed here would be about no particular market. Use it as an anchor for employed staff, then build freelance rates from quotes you collect yourself. The O*NET wage tab and the state-level OEWS tables are the next places to look.
Should I pay more for a specialist?
Usually, and the comparison should include rework. A cheaper generalist who needs heavy revision in a technical subject is not cheaper once the reviser's hours are counted.
How do I raise my own prices when linguist costs rise?
With notice and an explanation the client can verify, and preferably at a renewal point. Absorbing repeated increases silently is how an account stops earning without anyone noticing.
