This post is a summary of a discussion on fees and rates during a hosted Group Translation Chats (GTC) session It was moderated by Robin Humphrey who kindly gave me his notes to use a basis for this post.
Many newcomers to the profession can find it hard to know what to charge, especially as MA courses often don’t pay much attention to business aspects. Hopefully this post will bring some clarity to the fees and rates discussion and help translators feel confident when speaking about the cost of their work.
Broadly speaking, fee is used to describe an individual service, and rate the price or cost of something per piece (per character, word, 1000 words, page, hour, for example).
The difference between fees and rates matters because we’re running businesses. Some think translation is not a “real business”, that it’s not “real work” and anyone can do it, especially if they have access to the internet. But this is a wrong assumption and although our job requires skill, training and time, we’re not generally overpriced. We offer a professional service and should charge accordingly.
Three of the most popular posts on my blog over the years have explored the relationship between translators and agencies: 
It’s nearly December now and here I am just getting around to writing about last month. Following weeks of working on one project after another, and being lucky enough for clients to agree to wait in the queue, I’m finally enjoying a bit of breathing space. Hopefully it won’t signal a famine period for me as I am only free because I couldn’t make the deadline for one largish project and didn’t fancy anything else I was offered.
As we saw in 
