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Getting told your rates are too high by yet another publisher is kind of disheartening when you're trying to raise manga standards to a decent level. There are many agencies in Japan that sell lower than us and provide lower quality work, but the client will deal with it because it sells.
Might as well join in the party so you can see how poorly we are paid...
Recommended rates for manga translators:
5pp minimum
10 for mid-level publishers
5 for big publishers
15 where you can get it
Notice the disparity for "big publishers?" They pay less because EVERYONE wants to work there
I’m p sure the easiest way to get media localized faster would be to raise rates for external contractors so they can dedicate more time to individual series and hire more people on the other end of the process (typesetters/etc for manga, programmers for games, etc) to reduce those bottlenecks
My only recent notoriety was talking about how the manga publisher Comikey's freelancer rates were like $1/page with a ridiculous increase structure that resets every month (this hasn't changed btw)
I have since met the head of the company in person and he was a creepy scumbag lol
For manga and light novels, rates are generally determined by the publishers, so negotiation is difficult
For translators, $5/page for manga and $10/page for light novels are the lower end of market rate, but rates vary from $1-$9/page or $1000-$1500/vol (manga) and $6-$15/page (LNs)
Manga lettering rates are pretty much the same as when I started 20+ years ago. 🙃
Ritsku
Zack Davisson
Dobu
Jan Mitsuko Cash
Like I really don’t think people appreciate how much work you need to find every year as a freelance TL to make anything resembling a livable wage with the rates where they are rn. To hit the median US income on pretty typical manga rates you’d have to get about *50 volumes* a year
