From Freelance to Permanently On Call – How Parts of the Translation Industry Are Shifting Risk

Here’s a brief that landed in my inbox recently, and it neatly captures a growing problem in parts of the translation industry.

Language: German
Rate: USD 12/hour
Workflow: MTPE plus linguistic review
Content: documents, slides and spreadsheets
Volume: around 800 words per file
Time per file: 2.5–3 hours
Expectation: minimum eight hours a day

Every variable was fixed in advance – output, pace, workflow and daily availability – yet the role was positioned as freelance. In practice, it looks and behaves like full-time employment, just without the protections.

At current exchange rates, USD 12 an hour comes out at roughly £8.73 (2 February 2026), which sits well below the UK National Living Wage of £11.44, rising to £12.21 in April 2026. That minimum applies to employees who receive paid holidays, sick pay and pension contributions, with none of the administrative burden falling on them.

Freelancers, on the other hand, fund their own tax, National Insurance, pensions, software, hardware, electricity, insurance, CPD and unpaid admin, while also absorbing gaps between projects.

That is not freelancing by any reasonable standard. When hours are prescribed, workloads dictated and processes controlled, the arrangement drifts into false self-employment territory, where labour is managed without the obligations that normally come with it.

MTPE was originally marketed as a way to support translators and improve efficiency, yet it is increasingly being used to justify rates that would be unacceptable in almost any other skilled profession. German post-editing combined with linguistic review is cognitively demanding work involving accuracy, tone, compliance and client risk, and expecting that level of responsibility at under £10 an hour inevitably means something gives, whether that is quality, sustainability or the human doing the work.

The issue is not whether this particular rate is fair, because it clearly is not, but when “freelance” started to mean cheap, disposable and permanently on call, and how long the industry expects professionals to accept that definition.

I’m intrigued whether others are seeing more offers like this land in their inboxes, or whether more professionals are beginning to push back more decisively.

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