August 20, 2026—the night of the American Manga Awards.
The Japan Society's New York City theater was packed to the gills with industry professionals, members of the press, and representatives from almost every publisher. Among these pros was Jan Mitsuko Cash , a veteran translator with far more than a few credits under her belt. That night, she was up for a Best Translation award for her work on Yuzuko Hoshimi 's MAGICA . She won. After stepping up to the podium, thanking her colleagues, and praising MAGICA 's North American publisher, Kodama Tales , Cash called on the other publishers in the audience: “Please double your rates.” She didn't stop there, taking the opportunity to speak on the often unsavory working conditions she faces alongside many of her colleagues.
“Your most prolific freelancers suffer from online harassment for the things they work on, work 80-hour weeks, have no health insurance or retirement, but have developed long-term occupational illnesses and live paycheck-to-paycheck. At some point, something has to give. Freelancers are the bedrock of the industry, and the foundation your companies stand on is sagging.”
Viz Media , Yen Press , and Seven Seas Entertainment might be the names people think of when they think of manga, light novels, and other localized print media. But freelance professionals do the heavy lifting—translation, editing, proofreading, lettering, and more. Since they're not traditional company employees, these workers often worry about making rent, figuring out health coverage, paying for groceries, maintaining something of a work-life balance, and not completely burning themselves out in the process. Jan Mitsuko Cash 's AMA speech finally shone a spotlight on those worries—the same concerns that have long been kept only among professionals. In fact, I'm quite familiar with these challenges myself since I've been editing and proofreading light novels for just over three and a half years.
Emboldened by Cash's words after watching my peers struggle for years, I spoke with over 25 of the industry's leading talents across all disciplines. Roughly half agreed to speak with me only on the condition of anonymity, fearing their livelihoods could be negatively impacted if their identities were made public. On the flip side, many prominent talents were willing to speak with me on the record. It wasn't long before Cash learned I was making the rounds. When we eventually chatted, she shared a handful of other key factors behind her speech.
“I had a major health scare at the beginning of this year. It got to the point where I would regularly wake up with a migraine and vomit, then I would take an aspirin and start working again if I could manage to sit in front of my computer. This went on for a few years until a medical assistant took my blood pressure and told me I had to change something or I was putting myself at risk of having a stroke. Another freelancer had a case of burnout so severe that they had to quit projects across multiple publishers. I'm sure the in-house staff felt sympathetic and knew that working conditions were the problem, but the projects just got reassigned, and none of the underlying issues were ever addressed. In the end, it was the freelancer's problem, not the publisher's."
"That made me realize that if I have a stroke or die from overwork, the outcome would be the same. The books would be reassigned to the next person and business would go on as usual. I don't think that publishers will view the conditions they've created as their problem unless the reality of the situation is put in front of them.”
It wouldn't be an understatement to say that most people I spoke with felt similarly expendable, even if they love what they do.
Full-time or Part-time? Living Situation? Healthcare?
Cash and the vast majority of her colleagues work in localization full-time, but patching together a steady string of paydays is no easy feat. To pay their bills, full-time freelancers cobble together a Rolodex of clients—big publishers, independent upstarts, third-party agencies, and more. But to keep the lights on, full-timers often take on so much work that it tips into dangerously unhealthy territory. Cash told me that “80-hour weeks” she mentioned in her speech were actually an understatement.
“I said in my speech that my colleagues work 80 hours, but I chose a lower number because the real hours some people work don't sound believable. I and other people have had multiple stretches of 90- and 100-hour work weeks because seasonal scheduling tends to make deadlines pool on certain dates.”
Most full-time freelancers got their start in the industry by working part-time, dipping their toes in while keeping their benefits and a steady paycheck. However, a handful of professionals maintain a day job outside the industry. Letterer Aidan Clarke told me he'd love to leave his current job to pursue his craft full-time, but the lack of stability has left him understandably weary of making the jump. Tokyo-based translator Matt Schley also works on occasional manga after hours, having found stability in regular translation work with multiple clients, including NHK World Japan.
Freelancers like editor Carly Smith have a degree of that “day job” stability, as her husband's career and benefits provide enough for the two of them. However, situations like Smith's depend heavily on a couple's personal circumstances. Jan Mitsuko Cash has similar stability, but that could all go poof in a moment.
Cash was also quick to say that freelancers shouldn't have to rely on a higher-earning spouse to survive if they want to work in the industry. Also, if they're not living with a spouse or a roommate, some live with family, like translator David Evelyn . For many, their careers wouldn't be possible without the generosity of friends and families.
But regardless of one's living situation, any conversation I had eventually wrapped back around to healthcare. Freelancers in America are expected to cover their own health insurance, whether through the marketplace, a state program, or their spouse's insurance. Depending on the state they reside in, some may qualify for Medicaid or another program that ensures they receive the care they need. Some praised their state's healthcare options, while others just looked back at me with a blank stare. A pair of professionals who have chronic health conditions both managed to secure Medicaid, but they've been forced to live on the razor's edge as the program puts a cap on how much its recipients can make. One of those professionals used to live abroad, but returning to the United States quickly made their healthcare situation a nightmare.
“When I was living in the other country, there was national health care. After returning to the States, we struggled to pay for marketplace insurance, then got on Medicaid, and we've been on it ever since. Ironically, Medicaid has gotten me the most complete medical coverage I've ever had, and I've even been able to do preventative stuff, but in order to get it, I've had to make sure I don't make too much money. Just nervous to see where things go now that Medicaid funding has been cut a lot.”
Having lived in Japan for quite a while, Matt Schley hasn't had to worry as much about healthcare because he can get nationalized health insurance—which is also available to freelancers. The same goes for translator Jocelyne Allen , who splits her year between Tokyo and Toronto. As a Canadian, she's often shocked whenever the topic of benefits and healthcare comes up in conversation with her American colleagues.
“I've talked to some people in Japan about it, but most of the time I talk about benefits with folks, I slip on the financial stuff because healthcare is just the thing that keeps on coming up again and again and again.”
Besides paying a small fee at the dentist while in Tokyo, Allen doesn't have to worry about paying much more whenever she needs care. Additionally, as a Canadian, her higher taxes go toward a national pension plan as well—something which many Americans would probably kill to have today. For those out of the country, it seems that having the health insurance monkey off their backs has allowed them to more freely pursue their careers. However, a situation like this isn't possible for the vast majority of American localization workers. Many are constantly doing the mental math of whether they've got enough work to actually afford their insurance plan this month—even while they're in the middle of a delicate task.
So, What Are Those Rates Like?
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A few months before the AMAs, an anonymous rate survey started floating around Bluesky. The collected responses came together to form a rather comprehensive look at rates across publishers and disciplines. These rates generally aligned with what I'd been anonymously told. According to the survey and my interviews, translators, editors, and letterers are typically paid by the page or at a flat per-book rate.
The average rate for manga translators is US$6 per page, with rates as high as US$9 per page for simulpubs. The lowest rate that caught my eye was from an agency at US$1 per page. For completed manga volumes, the average is between US$1000 and US$1300, with the lowest reported rates at US$800 and the highest at US$1400. However, those higher rates only generally came about because the contractor asked for it.
Translators in the light novel space see rates as low as US$10 a page and as high as US$18.However, I've seen some insultingly low character rates at a penny per character. For editors, it's all over the place, from US$30 an hour at certain publishers to US$4.75 a page at others. Letterers are subject to similarly chaotic pay scales, with US$3 per page seemingly being the average and US$9 popping up for simulcast pages. Of those per-page rates, the lowest I saw was a dollar. The average for a full-volume lettering assignment came out somewhere between US$800 and US$1000, with rates as high as US$1300 being obtained through negotiation.
So, you might be asking: “Why were hourly rates only mentioned once in that entire breakdown?” With the exception of those aforementioned editing positions, proofreading, and rare situations where a translation is expected to be difficult, hourly rates are not an industry standard. Any chance of an hourly rate depends heavily on the publisher and could result in a smaller paycheck for less intensive projects compared to a page rate.
In this context, it's important to establish what an “intensive project” is. For a translator, a labor-heavy project could involve extensive research, intense review of a line's cultural context, or perhaps reworking a few lines of very specific wordplay into a new line that stays true to the spirit of the original joke, but makes it accessible to an English-speaking audience. Meanwhile, a lighter project could entail a title that's light on dialogue and heavy on action. There are also many cases where that intensity is somewhere in the middle. However, most translators often find themselves having to take what's given to them or think about it for a while.
Matt Schley put it to me like this: If he were brought on to translate another baseball manga at US$5 a page, he'd consider it because he already knows the sport well and can knock it out quickly. But if he were looking at a research-intensive title at US$10 a page, he'd probably say no. Yes, US$10 per page is more, but would Schley's additional effort be properly compensated for in the wash? That's something localization professionals across all disciplines have to consider.
Could an across-the-board switch to hourly rates help? When I posed the idea to two-time Eisner-nominated letterer Brandon Bovia , he said that accountants' eyes would pop when they saw how many hours he sunk into a single page of a particularly work-heavy project. They'd be likely to start screaming for a cheaper freelancer. This predicament is often why letterers tend to choose their heavy projects carefully, much like their translation colleagues. Either they're pouring in the extra time for something they believe in, or they're going for something a little less intensive to make that labor-to-compensation ratio math out more reasonably.
The situation changes a touch when simulpublishing enters the picture, as translators like David Evelyn are essentially on call at all times—waiting for materials to come in, getting it done quickly, and working on their other projects. Given the fast-paced, high-pressure nature of this slice of the industry, you'd think these workers would be paid a rush rate—nope. However, simulpublishing rates tend to be on the higher end of the pay spectrum for most workers. Jan Mitsuko Cash told me she prefers the higher rates that come with simul work, but she has to choose her projects carefully because she has no control over what is offered to her, and deadlines often overlap. Realistically, a complete switch to hourly rates would likely benefit some disciplines, like lettering, but not so much for translators unless there's an industry-wide overhaul of those rates.
Say a freelance manga translator whips through an easy, breezy 100-page book in 8 hours, with both the hourly and per-page rates averaging US$6. If we're talking per page, that translator is taking US$600 to the bank, but if it's an hourly rate, we're looking at US$48. You see how that doesn't exactly work out in the translator's favor, especially when they have to pay taxes on that as well. Now, we could take these numbers further to figure out a rough annual salary for our translator, but the information we're playing with is based on one project alone, and it's absolutely not guaranteed to be the steady “8 hours a day” gig. Any further figuring would be fantasy math that doesn't convey the reality of the situation.
Realistically, translators won't be working on manga alone to make ends meet. Cash told me that she does a combination of manga, light novel, editing, and proofreading work to cobble together her salary. She said that the amount she makes is inconsistent to begin with, fluctuating by “tens of thousands of dollars from year to year.” Understandably, that would make pursuing manga work alone even more inconsistent. For a clearer example, Cash gave me a reasonable hypothetical of what a single freelance manga translator in California would have to make to survive. Also, for simplicity, this translator is working on full volumes at the industry average of US$1,000 per book. First off, they're paying US$1,500 for rent, then US$500 for health insurance, and at least US$350 for bills like their phone and utilities. That comes out to US$28,200 a year (or US$2,350 a month), but doesn't account for taxes, which bumped that total to US$40,000 a year. With that $1000 USD per book in mind, the translator would need to complete 40 books a year or roughly three books a month to cover all their bills. However, with the currently skyrocketing cost of groceries, Cash suggested it could be four books per month. It's also worth reminding readers that this doesn't include the occasional treat for yourself, emergency costs, or savings either. If you're looking to live and work in the home of Viz Media , San Francisco, that US$40,000 a year is well below the US$70,117 needed for a single person to survive in the city according to MIT's Living Wage calculator.
Rates Have Barely Risen in 20 Years
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The numbers aren't flattering given how much the industry has grown over the past six years, but they're even more shocking when you consider that rates have barely risen over the past twenty years. One veteran translator told me, “Any year without a universal pay bump—which is most—is a year when I'm effectively getting a pay cut, because of inflation.” When you add freelance income taxes into the equation, that “pay cut” hurts even more.
According to multiple sources who wish to remain anonymous, I learned that Viz Media allegedly raised its rates in the late 2010s but seemingly slashed them sometime between 2022 and 2023 as a belt-tightening measure. Figuring out which companies have the best rates has been a bit of a crapshoot between the survey data and what I've been told—it's all based on one person's experience. But when I reviewed the survey again, I noticed that when someone got a raise, they asked for it—not an agent, an in-house editor, or anyone else. In fact, it's extremely rare for anyone, let alone a translator, to have an agent.
When we discussed rates, Jocelyne Allen was firm that talent should advocate for higher rates. “My number one piece of advice to all up-and-coming translators is to ask for more because they have more. They just want to pay you as little as they can.” While veterans like Allen are perfectly fine taking their ball and going elsewhere if a potential client isn't open to negotiation, many feel they don't have enough ground to stand on to say anything. Sometimes it's because they're not in a great bargaining position after missing a deadline, or they know how easily someone else can take that initial offer. Sometimes a freelancer just has to take the offer as-is to get by. But a veteran translator says those aren't the only dynamics at work.
“Anecdotally, having to beg for more money disproportionately puts non-white men at a greater disadvantage. Making those requests takes a boldness that's easier to come by when one already enjoys systemic privilege. This extra haggling wouldn't be nearly as necessary if rates were fairer to start with,” they said.
The specific in-house contact a worker communicates with, and their relationship, also matters. In some cases, an in-houser can give their freelancers a bump if their hands aren't tied, but that's not always the norm—and again, it depends heavily on the company. For example, the aforementioned veteran translator described the payment side of freelancer relations at Viz Media .
“With Viz, where it's common for a freelancer to work with many different editors, rate bumps have to be negotiated on a per-project basis, which puts the onus on the freelancer to advocate for fair(er) pay every single time, over and over. There, I've been told that editors are given a budget for each series, and they can choose to pay their freelancers within a certain range. At least one editor I know unequivocally chooses the max possible rate for all freelancers every time, viewing it as an ethical imperative. However, many editors do not. Effectively, an employee is making a subjective judgment about the difficulty or worthiness of the labor, before the work is even done, and that decision affects our livelihood.”
Scheduling and Burnout
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The mention of simulpub brings another topic to mind: scheduling. In addition to feeling on-call, Evelyn has often felt the brunt of scheduling snafus from both sides of the Pacific. It particularly smarted when he received the materials from Japan hours after his deadline. He can occasionally ask for more time, but he's also had to knuckle down and get it done as soon as possible. Additionally, Evelyn and his colleagues have been called out of the blue to tackle last-minute assignments that eat up their entire workday. This relentless pushing and pulling gets even harder when you consider that those in simulpub have other clients as well, which can throw an already tight schedule out of whack.
This takes a personal toll. People miss huge events, sometimes only going home for funerals if they're able to afford it. Even part-timers feel a degree of sacrifice that goes above and beyond the regular gig. But many suck it up and barrel through the work, even if they're already burnt out. Some don't feel it as much, since they're used to moving from one thing to the next without a problem, while others can't find a moment to sit back, breathe, and actually take care of themselves. However, workers also fear that they'll lose out on precious job opportunities if they take too much, if any, time off. Also, if a worker suddenly needs to increase their workload due to a loss of other income, it could take three to six months or longer for a publisher to offer them new assignments, according to Jan Mitsuko Cash .
I've been told that in-house editors are amenable to many of these scheduling issues as they've often been there themselves. However, in many situations, an in-houser's hands are tied. Another longtime industry veteran and former tabletop gaming manager, adaptive writer Steven “Stan!” Brown has seen both sides of the in-house/freelancer coin. Like Jocelyne Allen , he's a big believer in people speaking up if they can, especially since interaction between freelancers and in-housers tends to be a “here's an assignment, talk to you in a month” affair.
“I'd come in and say, 'Look, they want you to do this, but I don't think you should. They're not paying you for this, but this is the assignment. They want to know if you'll do this, and I'm asking you, will you do it?' But I'll tell you, 'I think that's a bad idea,' or 'you should ask me if there's any more money to be added.' Which did not make me the favorite manager in the company.”
However, Brown told me that his relationship with his editor is perhaps a bit different from most of his colleagues, as they've been friends since the 1990s. Again, the dynamics between in-house editors and their freelancers vary wildly. Most people I've spoken with have nothing but good things to say about the people they work with directly, but that doesn't always mean everyone gets along.
Award Shows, Upward Mobility, and the Letterer's Plight
Among those I spoke with, they felt that any potential award or nomination—be it an Eisner, American Manga Award, or otherwise—doesn't give them any leverage at the negotiating table. It might get them noticed, so more clients hit their inbox, but that's it. No increase to pay, benefits, or standard of living. However, Jan Mitsuko Cash did demonstrate that such an event gave workers a platform to speak before the publishers. Despite that bright spot, a few folks raised an eyebrow at the intentions behind awards shows like the AMAs—seeing them as more about enriching publishers and show organizers than the talents themselves.
On a similar note, upward mobility quickly became moot. Many, like Cash, have weaved their way in and out of full-time positions with various publishers. Working in-house obviously has its own hurdles, as demonstrated by the continued presence of the United Workers of Seven Seas , but just weaving into it is difficult. Beyond the competition, most in-house jobs are on-site and often require new hires to pack their bags and move to an expensive coastal city. Unfortunately, most of these postings—namely from Viz Media in San Francisco and Yen Press in New York City—do not offer a wage commensurate with the cost of living in such a town. For letterers, only FAKKU in Portland, Ore., has in-house positions.
Given the intense amount of touch-up work often required in this discipline—cleanup, redrawn panels, sound effects, diegetic text, and other miscellaneous tasks—it would be wonderful to stop weighing a project's intensity against its pay. More fundamentally, letterers across the board are asking for layered files [generally Photoshop files with separate layers for art and text] so they don't have to erase half the book before they get to work. According to Brandon Bovia , very few companies have ever sent him layered files to work with—which cut his work time in half, if not more.
So this basically means erasing the panels, making a new layer of horizontal lines, the "die die die die" text in the BG, and then the frontmost text.
[image or embed] — Brandon Bovia (@brandonbovia.bsky.social) January 22, 2026 at 4:36 AM
Aiden Clarke quickly elaborated on how important and game-changing layered files can be for the industry's efficiency, highlighting an example where they've already benefited workflows.
“Layered files are far and away the most impactful thing that could ever happen in manga lettering. Here are a few anecdotes. Makoto Yukimura took the effort to ensure that Vinland Saga was provided as layered files for localization, starting at the very beginning of the series in 2005. And guess what? Vinland Saga had replaced sound effects. That's one of the only Kodansha books in the U.S. to have that because they were given those files. It's the same for every other region the series has been localized in. It's the same for Minecraft: The Manga . After seeing the first two volumes and all the work that had gone into retouching to replace the sound effects, the author went out of their way to provide layered files going forward.”
These situations were born out of an author's forward thinking or discovering what had happened after the fact—and they're rare occurrences too. Well, at least when it comes to titles from larger publishers. Japanese publishers prefer to be the one and only point of contact with their licensee . It's the licensee , not the freelancer, that's going to do the talking. This inefficient form of communication has occasionally led to strange file formats arriving at workers when a publisher's call to the original author's studio could perhaps streamline the entire process. Thankfully, some of those calls are being made by the smaller, independent publishers, as Clarke told me.
“There's almost no avenue for communication on that, but also anecdotally, when working with independent artists through smaller publishers—places like Star Fruit Books or Manga Mavericks—we've worked directly with artists, and they are always super amenable to sharing layered files when they're available.”
Support from Japan and AI
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On the translation end, David Evelyn has been fortunate to build a strong working relationship with Kamudo author Akira Himekawa over the series' simulpub run. Whenever he has a specific question, it's easy for him to email Akira Himekawa with whatever's on his mind. But as with lettering, this level of direct interaction with a Japanese creative is rare in manga. Evelyn's translations directly influenced the work of Undead Unluck author Yoshifumi Tozuka , but their interactions (including their meeting at Anime NYC 2023) came after most of the work was completed. While he might be friendly with Japanese editorial staff because of these interactions, they haven't had any further beneficial effects on his career.
Since she's a Tokyo local for a good chunk of the year, Jocelyne Allen has cultivated strong relationships with a handful of authors who've made her their preferred translator. But again, this is because she's physically there for creatives to consult. If more links between Japanese authors and editorial teams were made, I have a feeling not just lettering, but the entire localization process would become way more efficient and lead to better-quality products.
Instead, many Japanese publishers have started turning to machine translation and other AI tools to cut out the conversation with Western localization professionals entirely. With recent news stories such as Media-Do's purchase of Seven Seas, the alleged use of machine translations used in Shueisha 's Manga Millions project, and the rise of AI translation companies like Orange Inc. (no, not the Trigun one), freelance and in-house localization professionals across the board alike aren't crazy about the implications this technology has for their livelihoods. Based on what many translators told me, trying to clean up a machine translation is a fool's errand. The material often just needs to be retranslated from scratch. However, some don't have the luxury of a full retranslation, and they won't be paid for it, so they have to polish a turd to the best of their ability.
Allen explained that the temperature around AI tools varies widely across Asia, especially in Japan. Between ChatGPT's sickeningly cute “Chappy-kun” nickname and the optimistic opinions about the technology, it seems to be sticking around for now. According to Allen, the desire to use these tools for translation work is odd, given many Japanese people's prideful preconceptions about their own language.
“There's a pervasive mindset in Japan that people who are not Japanese can never really understand Japanese. The language is too complicated, the sounds are too weird, and it's just so different from every other language that non-Japanese speakers might be able to speak. Non-native speakers who speak Japanese might be able to get by, but they can't understand the real, true deep nuances of Japanese. I can't begin to say how many times I've encountered this attitude.”
Learning of this attitude reminded me of countless “nihongo jouzu” (“your Japanese is good”) stories I'd read from non-native Japanese speakers. The phrase is often seen as passive-aggressive, but it's occasionally said sincerely despite the connotations. In discussing it further with Allen, we found that this mindset, and the occasional “nihongo jouzu,” isn't inherently malicious, but it's hard not to get that impression at times. This makes it all the more baffling that publishers with this attitude would prefer a model to translate Japanese over a person who's studied the language's many nuances for much of their life. After all, these small linguistic flourishes, their cultural context, and the occasional bit of wordplay are often incomprehensible to an AI model.
For example, Allen and I chatted about J-Dramas for a moment, specifically how I noticed that many series feature shirts with “Michigan” printed on them—something that stuck out to me as a Michigander. “Michigan” sounds kind of like a Japanese word, but Google Translate told me the state's name roughly translates to “road eyes.” But as a professional translator, Allen quickly gave me a much more nuanced option: “the unseen shore.”
There's been some talk among Japanese publishers and politicians that AI could help crack down on the proliferation of manga scanlations and piracy overall. Primarily by providing a quick-and-dirty official translation to accompany the Japanese release. However, everyone I spoke with laughed at the idea, saying readers won't pay for poor-quality work. This goes doubly for titles in territories with no official releases at all.
What's Next? Fledgling Publishers Show Promise of Change
With all of this in mind, what can improve the situation for freelancers across the industry? “Double your rates” was the phrase I heard most often from the professionals I spoke with. At the very least, doubling those rates, reassessing scheduling practices, and taking a closer look at freelancers' working conditions is the least publishers could do. We can't forget those layered files for letterers either.
For the publishing side of this story, we reached out to Viz Media , Yen Press , Kodansha USA , Seven Seas , Square Enix Books, Denpa , Manga Mavericks Books , Kodama Tales , and Omoi (formerly Azuki ) with a handful of questions regarding their roles in the situation. Viz Media , Yen Press , Kodansha USA , Seven Seas , and Denpa did not get back to us by our publication deadline, but we'll update this story with any future statements. Of the larger publishers, only Square Enix Books replied with a simple “no comment.” However, newer, independent publishers were quick to respond.
The first was Kodama Tales cofounder Pierre Dubost, who was refreshingly transparent about working conditions, scheduling, the rates his company offers, and freelancer concerns overall.
I agree with the concerns Jan raised in her speech. We ask a great deal of the people who translate, edit, and letter manga, and their working conditions need to reflect the skill and time these books require. Our team was delighted to see Jan Mitsuko Cash receive the award for her work on MAGICA . She worked on both volumes and is now working on our new series CROWS. Knowing her personally, I fully support her and am glad she used the occasion to speak about these issues. At Kodama, we pay US$8 per page for translation and a separate US$8 per page for lettering. We also credit our translators and letterers on the book jackets. Readers should know who worked on the English edition, and the people behind that work deserve proper recognition.
Dubost continued, saying the Kodama Tales team is keenly aware of the everyday hurdles freelancers face, since they've all worked in various parts of localization themselves. He also said Kodama Tales feels a strong responsibility to schedule its work sustainably, especially since its freelancers work for multiple clients. Finally, he reiterated to ANN that Kodama is still a young company, but dedicated to doing what it can to support workers as it continues to grow.
Manga Mavericks CEO Varun Gupta was similarly frank on his company's role in the lives of his freelancers—including Cash, who has edited a handful of titles for them.
Regarding the speech, Manga Mavericks agrees that the overall working conditions for freelancers need to improve. For our part, we have continued to be as transparent as possible with our freelancers on our project budgets and have also requested that they let us know if they feel a given project requires higher compensation or a longer work timeline, so that we can try to accommodate it. Freelancers are an essential part of localization production, and we want to make sure that their efforts are not undervalued. When it comes to rates with our freelancers, we usually provide a quote for the work when pitching a project to them, which includes the total dollar amount, the estimated work start date and deadline, and a preview of the project (usually a PDF of the first volume in Japanese). When finding letterers as well, we usually disclose what format the data is in (solely PSDs, full InDesign Package, Clip Studio files, etc.), and whether they are layered files. As a frame of reference, our rates for translation and lettering, respectively, are each on average US$6 per page, but some of our projects pay more or less depending on the amount of work needed and the overall production timeline. We are aiming to further increase rates over time as our company grows.
Finally, Omoi cofounder Evan Minto responded with sentiments generally in line with both Gupta and Dubost's comments.
Omoi aims to maintain above-average rates for the manga localization industry. It's definitely a challenge balancing rates against our limited budget, but we see our current rates as necessary to sustain the livelihoods of the localizers we partner with. We build our production schedules at the outset of each project to ensure standard chapter turnarounds are workable for each localizer, with the ability to adjust the schedule while the project is ongoing for vacations and personal reasons. We can also adjust the submission cadence if a localizer becomes busier. We aim to have a production-first mindset where marketing deadlines are based on production estimates, so we don't need to crunch to get a title localized. Omoi recognizes that freelance labor is the foundation of the English manga industry, and we want to do our part to ensure this is a sustainable career path for localization professionals.
All three companies also stated that they strive to provide layered project files for their letterers, but it's very much on a project-by-project basis. Sometimes the author or publisher has them ready to go, they're not available, or the project predates the adoption of digital files.
Amid such frank responses from independent publishers, the lack of any from the industry's big dogs isn't exactly flattering. A handful of fledgling companies might not be able to change the situation overnight, but the fact that the challenges freelancers face are top of mind is heartening—particularly when you consider that they've been through it all themselves.
However, that doesn't change the fact that currently stagnating wages are tantamount to death by a thousand pay cuts. This reality makes taking action where possible important—be it speaking out when possible, piggybacking on the unionization efforts of in-house staffers, putting out a company statement, or using your award speech to send a message to the executives in the audience. Everyone in this industry is in it for the love of the game, but love isn't going to secure them fair wages or healthcare. I've also never met anyone who can eat an award either.
Special Thanks to all the interviewees and industry professionals who participated in this article.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of Anime News Network, its employees, owners, or sponsors.