Sell a Literary Translation Sample to Authors and Publishers

A literary translator can sell a paid sample translation — typically 5-10 pages of a novel, story, or poetry manuscript — directly from a bio link by pricing it as a scoped custom request. The author attaches the source text and target details; the translator delivers the sample and a short translator's note by a set turnaround. Custom Work lets you offer clearly scoped commissions and services: you set the price, the scope and the delivery time, and followers submit a brief and pay before you start.

Brillay product details on this page come from Brillay's own pricing and how it works pages.

The University of Rochester's Three Percent project reports that only about 3% of all books published in the United States are works in translation, a figure it attributes to Bowker. The same Three Percent project notes that for literary fiction and poetry specifically the share is "closer to 0.7%" of US books published. When an author, small press, or rights holder asks for a translated sample, you can offer a clearly priced excerpt instead of agreeing to speculative work by email.

The client pays upfront as a guest, attaches the source text, and receives the finished sample privately. Followers pay upfront; you can decline a request.

What counts as a "literary translation sample" offer?

A literary translation sample is a bounded, paid excerpt — the opening pages of a novel, one short story, or a small set of poems — translated from a source language into a target language for a fixed fee. Neither side commits to the full manuscript afterward: a paid sample is a trial purchase, not a book contract, the same structure editors use for a paid sample edit before quoting the full manuscript job.

Buyers are usually the author themselves (self-published or seeking a foreign edition), a small press evaluating a translator, or a rights-holding estate exploring whether a work can travel into a new market. Fiction dominates the field: the Authors Guild's October 2022 survey of literary translators, conducted with the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA), the American Translators Association, and PEN America, found that 68% of its nearly 300 US-based respondents translate fiction (Authors Guild survey summary).

A literary sample is different from commercial document translation — contracts, manuals, marketing copy — which has its own pricing norms and belongs on a general translation-services offer; see structuring a commercial translation sample and consultation for that variant. A literary sample's deliverable is creative writing, not administrative document conversion, so a sample offer should be scoped and priced like a custom writing service rather than like per-page document processing.

How long should a paid sample translation be?

Published literary-translation guidelines cluster sample lengths between five and ten pages: PEN America's PEN/Heim Translation Fund asks for 5-8 pages of prose, and ALTA asks mentorship applicants for 8-10 pages. Treat the five-to-ten-page band as a scoping ceiling for paid work, because no organization publishes a measured average of what commercial clients request.

PEN America's PEN/Heim Translation Fund guidelines require a prose sample "within the range of 5-8 pages," roughly 3,000-5,000 words. ALTA's Emerging Translator Mentorship guidelines ask for "a sample translation of 8-10 pages from the proposed project (double-spaced if prose)." Both the PEN/Heim and ALTA page counts describe application samples for grants and mentorships, not paid client commissions, so those published ranges are a defensible reference band rather than a market statistic.

Poetry has its own published cap. PEN America's PEN/Heim guidelines instruct poetry applicants to "include 1-2 poems per page, within an 8-10 page range," which works out to roughly 8 to 20 poems. ALTA's children's-literature mentorship track sets an even tighter package, asking for "4-5 poems from a children's poetry project."

Setting a page or poem ceiling up front — for example, "up to 8 pages of prose, or up to 10 short poems" — keeps a request from expanding into an unpaid partial manuscript translation. If an author sends a 40-page excerpt, that request falls outside a sample-scoped offer and is a case for declining or redirecting to a larger, separately negotiated project rather than absorbing it into the sample price.

Should a sample translation be a Paid Question or a custom request?

Use a custom request for any sample-translation request, because the client has to send a source-text file and receive a translated document back. With Custom Work, the client can attach up to five source files of up to 50 MB each, and you can deliver the translated document with a note or link.

Paid Questions work for a narrower written request — for example, "does my project need a translator who works from Portuguese into English, or would a Spanish translator's background be close enough?" For Custom Work, you set the price and choose a delivery time of up to 5 days.

How much should a literary translation sample cost?

No organization publishes a rate card for paid literary translation samples, so most translators price a sample from book-length per-word benchmarks and the sample's word count. The Authors Guild's 2022 literary translator survey, run with ALTA, the American Translators Association, and PEN America, found the average literary translation rate was $0.13 per word.

The Authors Guild summarized that average this way:

"The average rate increased slightly, to $0.13 per word, but still lags behind the rising cost of living." — Authors Guild, 2022 literary translator working-conditions survey

The absence of a single market price is documented rather than assumed: the Authors Guild's Translator Book Contract guide reports pay rates "ranging from $0 to more than $0.20 per word for prose translations," with the two largest segments at $0.00-$0.07 per word and $0.14-$0.15 per word. A reported pay spread running from $0 to more than $0.20 per word inside one professional survey is why sample pricing stays practitioner judgment rather than an industry standard.

The Authors Guild's 2022 survey found that 63.5% of its literary translator respondents earned less than $10,000 from literary translation in 2021, twice the share reported in 2016 — one reason a directly paid sample offer, rather than unpaid speculative work, matters for translator income.

A 4,000-word prose sample at $0.13 per word works out to roughly $520 as a reference calculation, not a price recommendation. Actual pricing should reflect language-pair rarity, genre difficulty, and the translator's own experience, and any price example here is illustrative only, not an earnings guarantee.

What should a sample-translation listing include?

Before a client uploads anything, state the language pair, page or word limit, accepted file types, exact deliverable, scope covered by the price, and a delivery time you can meet of up to 5 days.

• Language pair: Source language into target language, stated explicitly (not "European languages").
• Length ceiling: A page, word, or poem cap. PEN America's PEN/Heim guidelines give ready-made ceilings — 5-8 pages of prose, or 8-10 pages of poetry at 1-2 poems per page.
• Format accepted: File type for the source text (manuscript doc, PDF, scanned pages).
• Deliverable: The translated sample plus, optionally, a short translator's note on voice or challenges.
• delivery time: A period reliably kept within Brillay's up-to-5-day service cap.
• Exclusions: State plainly that a sample is not a commitment to translate the full work, and that rights negotiation is a separate conversation. Rights matter commercially: the Authors Guild's 2022 survey found 73% of respondents retained the copyright to their translation, and that 44% of those who did not cited publisher refusal as the primary reason.

What else can a literary translator sell from the same page?

A literary translator can run five other paid formats beside the sample offer: Paid Questions for feasibility queries, Tips for supporters of published work, Goals for a self-initiated translation, Brand Collaboration Inquiries for press and agency leads, and Personalized Videos where a translator also does public literary commentary.

Diversifying matters because grant money is thin and publisher pay is often contingent. PEN America awards ten PEN/Heim Translation Fund grants of $4,000 each year (PEN America literary grants), and the Authors Guild's 2022 survey found 36% of respondents reported that their payment depended on the publisher receiving a grant. Federal translation money is similarly narrow: the National Endowment for the Arts states on its Translation Projects award page that "grant amounts range from $10,000 to $25,000" for published translators. The Authors Guild's 2022 survey also found that only 11.5% of its literary translator respondents earned 100% of their income from literary translation.

"We must all fight to ensure a full flourishing of literature in the English-speaking world by demanding fair terms and improved compensation for translators, in the hopes of making translation a viable and accessible career." — Jennifer Croft, Booker Prize-winning translator, quoted by the Authors Guild

• Paid Questions: A quick language-pair or feasibility question with one private written reply.
• Tips: Tips let followers send a one-time thank-you, with nothing for you to deliver and no membership for them to join.
• Goals: Contributions toward a defined goal, such as a passion-project translation of a public-domain or rights-cleared work the translator wants to pitch independently.
• Brand Collaboration Inquiries: A separate intake for presses, literary magazines, or agencies proposing paid project work.
• Personalized Videos: Custom videos for translators who also offer public-facing literary commentary.

Brillay's creator page for writers covers how these formats combine for writing-adjacent creators more broadly.

How do you get a sample-translation offer live?

Getting a sample-translation offer live takes four decisions: the language pair accepted, a page or word ceiling, a delivery time inside the 5-day cap, and a price. Publish the listing on a Brillay page, connect Stripe to receive payouts, and state in the listing that a sample is not a full-manuscript commitment. There is no sample to translate or upload before publishing; the listing is the offer, and the translation is made only after the client sends the source text.

Funding bodies treat "sample" and "career body of work" as separate things, and a listing should too. The National Endowment for the Arts requires Translation Projects fellowship applicants to have published at least 20 pages of translations of creative literature into English in curated print or digital formats — a career benchmark that no single paid sample satisfies on its own.

You can enable Custom Work with nothing to apply for; professional association standards, and any contractual or copyright obligations tied to translating someone else's text, remain the translator's responsibility to check.

Frequently asked questions

Common questions about selling a literary translation sample cover five areas: whether a credential is required, which offer format fits, what to do when a buyer wants the whole book, who controls translation rights, and what Brillay charges. Short answers follow, with Brillay's own mechanics cited to its how-it-works and pricing pages.

Do I need to be ALTA-certified or professionally credentialed to sell a sample translation?

You can enable Custom Work with nothing to apply for. Professional standards, such as those maintained by the American Literary Translators Association, are a separate, voluntary framework — and the Authors Guild reported alongside its 2022 survey that ALTA "currently counts almost 900 members." Represent your experience accurately regardless of certification status.

Should a sample translation be a Paid Question or a custom request?

Use a custom request whenever the client needs to send a source-text file and receive a translated document back, which covers nearly every sample request.

What if the buyer wants the whole book translated, not just a sample?

Treat a full-book request as a separate, larger negotiation outside the sample offer's scope. Decline or redirect the sample-priced request and discuss full-manuscript terms — timeline, rights, and total fee — as an independent project rather than folding the work into a bounded sample price.

Do I need permission from the rights holder to translate a sample?

This page is not legal advice, and rights questions should go to a qualified attorney in the relevant jurisdiction. As a starting point, US law lists "to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work" — the category that includes translations — among the copyright owner's exclusive rights under 17 U.S.C. § 106(2), published by the U.S. Copyright Office. Internationally, Berne Convention Article 8, administered by WIPO, gives authors "the exclusive right of making and of authorizing the translation of their works throughout the term of protection." Many sample requests come directly from the author or an agent who controls those rights, but confirm that before translating anyone else's copyrighted text.

What does Brillay charge?

No monthly fee, you only pay a small platform fee when you get paid. 8% platform fee when a follower pays for work, 5% platform fee on tips and goals. Card processing is separate. There is no follower minimum, and creators in 41 payout countries can connect their bank through Stripe. Typical US card-processing rates apply on top of the platform fee — Stripe's published pricing lists typical US online-card processing around 2.9% + $0.30.

Create your free Brillay page and turn the next "can you translate a sample of my book?" message into a clearly scoped, paid offer.