How much to charge for English to Japanese song translation?

[uncreepy]

Hi, everyone. I need some advice. Someone wants to commission me to translate their original Vocaloid song into Japanese, but I don't know how much to charge.

The person is a popular English Vocaloid producer. I worked with them about a year ago, but it was before I was into the vocal synth hobby and did it for free, because the song was about a minute long and I had never done anything like it before. This time, they are willing to pay me for a longer song.

I don't know if I should charge per hour, per unique song line, a flat rate per song, etc. It takes me about 3 days to finish a song, because I have to edit the translation to fit with the available syllables and give it a matching feeling. I've been practicing translating random people's songs but not uploading them, and I tend to think about the song all day even when I'm away from the computer cause I love translating so much, I feel like a per hour rate would be unreasonable due to this. >>;

They would send me the English VSQ, I would overwrite it to be in Japanese. They would get kanji and romaji lyrics from me. No tuning from me, just lyrics. So, how much is reasonable/how much would you pay?

 

[sleepysheep7]

Well, translatting lyrics is certainly no easy task. From what I have seen from proofreaders, they charge per page. So I would maybe charge something around the lines of it will be x amount per line, if you have to change any note length or tempos you charge an additional fee. Remember your time is precious and if someone wants to have it, they need to pay a fair amount.

 

[uncreepy]

Thank you so much for your reply. I ended up putting a lot of thought into it, comparing rates of Japanese translators, doing some math, and I finally came up with what I think my time is worth as you said. (I decided to charge per unique word, since songs repeat a lot.)