Tariffs - always a thorny issue
The question of how much a client should be paying for language services is always a thorny one. The language practitioner is offering a specialised service and deserves to make a decent living; the client has the right not to be exploited and to pay a fair tariff.

PEG is at times approached with a request for "recommended" or "guideline" or "set" rates. We are unfortunately not in a position to provide these. By law, recommended fees can be set only for professions governed by a statutory body. This is why there are such fees for doctors, lawyers, accountants and engineers, although even there they are not set in stone. PEG is not a statutory body and the law therefore states specifically that we may not recommend or give guideline rates. The profession operates purely on free market principles, and as a result the rates charged can vary widely, governed by a variety of factors.

This is a subject that requires discussion, however, and so PEG in April 2004 organised a workshop at which members got together to look at what is being charged in the profession. You can read a full report on the discussions at the workshop elsewhere on this site, and the final conclusions are given below. Note that these are not "recommended" rates: they simply reflect current charges on the basis of the feedback we received from members.

• Editors are earning around R200 an hour in the corporate market.
• Publishers that can afford this should be paying the same, but the average here is probably nearer R130-140 an hour for hard-copy editing and R150-160 an hour for electronic editing.
• Electronic editing should pay more, as the editor is doing a certain amount of the work normally required of the typesetter and so is saving the publisher money further down the line.
• As far as theses and academic editing are concerned, and also in the case of NGOs, a discounted rate may be offered in deserving cases, but charges will depend on organisations' funding sources and capacities.

Remember: if you want a professional product, you have to pay a professional fee.

[This page was last updated on 31 October 2004]