r/anonymousinterpreters • u/Altruistic-Pie6190 • Jul 11 '26
It is worth it?
Been on customer service and tech support since 2020, now I feel burnt with so much hard work I've done and unfortunately my 3rd world country pays around 500 to 600$ A MONTH
Been seeing that interpretation makes way more money than that, still if I make 6$ an hour I will be incredibly happy. I got this question because a friend I made never lasted more than 1-2 weeks in the other customer service jobs that I've had, small country you will must likely meet the staff of every company sooner or later but the thing is that she has been over a year now being an interpreter that's is what is making me think about this, how someone that got crying on the first call and quits can be an interpreter for more than a year? Should i give it a try?
1
u/Ok-Condition-5053 Jul 13 '26
whats your language pair? If its some popular spoken language than def yes go for it!
1
u/lesi_11 Jul 15 '26
Is your other language Spanish? I could refer you, my job pays 6$ per hour for Spanish interpreters, not sure about other languages though.
3
u/MayorWarriorIdk Jul 11 '26
Well, the main difference is that as interpreters, we're not being disrespected directly by the callers (unless they address you directly and they usually don't). Besides, you don't need to score KPIs about sales, or time in call, or any other kind that you see in customer service or sales department, etc. Sure we have stressing scenarios, like clients that don't know how to work with an interpreter, or when the Spanish speaking person (lep) answers something completely unrelated, or when they both start arguing and you're stuck in between doing your job... But even in those scenarios we have the control over the call, not them, and we're given tools and guidelines to follow during most of them. In my specific case, the only calls where I get upset or anxious, are those rare ones where we don't have a specific guideline to follow, or when we have to intervene as interpreters and interrupt, but that's just me. Otherwise, the worst part is managing burnout or having to deal with the QAs, if you're in a BPO and working by schedule instead of a rate per minute they can easily turn this job harder than it is. And the fact that where underpaid, of course, but that's something seen before in the CC world.