DeepL Pro and ChatGPT can translate a page from Italian to English in seconds. Clients still pay for the part those tools can't do. In this kind of work, the real effort starts after the machine output appears.
These are the skills that matter.
1. A high level in both Italian and English. You need to hear when a sentence is grammatically fine but sounds wrong to a native reader. Without that, you can't judge the AI output.
2. Editing machine translations. DeepL Pro and ChatGPT give you a fast first draft. The job is to fix tone, catch false friends and rework any passage that doesn't read naturally in the target language.
3. Knowing when to throw a draft away. Sometimes an output is too far off to patch. Re-prompting or retranslating a passage is often quicker than fixing it line by line.
4. Quality control on every job. This service needs a lot of human involvement. Every delivery needs a check before it goes out, because the client is paying for that check.
5. Talking to clients about price. Clearly explaining what you deliver and what it costs matters as much as the translation itself.
You don't need a specific industry background for general work. Legal and medical texts are the exception: they require their own specialist knowledge.
What it takes to start:
- Setup cost: $0 to $20
- Running cost: about $10 a month
- Time: at least three hours a week
- Equipment: nothing beyond the computer you already use
- Time to first client: about 14 days
The margin is moderate, and the competition is real. IT/EN translators are already on Guru, Fiverr, Proz and other platforms. Being fast won't make you stand out, since everyone has the same AI tools. What sets you apart is the quality of your review: natural phrasing, the right tone and no false friends in the final text.
The low cost and small weekly time commitment make this a realistic side project. The editing skills are the part you need to build, and they get sharper with every job.
If you work between Italian and English and are thinking about starting, tell us which part of the workflow you want broken down next.
