ZipRecruiter

Log In

1

Language Translation Jobs in California (NOW HIRING)

TransPerfect

Translation Coordinator

Santa Clara, CA · On-site

$65K/yr

Use translation and interpretation management systems (e.g., CAT tools and TMS) to process multilingual requests and assign qualified linguists based on language pair, specialization and ...

Transperfect

Project Coordinator

San Francisco, CA · On-site

... language and business support services, including translation, interpretation, multicultural marketing, website globalization, subtitling, voiceovers, staffing services, multicultural marketing ...

next page

Showing results 1-20

All JobsLanguage Translation JobsLanguage Translation Jobs in California

Language Translation information

See California salary details

$13

$27

$41

How much do language translation jobs pay per hour?

As of Jun 14, 2026, the average hourly pay for language translation in California is $27.28, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $18.03 and $29.42 per hour, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a Language Translator, and why are they important?

To excel as a Language Translator, you need advanced proficiency in at least two languages, a deep understanding of grammar and cultural nuances, and often a bachelor's degree in translation or linguistics. Familiarity with computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools, terminology databases, and sometimes certifications like ATA (American Translators Association) are commonly required. Strong attention to detail, time management, and effective communication set standout translators apart. These skills ensure accurate, culturally sensitive translations that maintain the intent of the original message and meet client needs.

Is a translator a well paid job?

The salary of a translator varies based on experience, language pairs, and industry, but generally, it can be a well-paying profession, especially for those with specialized skills or certifications. Freelance translators may have variable income, while in-house positions often offer steady salaries and benefits.

How much do Netflix translators get paid?

Netflix translators typically earn between $0.05 and $0.15 per word translated, depending on experience, language pair, and project complexity. Some may work as freelancers, while others are employed directly, with pay rates varying accordingly.

How do I get a job as a language translator?

To become a language translator, you typically need fluency in at least two languages and often a relevant degree or certification in translation or linguistics. Gaining experience through internships, building a portfolio, and mastering translation tools like CAT software can improve job prospects; some roles also require specialized knowledge in fields like legal or medical translation.

Are translators losing jobs to AI?

Language translators are increasingly using AI tools to assist with tasks like initial drafts and large-volume translations, but AI has not fully replaced human translators. Human expertise remains essential for nuanced, context-sensitive, and culturally accurate translations, especially in specialized fields. The role of translators is evolving to include working alongside AI technologies to improve efficiency and quality.

What are some common challenges faced by language translators when working on projects with tight deadlines?

Language translators often encounter challenges meeting tight deadlines, such as managing large volumes of content while maintaining accuracy and consistency. The need to quickly research specialized terminology and adapt translations for different cultural contexts adds pressure. Additionally, translators may have to coordinate with project managers, editors, or subject matter experts to ensure quality, which can be difficult when time is limited. Effective time management and familiarity with translation tools are essential to overcome these hurdles.

What is the difference between Language Translation vs Interpreter?

AspectLanguage TranslatorInterpreter
Primary RoleConverts written text from one language to anotherConverts spoken language in real-time
Work EnvironmentOffices, freelance, remoteConferences, meetings, live events
CredentialsLanguage proficiency, translation certificationsLanguage proficiency, interpretation certifications
Industry UsagePublishing, legal, medical, businessConferences, diplomatic events, legal proceedings

While both language translators and interpreters facilitate cross-language communication, translators work with written documents, whereas interpreters focus on spoken language in real-time settings. Their skills, work environments, and certifications differ, but both roles are essential in global communication and require high language proficiency.

What is language translation?

Language translation is the process of converting written or spoken content from one language into another while maintaining the original meaning, tone, and context. Professional translators use their linguistic skills and cultural knowledge to accurately convey messages between languages. This service is essential for global communication in fields like business, law, healthcare, and literature. High-quality translation ensures that information is accessible and clear to speakers of different languages.
What are the most commonly searched types of Language Translation jobs in California? The most popular types of Language Translation jobs in California are:
What are popular job titles related to Language Translation jobs in California? For Language Translation jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:
What job categories do people searching Language Translation jobs in California look for? The top searched job categories for Language Translation jobs in California are:
Language Translation jobs near you
Infographic showing various Language Translation job openings in California as of June 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 76% Full Time, 19% Part Time, 1% Temporary, and 3% Contract. Highlights an 91% Physical, 1% Hybrid, and 8% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $56,752 per year, or $27.3 per hour.

Research Engineer (Machine Translation)

Sanas

Palo Alto, CA • On-site

Full-time

Posted 9 days ago

Job description

Sanas is pioneering the future of human communication. Founded by a team of Stanford researchers and entrepreneurs with deep industry experience, Sanas has developed the world's first real-time speech AI platform capable of accent translation, noise cancellation, speech enhancement, cross-language communication, and more.
Sanas makes conversations clearer, more inclusive, and more effective, removing barriers that prevent people from being understood, regardless of accent, background noise, or native language.
Sanas is currently one of the fastest growing startups in Silicon Valley, growing from $16M to $50M ARR in 2025. The company's core business is profitable and is on track to end 2026 with >$120M ARR. Our team combines deep expertise in model innovation and systems engineering with a design-minded product engineering culture to build and ship cutting-edge AI models and experiences - entirely in-house.
Sanas is a 180-strong team, established in 2020. In this short span, we've successfully secured over $100 million in funding. Our innovation has been supported by the industry's leading investors, including Insight Partners, Google Ventures, Quadrille Capital, General Catalyst, Quiet Capital, and other influential investors. Our reputation is further solidified by collaborations with numerous Fortune 100 companies. With Sanas, you're not just adopting a product; you're investing in the future of communication.
If you're looking to have a significant role in roadmapping and driving technical directions, if you're looking to deploy challenging and big ideas without much overhead or slowness, if you're looking to leave your mark on an ambitious, generational mission to change how the worlds thinks about speech + AI, then Sanas is a well-suited place for you.
About the Role
Language Translation is one of Sanas's most exciting and fastest-growing product lines. We're looking for a Research Engineer who can both set technical direction and get deep in the modeling work - someone who owns translation quality end-to-end across language pairs and drives the fundamental research challenges unique to real-time simultaneous interpretation.
Job Description
Translation quality & modeling
  • Own and drive improvements to translation accuracy across Sanas's supported language pairs, with a focus on conversational, spoken-language domains.
  • Design, train, and evaluate neural MT models - from fine-tuning large multilingual models to building targeted components for low-resource or high-priority language pairs.
  • Develop and maintain rigorous evaluation pipelines using both automated metrics (BLEU, COMET, chrF) and human evaluation frameworks calibrated to real-world enterprise use cases.
  • Identify the highest-leverage research bets - data augmentation, domain adaptation, quality estimation, terminology consistency - and execute on them with measurable quality gains.

Simultaneous interpretation & delimiter modeling
  • Lead research and development of Sanas's delimiter model - the component that determines optimal segmentation points in streaming speech for real-time translation output.
  • Develop methods to handle speech disfluencies, sentence fragments, and incomplete utterances gracefully in a streaming translation pipeline.
  • Collaborate closely with the speech and inference engineering teams to ensure translation components meet strict real-time latency budgets in production.

Research direction & technical leadership
  • Define and maintain a research roadmap for MT and simultaneous interpretation, prioritizing work that moves production quality metrics.
  • Stay at the frontier of MT research - track and evaluate relevant work - and translate (haha) relevant advances into practical improvements at Sanas.
  • Mentor and technically guide other engineers working on translation-adjacent problems across the ML org.

Data & infrastructure
  • Identify, source, and curate training data for MT and delimiter modeling - including parallel corpora, synthetic data generation, and speech-aware augmentation strategies.
  • Instrument model quality monitoring in production to detect degradation across language pairs and trigger targeted retraining cycles.

Qualifications
  • 3+ years of experience in machine translation, NLP, or multilingual modeling research - with a track record of measurable quality improvements in production systems.
  • Deep familiarity with neural MT architectures: sequence-to-sequence models, Transformer variants, and large multilingual models.
  • Hands-on experience with simultaneous or streaming translation, including segmentation and low-latency decoding strategies.
  • Strong command of MT evaluation methodology - automated metrics, human evaluation design, and error analysis.
  • Proficiency in Python and deep learning frameworks (PyTorch preferred)
  • Demonstrated ability to set a research agenda, execute independently, and communicate findings clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
  • Fluency in English plus working proficiency in at least one non-English language is a strong plus.

Bonus
  • Experience with speech translation (end-to-end or cascaded) and speech-aware MT pipelines.
  • Familiarity with on-device or edge-optimized model deployment for low-latency inference.
  • Prior work on low-resource language pairs, domain adaptation, or terminology-constrained translation.
  • Published research at ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, INTERSPEECH, or equivalent venues.

Apply