先生頑張って！応援してます！！

I'm not sure how things work in Japan--and even my US knowledge is very limited--but teaching might work differently
We're also still allowed to form organizations, but we just don't have protections like full-time employees, so there are some things we can't do

Large language models are incapable of having respect for an artist. And the people choosing to use them for the localization of art hold an active disdain for that art and the people they supposedly want to appreciate that art.

anyone who has a viz sub they pay for, I totally suggest leaving a comment about this www.viz.com/company-cont...

NFTs (Neat Font Tricks)...AI (Adobe Illustrator, obviously)...VC (voice chat, where we cry together)

Yup! They're one of the only ones. JNC also does raises based on amount of work translated for them. Other publishers seem to only do rate adjustments across the board for inflation, if they adjust them at all

Anecdotally, letterers are usually paid close to translator rates for styles that require less retouch, then rates should go up from there based on the amount of work asked for
But it'd be better to ask professional letterers like @sara.pizza , since I don't work as a letterer

Yeah, I almost always ask first now before I'll do a test. I've still tested with places paying below market but usually they're new publishers just starting out, and sometimes they reconsider their rates with enough feedback from freelancers

Oof! I hope you can!! I think all the major print publishers pay $5 or above now, and a handful of places also raised rates to $6 a few years ago when we had that big inflation spike
There are a few places that pay sub-$1000/vol. but that's usually because they're calculating from a page rate

Also, consider what you'll do long term. It's hard to save up as a freelance translator unless you're very fortunate and lucky, but if factors outside anyone's control eliminate our jobs, we need to make sure there's cushion
Save a rainy day fund or open up a SEP IRA/solo 401k for retirement

To summarize:
-Don't take work below $5/page (manga) or $10/page (light novels) unless there's really good reason to
-Before seriously thinking about going full time freelance, make sure you can realistically translate one volume of manga (or about 200 pages) in a week