Broadly, this is called community interpreting.
At the first company where I worked, more than 80 percent of my calls were related to hospitals. North American hospitals are required to provide language access, and the patient does not personally pay the interpreter, so hospitals can request one without placing that cost on the patient. That made demand feel steady to me. The rest of my calls included insurance, finance, transportation, government agencies, and, depending on the company, legal matters.
From Start Earning: How to Start as a Home Interpreter by Mocha Park
What I learned after moving
With per-minute pay, a quiet hour is an hour of zero income. It works well when volume is high. When volume is low, it wears away at you, and the psychological burden was much heavier than the arithmetic suggested.
My first role paid by the hour rather than by the minute and felt much like an ordinary job. Regardless of its exact legal classification, I had the stability of being paid for scheduled time even when no call arrived.
From Start Earning: How to Start as a Home Interpreter by Mocha Park
Where I found postings
I found many openings by searching Google for
korean interpreter. Substitute your own language if appropriate. Companies that were actively hiring often seemed to reply within a few days.LinkedIn was also useful. After I updated my profile with interpreting experience, I received recruiting messages.
In my experience, keeping current experience on the profile and checking messages worked better than merely creating an account.
From Start Earning: How to Start as a Home Interpreter by Mocha Park
What actually happened to me
Doing nothing would have left me at 109. Negotiating took me to 140. That is the difference between the automatic first-year increase of 9 percent and the 40 percent increase I created through negotiation.
What I learned was that, at least in my negotiations with the recruiters I met, the first quoted rate was not always the final number. I changed from someone who accepted a number announced by the company into someone who presented reasons and proposed a different number. The final contract changed as a result.
From Start Earning: How to Start as a Home Interpreter by Mocha Park
