I'm looking at a criminal procedure act from 1853 (this section on translator pay in particular). The going rate for sight translation was apparently 20 kreuzer vs. 2 gulden for a translation in writing per page. They would also get 1 gulden for every half-day they had to be present in court, or 1 gulden and 30 kreuzer if they also had to take minutes.
I have no way of assessing if that was decent pay or not since I have no frame of reference and don't really know where to start looking, so I was wondering if any of you could point me in the right direction. I'm mostly interested in what a day's wages were like at the time. I know they're not directly comparable sets of data, but I can use court records to roughly assess the typical workload of a court translator and then compare it with any wages for other professions.
I'm working with historical records from the GPIH-website "Austro-Hungarian prices and wages, 1827-1914"
Also what area is this in? I can be more specific to the area in question if you let me know, for now I am using Vienna as the basis.
From 1753 to 1858 the official currency was the Conventions-Münze or C.M. 1 Gulden(fl) = 60 kreuzers (kr) and the official silver content was 11.69 grams (gAg) per Gulden. Though in 1853 the rate was 10.575 gAg per fl.
1 C.M. = 20fl = 60kr
In Vienna in 1853 the average wage in grams of Silver was 7.08 gAg per day for a laborer (gewöhnlicher Taglöhner). Wheat bread per Kilogram would have been 1.96 gAg and potatoes went for 0.30 gAg per Kilogram. Now if you aren't mathematically inclined or dislike conversions, 1 Kilogram is about 2.2 pounds.
With this data in mind, it would appear that that was a pretty fair wage considering it was more than a day laborer would have earned.
I hope this helps.