| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5] > | Rates, rates and LOW rates! Thread poster: Rebecca Lyne
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Laurent KRAULAND wrote:
As long as I don't know what the agency will be charging the end client, I cannot tell if the rate offered is good or not.
An agency selling translations at 0.10 EUR/word and paying me 0.07 EUR/word is somewhat different from an agency selling translations at 0.40 EUR/word or more.
In the first case, they are low-cost providers. In the second, I'd say they are exploiters.
Have you been living under a stone? Do you really think that there are agencies anywhere in the world that can charge end clients 0.40 EUR/word. You must be joking!
| | | | Dave Greatrix 
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:33
Dutch to English
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Laurent KRAULAND wrote:
"600 words/hour" doesn't sound that impossible to me, depending on the knowledge I have of the topic at hand and of the end client's habits and terminology.
However this is comparable to a sprint rather than to a long-distance race for most of us.
Hence it should be paid MORE and FASTER - quid pro quo.
That's not the point! 600 words for an hourly rate of 28 Euro is 0.046 per word.....
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 10:33
French to German
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Dave Greatrix wrote: Laurent KRAULAND wrote:
"600 words/hour" doesn't sound that impossible to me, depending on the knowledge I have of the topic at hand and of the end client's habits and terminology.
However this is comparable to a sprint rather than to a long-distance race for most of us.
Hence it should be paid MORE and FASTER - quid pro quo. That's not the point! 600 words for an hourly rate of 28 Euro is 0.046 per word.....
But who said that *I* or any other pro translator would be accepting 28 EUR/hour for an output of 600 words?
[Edited at 2012-07-06 07:40 GMT]
| | | | | Concepts and Numbers | Jul 6, 2012 |
Laurent KRAULAND wrote: Stanislav Pokorny wrote: Dave Greatrix wrote:
I probably won't be missed if the "other translators" are capable of maintaining "a minimum of 600 words" per hour! -:)) That's called modern management, lean production, 7S etc. Yet some managers seem to fail to understand that what can work well on a factory floor and production line can't be applied on certain services, at least not without some reasonable adaptation. "600 words/hour" doesn't sound that impossible to me, depending on the knowledge I have of the topic at hand and of the end client's habits and terminology.
Hi Laurent,
I was referring more to the concept of dictating how many words you have to translate to keep your job, rather than to specific numbers.
However this is comparable to a sprint rather than to a long-distance race for most of us.
Indeed.
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| Not that unreal | Jul 6, 2012 |
Rifraf wrote: Laurent KRAULAND wrote:
As long as I don't know what the agency will be charging the end client, I cannot tell if the rate offered is good or not.
An agency selling translations at 0.10 EUR/word and paying me 0.07 EUR/word is somewhat different from an agency selling translations at 0.40 EUR/word or more.
In the first case, they are low-cost providers. In the second, I'd say they are exploiters. Have you been living under a stone? Do you really think that there are agencies anywhere in the world that can charge end clients 0.40 EUR/word. You must be joking!
Although I think that Laurent meant this as a hyperbole, it's not that unreal. I know an agency that used to charge a client €0,30. That was five years ago. Now they may be charging him €0,40. Who knows?
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 10:33
French to German
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| These were HOT (rolling) stones | Jul 6, 2012 |
Rifraf wrote:
Have you been living under a stone? Do you really think that there are agencies anywhere in the world that can charge end clients 0.40 EUR/word. You must be joking!
Just because YOUR agency doesn't do it doesn't mean that "no other agency in the world" is not able to charge that.
What choice would an end client have if there were only a few agencies able of dealing with highly specialised stuff, the kind of stuff which would read like Martian to you and me even if written in our respective native languages?
I could also tell you about small "agencies" charging as much as 0.50 EUR *per word ex VAT* to their end clients.
I can agree that this is not mainstream though, but it doesn't rule out the possibility of such high rates altogether.
And a question on the practical side, if you allow: how much would YOUR agency charge to an end client, assuming that it would pay the translator my publicly available rate, namely 0.12 EUR ex VAT per word?
| | | | Maciek Drobka
Poland
Local time: 10:33
Member (2006)
English to Polish
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| It depends on how you want to charge | Jul 6, 2012 |
Dave Greatrix wrote: Laurent KRAULAND wrote:
"600 words/hour" doesn't sound that impossible to me, depending on the knowledge I have of the topic at hand and of the end client's habits and terminology.
However this is comparable to a sprint rather than to a long-distance race for most of us.
Hence it should be paid MORE and FASTER - quid pro quo. That's not the point! 600 words for an hourly rate of 28 Euro is 0.046 per word.....
When I agree on an hourly rate with a client, it doesn't matter whether I translate an average 100 or 1,000 words per hour as long as the client pays for the whole amount of time I spent on translation.
I believe mixing hourly rates with word rates can create a lot of confusion, frustration and a number of other things.
If you agree to charge per word, charge per word; if you agree to charge per hour, charge per hour. That's how I see it.
M
| | | | | What a brilliant joke! | Jul 6, 2012 |
LilianBoland wrote:
I think $0.04 is a great rate if you live in New York or London, and studied linguistics for years.
You may buy yourself a hot dog, a can of soda and a lottery ticket with some hope to hit the the jackpot.
[Edited at 2012-07-05 14:21 GMT]
Thank you, Lilian, your joke was very funny and made my day! As a Londoner, I know many ways to donate my income to charities, and accepting such "great" rates is not one of them. Definitely.
[Редактировалось 2012-07-06 11:30 GMT]
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Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 10:33
French to German
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Natalia Mackevich wrote: LilianBoland wrote:
I think $0.04 is a great rate if you live in New York or London, and studied linguistics for years.
You may buy yourself a hot dog, a can of soda and a lottery ticket with some hope to hit the the jackpot.
[Edited at 2012-07-05 14:21 GMT] Thank you, Lilian, your joke was very funny and made my day! As a Londoner, I know many ways to donate my income to charities, and accepting such "great" rates is not one of them. Definitely. [Редактировалось 2012-07-06 11:30 GMT]
How about fish'n'chips instead of a hot-dog? Too Jag-and-gin? I am getting hungry
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Timote Suladze wrote:
Do you know that in Russia average rate for english/russian translation is about $0.02-0.025? And lots of professional translators work with such rates all over Russia because they have not a choice!
Timote, are you sure it's an average rate? Do you mean agencies or direct clients? Actually I'm rather new to this site, but I have spent several months with a similar Russian resource, during which I have had quite a lot of orders from direct clients, whom I charged much higher. Though I noticed that prices people quote there differ a lot, there's a huge gap between the minimum and the maximum.
Though I don't know about agencies yet, as I try to avoid them so far.
| | | | | Of course it was meant sarcastically | Jul 6, 2012 |
$0.40/w would be a great and fair rate in New York, or other expensive places, but I would really settle for $0.20 for more general texts.
| | | | Timote Suladze
Russian Federation
Local time: 12:33
Italian to Russian
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| As I know, yes. | Jul 6, 2012 |
Natalia Kulichkina wrote:
Timote, are you sure it's an average rate? Do you mean agencies or direct clients?
As I know from my collegues who work English/Russian translator this is an average rate of russian agencies. I know only one collegue whose rate is $10 per 1 page (1800 caracters with spaces). And searching Italian/Russian job offers I often can see English/Russia ones with rates 100 roubles per 1 page.
Natalia Kulichkina wrote:
Actually I'm rather new to this site, but I have spent several months with a similar Russian resource, during which I have had quite a lot of orders from direct clients, whom I charged much higher.
Realy? Which resource is? Are there Italian/Russian job offers as well?
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Alex Lago
Spain
Local time: 10:33
English to Spanish
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Nicole Schnell wrote:
Right know I am working for a translation agency as a direct client and they pay dollars, not cents per source word for their own marketing texts.
I try to stay away from low rates and know quite a few translators that do so, but also know quite a few translators that don't. however I don't know anyone who charges dollars per word.
I think it's great that you have a client paying dollars not cents per source word, but I don't understand why they would, I believe in trying to go for the high end of the market but paying dollars (which I understand to be at least 2) per word seems to make no business sense at all, why pay so much more than you have to? Paying say 50 (or 40 or even 30) cents per word would be an excellent rate and they would have top-notch translators lining up, so why go so high? Unless you are talking about very short texts which get paid at a fixed rate. Could you explain the situation a bit further, I find this really intriguing.
| | | | | It's that there marketing stuff... | Jul 8, 2012 |
Alex Lago wrote: Nicole Schnell wrote:
Right know I am working for a translation agency as a direct client and they pay dollars, not cents per source word for their own marketing texts. paying dollars (which I understand to be at least 2) per word seems to make no business sense at all, why pay so much more than you have to? Paying say 50 (or 40 or even 30) cents per word would be an excellent rate and they would have top-notch translators lining up, so why go so high?
... that you need to agonise over, re-write, agonise a bit more, re-write, sleep on it, tweak a bit, phone a friend, re-write, and so on und so weiter. I hardly do "marketing" any more because I can't persuade the agencies that send me it that it takes bloody ages to do an even half decent job with most of it, let alone a proper decent job.
It honestly would not surprise me to find, if you included all the time taken for everyone involved (no doubt including meetings and whatnot), multiplied by a decent hourly rate and divided by the number of words, that it could indeed be dollars per word for proper "translation" (transcreation/localisation/blah blah). After all, this is copy the client may easily have spent hundreds if not thousands on. It may be a load of old bollocks to world-weary cynics like me, but they think it's worth it. So why not pay for a proper job in other languages? Indeed, I would argue it would be a mistake not too.
From what I can gather about the kind of work that pays the translator 0.40 and up, it usually involves time spent doing things other than hammering away at the keyboard. Like meeting people face to face and schmoozing round absorbing background information and suchlike.
| | | | Phil Hand
China
Local time: 16:33
Chinese to English
| Suffering extreme cognitive dissonance | Jul 8, 2012 |
Charlie Bavington wrote:
...the kind of work that pays the translator 0.40 and up...usually involves time spent...schmoozing
Nicole...schmoozing...Nicole...schmoozing...
No, there is no way. I cannot fit those two concepts in my head at the same time. Nicole, do you schmooze?
[Edited at 2012-07-08 16:54 GMT]
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