Calculations based on Trados analyses unfair?
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| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | | User | Thread poster: Igor Indruch Calculations based on Trados analyses unfair? |
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Jerzy Czopik 
Germany
 Member (2003)
Polish to German
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MODERATOR |
Sorry for the lengthy post 
Igor Indruch wrote:
Thank you for your lenthy post, but if it is a reply to my original question, you missed the point completely...
The point is, that final calculation (billable) should always be done AFTER the translation is complete. A PRELIMINARY analysis should be only informational. But this is, as it seems, not possible in TRADOS. Trados analysis is therefore unfair...
Tomas Cano Binder put it nicely - the problem is especially when customer suplies his own TM and does calculation according to it. |
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Of course, if customer delivers his TM, the analysis is not everything.
As you cannot tell what is in TM, you need to set the parmeters differently.
So even then an analysis might be "fair".
Basing on what you say, every service sold for fixed price is calculated unfair. If you build a house, you may find dificculties when excavating, but you've already quoted. If you offer a printer repair for fixed price (which is quite often nowadays, at least from what I have experienced with our printers) you may also end in spending money on the job instead of earning them.
But OTOH many customers are willing to pay a better price if it is fixed before the job starts instead of taking a potentialy cheaper offer which shall be finally calculated afterwards. Or at least so are my experiences.
So I do not think I missed the point here.
 
| | | | Steven Capsuto
United States
 Member (2004)
French to English
+ ...
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Williamson wrote:
If all did the same, there would be no discussion possible. Trados invented the scheme and agencies jumped on it. Do they give reductions for the use of Trados to their end-clients. Probably not. |
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Many agencies do.
| | | | Igor Indruch
Czech Republic
 Partial member
English to Czech
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But I do not offer "fixed price" for a job. I offer rates per source word with some discounts based on repetitions. Actuall repetions. Not estimates. And the question is why Trados cannot do exact reports as Transit. And we have another "interesting" question here: Why so many agencies prefere Trados?
Everybody who says, that everything is negotiable are right. But some negotiations can be difficult because I cannot provide exact data - I cannot show to the customer how much of "pretranslated" segments I had to correct.
With Transit there are no such problems - the report shows exactly what was really translated...
| | | | Fernando Toledo
Germany
German to Spanish
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Igor Indruch wrote:
The point is, that final calculation (billable) should always be done AFTER the translation is complete. A PRELIMINARY analysis should be only informational. But this is, as it seems, not possible in TRADOS. Trados analysis is therefore unfair...
Tomas Cano Binder put it nicely - the problem is especially when customer suplies his own TM and does calculation according to it. |
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This point is in my wish-list since Trados 5 ;-(
A possibility to compare between matches the analysis made and the matches really used.
[Edited at 2008-07-15 15:49]
| | | | eng2chi
Hong Kong
Member (2007)
English to Chinese
+ ...
| | the repetition calculation is objective and fair | Jul 15 |
First, I think the repetition calculation by Trados is objective and fair enough, because it relies on string match. It tells how the file to translate contains identical/similar sentences, which can be facilitated if the first occurrence is handled and stored as a TU. So the only thing you need to do is to setup a fair enough price scheme according to different repetition percents. Many repliers have shared their price tables.
Trados will also calculate how the file to translate matches the existing TUs your client has supplied to you. The calculation of similarity again is fairly fair. But how you can leverage the TUs they provide depends on how reliable (you think) these TUs are. So the subjective part is to determine the quality of these TUs.
| | | | Kevin Lossner
Germany
Member (2003)
German to English
| | Opening the can of worms a little wider.... | Jul 15 |
In the end it's up to you to decide how to set your rates and what to charge for any job. Given the amount of cr*p in many agency and customer TMs, I wouldn't be very generous with any match rates from TM material you didn't create.
One other issue to consider with a Trados count as the basis for pricing is that numbers and numerical dates which do not appear together with other text are not counted. In many texts this may not matter or it may be a minor issue, but if you are working in a language pair where this information requires adaptation and there are a lot of numbers to deal with, then Trados is useless for counting. Leaving this content unadapted may give some a nice "I told you so feeling", but it really doesn't do much for quality and reputations in the end. So the "fair" thing to do is count with a different tool in the first place - one that measures everything - and base prices on that count.
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| Lawyer-Linguist
Portugal
Member (2004)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| | Of course it's that easy | Jul 15 |
Igor Indruch wrote:
Lawyer-Linguist wrote:
Don't accept the PO in the first place.
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Well, that is not allways so easy...
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What I meant was ...
Tell the client that you're not in a position to accept the PO without looking at the quality of the TM, do a proper review of it (for an agreed fee if it's really going to take up too much time), and then - and only then - reach a fair and final arrangement. It's in the interests of all involved that you do that anyhow because it's the only way you'll know how long the job is going to take to be done properly.
What arrangement you then make is entirely up to you - there are no hard and fast rules, despite what the hard liners here might suggest - at the end of the day, you have to feel properly compensated for the time and effort you put in, that's what matters, but don't allow yourself to be dictated to, by accepting POs blindly only to then find yourself out of pocket.
If they are not prepared to give you a decent chance to review jobs beforehand, they frankly aren't worth working for - and that counts for all jobs (translation with or without CAT tools, revision etc).
[Edited at 2008-07-15 18:15]
| | | | Igor Indruch
Czech Republic
Partial member
English to Czech
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The problem si called "negotaiting power". Situation here is bad enough because of translators willing to work for 0.04 EUR or even less. Their work is usually miserable, but sometimes clients do not mind - recently I had a proofreading job, were "translator" left many words in original. I suggested to correct it, but client said that it sounds "cool". So I am afraid that pretty soon I will have to look for some other job, because everybody here will talk "czenglish"....
| | | | Katalin Horvath McClure
United States
Member (2002)
English to Hungarian
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| | The question was technical, IMHO, and there is a solution | Jul 15 |
I agree with previous posters that accepting a TM with unknown quality can put the translator in a very disadvantageous position.
I am currently dealing with a client who asked for my standard "match table" for a very large job, and after I supplied it, they told me the first time that there was actually a TM (originally it sounded like a project from scratch), and when I looked at the TM, it was full of useless stuff (don't want to use the c-word). I told them I will not give any discounts for any matches with this TM, however, I will later on, as I create a new TM and the project files will have more and more matches from there.
But anyway, the question was I think of a technical nature.
Igor wanted to know, if he could produce translation statistics after the job is done, in a similar fashion to what Transit provides. To answer his question, one must understand what Transit does.
If you know how Transit creates the post-translation statistics, you may want to skip this part of my message.
Transit post-translation statistics explanation START
Transit keeps track of the translator's action for each translation unit. The unit gets a different "flag" or "tag" if the translator used the 100% match as is, if the translator edited it, if the translator used an x% fuzzy match as is, or if he edited it, or if he created a completely new translation unit from scratch. (This is just a simplified explanation, but that's the essence of it.) So, when the job is done, it produces statistics ("export" or "output"statistics) based on the translation process, that is, taking into consideration the actions I mentioned above. Some agencies like to pay based on this.
There are situations, where these statistics are useful, and can be advantageous for the translator, such as Igor's case where he was given a bad TM, and these statistics would show how few of the 100% or whatever matches he could use without editing.
In other cases (and I am telling this to Igor), when the TM is good, it is more likely that a translator would prefer getting paid based on the "import" statistics. Why? The import statistics do not count for internal fuzzy matches. That occurs when there are sentences very similar, but they do not have a match in the TM. In that case, you translate the first occurrence, and you would get fuzzy matches for the rest, and perhaps you just need to modify a few words or characters for each. These do not show up in the input statistics, but they will show up in the output stats, and you would get a reduced rate for them. Some may argue that is only fair, I say it is not, because when the translator accepts a job, only the import statistics are available, and the translator budgets/reserves his time according to that. So, even if the job turns out to be less time consuming, that does not come out till the end, and the translator already reserved the time, perhaps refusing other jobs.
Anyway, this was a tangent, just to explain the problem and put it into proper context.
It still does not give a solution to Igor.
Transit post-translation statistics explanation END
However, Igor, as a workaround, you could try this (assuming this was an English to Czech translation):
Step1: Export the original English-Czech TM you got from the client. I hope you have a copy of it, without your translations in it.
Step 2: Create a new TM, but with the reversed language pair (Czech to English).
Step 3: Import the TM you exported in Step 1.
Step 4: Take the target document (Czech) and analyze it against this reversed TM.
This way you will see how much of the Czech text is similar to the Czech in the TM.
Please do let us know what you see.
(Of course, this method has a tiny loophole, if by any chance, any of the sentences you created had a match in other parts of the TM, I mean as a translation for sentences that were not in your source file, then the numbers may show a bit more matches than what you really used. If this seems to be a likely thing to happen, then you can modify Step 1 and export only the segments that showed a certain level of match to the source text.)
[Edited at 2008-07-15 22:58]
| | | | dgmaga
Germany
English to Spanish
| | They do have to give discounts | Jul 15 |
Williamson wrote:
If all did the same, there would be no discussion possible. Trados invented the scheme and agencies jumped on it. Do they give reductions for the use of Trados to their end-clients. Probably not.
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I have worked in a couple of agencies, one of them a multinational translation company and I have discussed the issue with people from other translation companies and everybody offers some kind of TRADOS-like reduction to their final customers.
More often than not, the final customers have their own translation memories and ask the translation companies to use them.
End-clients often know better than you seem to think. 
I think it is important not to get too fixed on the "TRADOS discounts".
I tend to agree with those that advice to look at your income per hour to see if you are making money or not.
Doing repetitions at 30% of 0,50 euro per word is probably better than doing them at a full rate of 0,05 euro.
Daniel
| | | | Igor Indruch
Czech Republic
Partial member
English to Czech
| | Thanks, Katalin... | Jul 15 |
Tomorrow I will try your procedure with inverted TM. I will see...
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| PRen
Canada
English
+ ...
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Jerzy Czopik wrote:
Your end customer, no agency, having no clue about Trados or other CAT tools, has a tender for you to translate. In due course you also translate all this administratory stuff needed to place an offer to this tender (ie balance sheet, excerpt from commercial register and so on). All documents are actual in the date of this tender. Three months later you get another tender to translate, with all the same administratory stuff with slight changes. The commercial register has one position more, some other documents have only a different date, some different numbers within. The volume in total is both times several thousand words. But the second time you don't neeed to translate more than 50% of the stuff, but just replace dates and so on. Will you charge your customer in full for the second job? And if yes, will you do this with each tender? Quite certainly you will not keep this customer for a long time.
Jerzy |
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Well, to look at it another way, let's say I come up with a top notch wrench and start producing them in the thousands, millions, whatever, and set the price at $10. Should I charge $10 for the first wrench and then discount every wrench after that because it's exactly the same as the first wrench? Nope. True, some manufacturers give bulk discounts, for large orders of the same wrench, maybe orders over 100, 200, etc. If I have a top quality wrench, one the customers really want, I won't have to discount too deeply. And no one will have to go back and examine all the wrenches to make sure they're exactly the same. You get my drift.
My gripe with Trados is the way it was, and still is, presented - a way to save the client (read, agency) money, not save the translator time. Really, it's a tool that agencies use to beat translators over the head. Good direct clients don't care what you use to get the job done - they just want it done, and generally quite quickly. And good direct clients are willing to pay you what you want to make this happen. That's been my experience. I don't use Trados, because I don't want to babysit software, and from what I've seen on this and other fora, it causes no end of problems. I can work just as fast relying on my memory of what I've done for my clients in the past, and using a very simple search tool (X1) to call up previous translations so that I can see the whole document, context and all.
But this has been discussed ad nauseum. I think translators have dug a very deep hole for themselves by buying into the Trados line, and I wonder if they'll ever be able to climb out.
| | | | Williamson
United Kingdom
Flemish to English
+ ...
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tectranslate wrote:
Williamson wrote:
If all did the same, there would be no discussion possible. Trados invented the scheme and agencies jumped on it. Do they give reductions for the use of Trados to their end-clients. Probably not. |
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Yes they do, thank you very much.
| Agencies live of translators, but not vice-versa. Ever considered direct customers and being a freelancer in your specialisation? |
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And deal with their clueless secretary when it comes to terminology problems, technical questions etc.? Accept that most of the files are badly formatted, preventing an efficient translation workflow? Chase payments from all your various direct clients sometimes for months on end?
A good agency will spare you from all of that and give you a steady stream of work so that you can concentrate on what you do best and get paid as agreed and on time, every time.
Williamson, if you have the nerve to deal with direct clients in your day-to-day business, fine. Whatever works for you. But don't berate people telling them all agencies are bad. PLEASE.
All the best,
Benjamin |
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I don't hate agencies. I happen to sit at the offices of a bigger player, when they wrote the invoice for my translation. The amount of that invoice was about 50% higher, so why want more with trados reductions..
A friend of mine works as a call-centre agent and was so kind to request prices at a number of agencies. I still have that list. Those prices won't have gone down.
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The plusvalue of an agency is client-search, formatting and in some cases terminology, although I prefer to look for specialists myself. As it happens, an agency came to me to ask for the data of "that (technology-savvy) engineer", because their translators did not fiind the terminology and did not understand what was written in the specs.
Special formats like Framemaker are also the plus of an agency.
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Chasing invoices is part of the translation business, both for a freelancer and an agency. In all those years, I have known only 1 agency paying on time without having to call or send a reminder. I don't say that all agencies are bad. With regard to payment, some are helpful and have an excellent reputation. They too are in the business of making money by asking a percentage on the work delivered to them by the translator.
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When I started was also the start of Trados. When a word/part of a sentence was exactly the same, nobody mentioned price-discounts. Fortunately, I found a sector where the sums of the projects are so big, that translation is only a small figure on their budget and Trados-discounts don't come to mind.
Moreover, I have an alternative to translation and can afford to say "no".
But you are right, I shall consider the hourly rate, a weekly rate, a monthly income and an income p.a., which should be about the same as the hourly rate of a freelance interpreter, cover the cost of living and make growth possible.
[Edited at 2008-07-16 07:36]
| | | | Lawyer-Linguist
Portugal
Member (2004)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| | Rather a defeatist attitude | Jul 16 |
Igor Indruch wrote:
The problem si called "negotaiting power". Situation here is bad enough because of translators willing to work for 0.04 EUR or even less. Their work is usually miserable, but sometimes clients do not mind - recently I had a proofreading job, were "translator" left many words in original. I suggested to correct it, but client said that it sounds "cool". So I am afraid that pretty soon I will have to look for some other job, because everybody here will talk "czenglish".... |
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I could very easily adopt the same attitude here in Portugal where plenty of PT»EN 'translators' work for EUR 0.05 and less, are willing to wait 60 days for payment, and deliver top-notch Porglish. I don't. My situation differs because I also translate from Dutch - a completely different ballgame - but even so, I have to contend with the sorry state of the PT market as well. I refuse to be drawn into it. I simply use my particular skills and market myself. I don't negotiate with bottom feeders. Simple as that.
If it's that bad, look for another job. But the other - and initially more difficult - option is to take the bull by the horns and raise your own game. There are clients out there needing top quality translations, who aren't and by law can't be satisfied with poor quality because of the nature of their business. Find them and let the bottom feeders fight for what's left.
No particular reference to yourself, but translators seem to make a global hobby out of bemoaning the state of the profession. Translation is like any other business. You have to fight to get to the top. It isn't handed to you on a silver platter.
[Edited at 2008-07-16 14:48]
| | | | FarkasAndras
Hungary
English to Hungarian
+ ...
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PRen wrote:
Well, to look at it another way, let's say I come up with a top notch wrench and start producing them in the thousands, millions, whatever, and set the price at $10. Should I charge $10 for the first wrench and then discount every wrench after that because it's exactly the same as the first wrench? Nope. True, some manufacturers give bulk discounts, for large orders of the same wrench, maybe orders over 100, 200, etc. If I have a top quality wrench, one the customers really want, I won't have to discount too deeply. And no one will have to go back and examine all the wrenches to make sure they're exactly the same. You get my drift.
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The factory doesn't just press alt & + to make a new wrench. They source raw materials, send them along the production line, pay the employees who operate the machines, pay for the electricity, do QC, and then package and ship the end product and of course do a million other little things.
True, they only do R&D once, but then that is indeed refelected in the price. Otherwise, a competitor would undercut their price with an equally good product.
The market sets a realistic price for pretty much everything, and translation is no different. If you wish to charge in full for repetitions, I am here offering a discount for TM matches because I know they take little time to revise and I still get a very reasonable hourly wage for my work. Guess who the clients will choose.
Complaining about Trados not being designed to save time but to save money makes no sense to me. The two are basically the same thing; if it didn't save time, there would be no basis for discounts and translators would not be accepting them. If it didn't save time, I would not be using it in my own interest even when the client has no clue it exists.
The change it brings is basically that you get largely the same hourly rate, but instead of translating the same thing over and over somewhat differently or ransacking your earlier files murmuring to yourself "this sounds familiar, I think I've translated this sentence once before", you translate the new stuff and don't spend much time with the repeated parts. Good riddance, I say.
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