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Charge for DTP in Word?
Thread poster: Karen Haggerty
Karen Haggerty
Karen Haggerty  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:48
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Nov 10, 2005

Hi all,

I usually don't do DTP as part of my work, so haven't looked into fair pricing. An agency asked me to return a translation in word, but so that it mimicked the original newspaper article layouts (job originally sent as scanned PDF). This meant extra time messing with those awful columns in word, etc. Because I don't usually do DTP, I of course took longer than usual. Hence charging for the hourse that *I* took may not be fair. Or might it?

She and I didn't ... See more
Hi all,

I usually don't do DTP as part of my work, so haven't looked into fair pricing. An agency asked me to return a translation in word, but so that it mimicked the original newspaper article layouts (job originally sent as scanned PDF). This meant extra time messing with those awful columns in word, etc. Because I don't usually do DTP, I of course took longer than usual. Hence charging for the hourse that *I* took may not be fair. Or might it?

She and I didn't negotiate a price before I took on the job for doing the formatting work. Now that it's time to invoice, I want to bring up the subject and propose a fair price. Any suggesetions?

Thanks ahead of time.

Karen ▲ Collapse
 
Jaroslaw Michalak
Jaroslaw Michalak  Identity Verified
Poland
Local time: 15:48
Member (2004)
English to Polish
SITE LOCALIZER
These were your hours, after all... Nov 10, 2005

They have chosen you to do the job. Therefore they should expect to pay your hours, not someone else's...

And believe me, if they told you just to translate and ask someone else to do just the formatting, they would probably pay more anyway.

By the way, I always try to avoid the hourly rate if I can. The moments where I slip from frantic productivity to lazy Internet surfing are so frequent and imperceptible that my work time is quite impossible to measure. I kno... See more
They have chosen you to do the job. Therefore they should expect to pay your hours, not someone else's...

And believe me, if they told you just to translate and ask someone else to do just the formatting, they would probably pay more anyway.

By the way, I always try to avoid the hourly rate if I can. The moments where I slip from frantic productivity to lazy Internet surfing are so frequent and imperceptible that my work time is quite impossible to measure. I know, it's lack of discipline.

Besides, there is always this strange proposition that if I do the job as well as someone else and it takes me half the time to do it, I get paid half the amount. This concept I cannot understand... No, hourly rate is not for me, definitely. ▲ Collapse
 
Karen Haggerty
Karen Haggerty  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:48
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
By the way, I always try to avoid the hourly rate if I can. Nov 10, 2005

Hi,

Thanks for the moral support..

Yes, I believe I need to charge something. But what is the standard way to charge for a job like this? (DTP in word).

Karen
 
David Sirett
David Sirett
Local time: 15:48
French to English
+ ...
Hourly rate, but check with customer first Nov 11, 2005

Karen Haggerty wrote:

Hi all,

I usually don't do DTP as part of my work, so haven't looked into fair pricing. An agency asked me to return a translation in word, but so that it mimicked the original newspaper article layouts (job originally sent as scanned PDF). This meant extra time messing with those awful columns in word, etc. Because I don't usually do DTP, I of course took longer than usual. Hence charging for the hourse that *I* took may not be fair. Or might it?

She and I didn't negotiate a price before I took on the job for doing the formatting work. Now that it's time to invoice, I want to bring up the subject and propose a fair price. Any suggesetions?

Thanks ahead of time.

Karen


If you're going to charge, I don't see any alternative to applying an hourly rate. I would advise you to contact your customer, though, to make sure they're expecting an extra charge, since you didn't discuss it at the outset and because putting Word text into columns might not be the agency's idea of DTP worthy of a separate charge.

Regards
David
 
Karen Haggerty
Karen Haggerty  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:48
Portuguese to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
DTP in word Nov 11, 2005

Hi David,

Thanks for your comment.

Yes, I want to discuss this with the agency before sending the invoice, since it wasn't discussed at the outset.

Any ideas of where I could find the market rate (that is reasonable) for this work?

Karen
 


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Charge for DTP in Word?







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