| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: What's your average monthly output? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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| Quality is more important | Dec 11, 2007 |
I think we all agree that quality is more important than quantity.
My output is about 40.000 words per month, I think.
| | | | | Selling elastic by the metre | Dec 11, 2007 |
I never give answers to topics like this.
OK, I have no idea what my 'typical' or average output would be in any case.
Some months I get a job or two with TMs that give lots of matches. Very often the concordance is useful, but there are no matches.
For some regular clients I can turn out 750 words an hour, but they usually send jobs under 1000 words, so the invoicing and administration eat up more time. For others I may be struggling to produce 200 an hour before... See more I never give answers to topics like this.
OK, I have no idea what my 'typical' or average output would be in any case.
Some months I get a job or two with TMs that give lots of matches. Very often the concordance is useful, but there are no matches.
For some regular clients I can turn out 750 words an hour, but they usually send jobs under 1000 words, so the invoicing and administration eat up more time. For others I may be struggling to produce 200 an hour before the deadline.
And then it depends which language you are talking about.
On average, there are 20% more words in my English target texts than in the Scandinavian source texts. But that too varies enormously from text to text, writer to writer and genre to genre. The agencies tell me there are even larger differences between other language pairs.
I get a lower rate per word from one big agency when we have to count the target words instead of the source, but if I spot check and calculate both rates where I can, the difference is very small and may swing either way. My Scandinavian colleagues get the English to Danish rate per word - with considerably fewer words in their target texts than the English sources.
So you are comparing apples with oranges or grapes with coconuts here. A rate per hour would be a better unit to discuss, but even then you have to allow for administration and all the jobs apart from direct translation.
The Danes have a proverb: You are trying to sell elastic by the metre!
Happy translation, folks!
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| | | | Williamson 
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:27
Flemish to English
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Erik Hansson wrote: My average is somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 words, but it's hard to say as I normally make all quotes, invoices etc. based on standard lines with 55 characters. Depending on language, one standard line can have between 7 and 9 words (for Swedish). For the languages related to Latin it must be far more. I am wondering though how any translator can produce 200,000 words and more on average per month. Are there any robot translators around? I would like to learn how to handle this amount of text as it would give me much more spare time. Speech recognition? Special keyboard? 18 hours/day? Regards Erik +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Erik Hansson ( SFÖ ) Technical translator DE-SV Hansson Übersetzungen GmbH www.hansson.de [email protected] +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Combine machine translation, CAT,speech recognition and the human translator. You will not get 200.000 words, but after a while (training of speech recognition, building of TMs), your volume will be much higher than the average. M.T. does not always translates correctly, but it gives the gist of the text. CAT produces what has been translated before, the human translator using speech recognition can correct the output. That is the direction this profession is heading.
| | | | Angela Dickson (X)
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:27
French to English
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Williamson wrote:
Combine machine translation, CAT,speech recognition and the human translator. You will not get 200.000 words, but after a while (training of speech recognition, building of TMs), your volume will be much higher than the average. M.T. does not always translates correctly, but it gives the gist of the text. CAT produces what has been translated before, the human translator using speech recognition can correct the output. That is the direction this profession is heading.
Do you use this workflow yourself? How are you finding it?
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HelenG
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:27
French to English
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| Volumes don't count | Dec 11, 2007 |
Personally, I subscribe to the "less is more" school. I think the best route through all of this is to truly specialise which then enables you to be quicker and better at what you do and to charge accordingly. May seem idealistic but I need to have some pride in what I do so this approach suits me more than banging out piles of nonsense every day.
I often charge significantly higher than Proz rates and I know that there are others out there who do too. And even agencies are willing to pay... See more Personally, I subscribe to the "less is more" school. I think the best route through all of this is to truly specialise which then enables you to be quicker and better at what you do and to charge accordingly. May seem idealistic but I need to have some pride in what I do so this approach suits me more than banging out piles of nonsense every day.
I often charge significantly higher than Proz rates and I know that there are others out there who do too. And even agencies are willing to pay because they know what they are getting. By the same token, I don't make discounts for Trados because I have explained to everyone I work with that it is a quality assurance tool and the time savings are more than offset by the cost of the product and technical assistance/training, etc.
I think the industry needs translators to focus more on quality than on quantity as there is some truly terrible work being done out there - I have proofread some of it so I know how surprisingly rare it is to come across a really good translation. I once did 8,000 words of complicated text in approximately 8 hours - and I can honestly say it was the worst work I have ever done in my life and a world apart from what I normally do! Which makes me wonder: of course, it is physically possible to translate 10,000 words - but I think different people are working to different standards and have different ideas about what translation is - and this explains the large volume differences. I don't believe it is possible to produce a really well-translated, idiomatic translation that reads like a target language original document that is 10,000 words long in 10 hours. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | What about the quality? | Dec 11, 2007 |
I usually translate 2,000 or 2,500 words a day maximum, i.e. including full reviewing. A full month, week-ends included would then be 50,000 words. Of course a 3K words per day happens once in a while, but not on a steady basis. Serious translators around me also average the same amount.
How can anyone answer he/she has an average output of 100,000 - 150,000 words a month? I have serious doubts on the quality of their production.
| | | | Heidi C
Local time: 05:27
English to Spanish
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| Average hourly output | Dec 11, 2007 |
Christine Andersen wrote: So you are comparing apples with oranges or grapes with coconuts here. A rate per hour would be a better unit to discuss, but even then you have to allow for administration and all the jobs apart from direct translation. The Danes have a proverb: You are trying to sell elastic by the metre!
I did not respond to the poll, as it really makes no sense. There are too many variables involved!
It would make much more sense to calculate average HOURLY output. After all, to calculate the montly output you have to start with how much you translate a week, a day, an hour....
| | | | Jocelyne S
France
Local time: 11:27
French to English
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| With Helen and Christiane | Dec 11, 2007 |
I'm with Helen and Christiane: quality over quantity is what counts.
I'm also a bit amazed as to why people would want to translate upwards of 100K words per month. I earn what I feel is a good living with roughly half that, so either people in our profession are disgustingly rich or are working for far too little money.
As I've yet to meet any filthy rich freelance translators, I imagine that there must be a lot of people out there selling themselves (and in the proces... See more I'm with Helen and Christiane: quality over quantity is what counts.
I'm also a bit amazed as to why people would want to translate upwards of 100K words per month. I earn what I feel is a good living with roughly half that, so either people in our profession are disgustingly rich or are working for far too little money.
As I've yet to meet any filthy rich freelance translators, I imagine that there must be a lot of people out there selling themselves (and in the process the whole profession) short. Do not underestimate yourselves and your work!
Best,
Jocelyne ▲ Collapse
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Williamson
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:27
Flemish to English
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| How am I finding it | Dec 14, 2007 |
Angela Dickson wrote: Williamson wrote:
Combine machine translation, CAT,speech recognition and the human translator. You will not get 200.000 words, but after a while (training of speech recognition, building of TMs), your volume will be much higher than the average. M.T. does not always translates correctly, but it gives the gist of the text. CAT produces what has been translated before, the human translator using speech recognition can correct the output. That is the direction this profession is heading. Do you use this workflow yourself? How are you finding it?
In my book about Operations Management, one of the problems consists of calculating how much a translator can produce given certain variables.
It certainly goes a lot faster than the "traditional way" of browsing through normal paperback dictionaries and typing the translation.
There are MTs on the market which give the gist of the source text and not all churn out an incomprehensible translation. All you have to do is to dictate the improved version in the target-language and correct those words which Dragon misinterpreted.
In such a way 8.000 a day (of 10 hours) becomes feasible.
Moreover, I am not an advocate of the "Ego Sum" (i.e. look how great I am and look how "bad" the others are) attitude of the translator. If you work together : those 8000 can be reviewed by somebody else, specialised in the subject matter. By the way, have a look at : http://www.undl.org/unlsys/introduction_main.html
[Edited at 2007-12-14 10:48]
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