but these market distortions are simply sons of lean years, and I'm afraid we'll have to get used to, and may be to become more flexible
Pablo dixit: I believe it is quite clear that if an agency offers prices for 0,05 euros - 0,06 euros per word (real case that can be searched at Internet) to the clients, the translator probably will have to work to 0,025 - 0,030 euros per word.
Note that are all around there are many "fake agencies" that are indeed one-man-bands; it partially explains this deplorable behaviour
Claudio
[Modificato alle 2009-12-07 23:07 GMT]
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David Eunice Japan Local time: 09:11 Japanese to English
Low cost translation affects the sanity of serious translators
Jan 20, 2010
While I can imagine low-cost translation, I'm not sure what 'professional service' means.
I suppose it must be informed by a philosophy something like "Deliver a product, not a problem"?
If by 'professional service' you mean delivery of a high-quality translation with few typos and text that fulfills its purpose, -- let's say that it's clear and easily readable to the target readers in the target language, then I can't see how such work can be delivered at low cost, at least not by an Anglophone living in one of the richer countries.
All you have to do is model how much money you need make in a year and divide that by the number of productive hours you manage in a day.
I live and work in Japan, and I worked out that I have to make JPY 3,000 per hour just to pay the bills! (And that is based on 7 hours a day, 25 days a month, 11 months a year.)
But it is also 'professional service' (on the part of agencies) to deliver translated text that meets the client's budget. The client's budget and the client's real needs may not match.
'Professional service' does not correlate with translation quality. For example, professional copyeditors will look at the budget for a job and give each page an average amount of time based on the desired hourly rate. Say the pay for 100 pages is $100 and the copy editor expects to make $50 per hour, then the average time per page is a little over one minute. If the budget is $1,000 dollars, then a better job can done.
I know translators who claim to consistently make, in dollars. five-figure incomes by using voice recognition software and being generally massively competent in their field of specialization. They are not great stylists and the work that I have seen done by them definitely looks translated. They are only at home with technical materials.
The one year I made a five-figure income I burned out. So I would say that it is unreasonable both for a client to expect high quality for low-cost and for a translator to think that they can consistently deliver high quality for low cost and preserve their mental health.
[Edited at 2010-01-21 00:53 GMT]
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