I'm wondering if other translators have an idea of how much I should be able to ask for for the 'translation' of numbers. (This was a large scanned document that had to be completely retyped and because it was engineering-related, there were MANY numbers, about 6,000, that had to be changed because of the different use of periods and commas in Europe and the United States.) The price per word is $.07 and I was estimating a price for numbers would be $.01 or something much lower than the rate per word. Any suggestions?
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Jenny Forbes United Kingdom Local time: 02:58 Member (2006) French to English + ...
Count them as words
Jan 26
Dear Martha,
I translate a lot of accounting documents and, in the case of a PDF file that can't be copied and pasted but has to be completely re-typed, I always count numbers as words. They all have to be reproduced so why on earth should they not count? In fact, retyping them requires particular care because they can't be spell-checked and, as you say, commas have to be replaced with stops and stops with commas when translating from a European language into English.
No discounts for numbers! Au contraire ...
Best wishes,
Jenny
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Paula Hernández Spain Local time: 03:58 Member (2008) English to Spanish + ...
Seriously?
Jan 26
I agree that numbers are not words, but they are units inside a text and have to be either typed or copied, and even if they come as tags (as it happens in Trados sometimes) you have to clic the combination of keys on the keyboard to include them in your text. If you have typed them, you have to check that you did not type them incorrectly...that is work and should be paid as such.
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Miranda Drew Italy Local time: 03:58 Member (2009) Italian to English
I agree
Jan 26
If I have to type in and check numbers from a PDF, I charge extra for that!
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Thank you guys! I don't think I'll charge him the same as my translation rate (at least not this time) because I said I wouldn't and now have to stick to it but maybe will in the future if it's a PDF. (I'm thinking of charging half the rate of translation per source word since it's still really tedious - that's fair, right?) I'm glad to have an idea of what to expect so thanks for your input!
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Christine Andersen Denmark Local time: 03:58 Member (2003) Danish to English + ...
You should definitely charge in some way
Jan 26
Miranda Drew wrote:
If I have to type in and check numbers from a PDF, I charge extra for that!
I have occasionally found mistakes in the source, which the client has gratefully acknowledged and sorted out.
It is necessary to make sure that the numbers are correctly placed in the sentence, and that they match the statement - to watch whether for instance a figure is reduced by a third or reduced to a third. (I have caught that sort of thing in proofreading, so I double-check my own work too...)
Figures are just as important as any other element in the text. I have to keep reminding myself, because I have a blind spot for them and tend to spring them over when reading! They are not intuitive like singular and plural verbs, syntax and whatever, so they call for more effort, not less.
I rarely charge extra, but I certainly don't handle them for free!
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Samuel Murray Netherlands Local time: 03:58 Member (2006) English to Afrikaans + ...
Charge full rate for numbers, in your case
Jan 26
Martha Oschwald wrote:
This was a large scanned document that had to be completely retyped and because it was engineering-related, there were MANY numbers, about 6,000, that had to be changed because of the different use of periods and commas in Europe and the United States.
Charge the full rate for whatever you type. In your case, you had to type the numbers. Charge at least your full per-word rate for typing them.
In fact, if I had to type out all the numbers myself, I would charge the per-word rate for every digit in the numbers, because the per-word rate should reflect the amount of time that you would normally spend typing/translating something[1] (though if you do that then you should make sure your client knows about it in advance).
Only if the client supplies the numbers in a format that is already typed so that I would not have to type them or check them, only then do I give a discount for numbers (if any).
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[1] Typing digits is as slow as typing words in a foreign language. If you type words in a sentence, you can do so semi-automatically because what you type makes sense, but try typing something in a foreign language and just see how long it takes you to ensure that there are zero typing errors. The same applies to numbers. You can see a typo in your own language without having to examine the word character by character, but you can't spot a typo in a number like that, so typing and checking numbers take much longer than typing words.
[Edited at 2012-01-26 11:43 GMT]
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