Winalign - What's reasonable? Thread poster: Maria Johnson
|
|---|
Hello All,
I was just asked to give a quote for a Winalign project.. I explained I had never done one before but they asked me to take a look at it and to try and give them a quote. I was just wondering what would be a reasonable rate? I would guess it would have to be hourly but how much would be reasonable to expect to get done in an hour (# of pages).. Best case scenario.. Thanks tons in advance.
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 06:07
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Maria Johnson wrote:
I was just asked to give a quote for a Winalign project.. I explained I had never done one before but they asked me to take a look at it and to try and give them a quote. ... I would guess it would have to be hourly but how much would be reasonable to expect to get done in an hour?
Yep, you'd have to charge per hour. I assume you're referring to Trados WinAlign and not Windows 98 WinAlign (which is a program optimisation utility).
I've never worked with WinAlign, but if it's anything like other alignment programs (like PlusTools that comes free with Wordfast), then your speed all depends on (a) how well the original translator translated sentence-for-sentence and (b) how strictly your client wants you to align sentence-for-sentence.
Ask the client (a) whether he'd expect you to break up complex sentences where either source or target segment contains more than one sentence per segment, and (b) whether the two texts to be aligned are exact copies of each other or not.
As for the former, it speaks for itself that if the client insists on a one-sentence-to-one-sentence alignment, that it'll take a lot longer to do.
As for the latter, if either text has been tinkered with since the translation was done, the alignment will be far less "automatic" and a lot of manual alignment will be called for (which hikes up the hours). Also, with an untinkered pair of documents, you can often simply align the sentences without actually proofreading them. But if either text has been changed since the translation was done, then you'd have to perform proofreading in addition to simple alignment to ensure that the source and target segments are actually equivalents.
There is really no way to determine upfront how long it'll take, because it all depends on the "alignedness" of the two texts. One thing you can do, however, is to segment the two texts and count the number of segments each. If the number of segments are not even nearly the same, the alignment will probably a lot longer.
As a rule of thumb, however, and in a perfect world with perfectly alignable texts, the alignment will take as long as it normally takes you to read the first five words of every paragraph in the text . Otherwise, taking averages into account, I guess the alignment might about as long as it would normally take you to read the source text entirely.
[Edited at 2005-03-02 10:25]
| | | | Maria Johnson
Local time: 21:07
Italian to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you very much for your time and your reply. I've asked the agency to clarify a few of the points tha you brought up. When they get back to me I should have a better idea as to how much time this will take and so how much to charge. Thank you again for your time!
Maria
| | | | Judy Rojas
Chile
Local time: 00:07
Spanish to English
+ ...
| Make sure you ask if they also want editing and proofreading | Mar 2, 2005 |
You have to make sure this is an alignment only job or if this is an alignment AND editing job. If the later is the case, just reading the first five words won't do you will have to read the complete unit (source and target) to make sure it's correct.
That will take much longer.
Regards,
Ricardo
| | |
|
|
|
Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 06:07
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Editing -- quite right | Mar 3, 2005 |
Ricardo Martinez de la Torre wrote:
You have to make sure this is an alignment only job or if this is an alignment AND editing job. If the later is the case, just reading the first five words won't do you will have to read the complete unit (source and target) to make sure it's correct.
You're quite right, Ricardo. I didn't think of that. I was thinking from a perspective of a client having print-ready source texts and print-ready translations in one or more languages he doesn't understand sufficiently well to perform the alignment himself. Asking (nay, making absolutely sure) if editing is required, is a good idea.
| | | | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » Winalign - What's reasonable? | Wordfast Pro | Translation Memory Software for Any Platform
Exclusive discount for ProZ.com users!
Save over 13% when purchasing Wordfast Pro through ProZ.com. Wordfast is the world's #1 provider of platform-independent Translation Memory software. Consistently ranked the most user-friendly and highest value
Buy now! » |
| | CafeTran Espresso | You've never met a CAT tool this clever!
Translate faster & easier, using a sophisticated CAT tool built by a translator / developer.
Accept jobs from clients who use Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast & major CAT tools.
Download and start using CafeTran Espresso -- for free
Buy now! » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
