| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7] > | 75,000 words in 15 working days? Thread poster: Beatriz Ramírez de Haro
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Brandis (X)
Local time: 23:14
English to German
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| What is the cient paying... | Dec 29, 2009 |
Hi! I guess not much and I also think that the project manager is butting the project like in the football field, may be for a diference of USD 0,02 word another his superior another usd 0,02. It is humanly impossible to do 75000 words in that given time frame. Currently I have one such issue here, almost over 128000 words in 12 days finishing. I told the customer, sorry I cannot take that kind of job anymore. I want to have my peace of mind and I have other customers as well. I like translation... See more Hi! I guess not much and I also think that the project manager is butting the project like in the football field, may be for a diference of USD 0,02 word another his superior another usd 0,02. It is humanly impossible to do 75000 words in that given time frame. Currently I have one such issue here, almost over 128000 words in 12 days finishing. I told the customer, sorry I cannot take that kind of job anymore. I want to have my peace of mind and I have other customers as well. I like translation because it brings me int inclination with the domain expertise I enjoy, though I respect much when I get paid and I hate it when clients exploit my attitude to the profession. Afterall I am helping them. Brandis. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Good observation | Dec 29, 2009 |
gianfranco wrote:
... we have a potential productivity of over 12-13,000 words, and yet, when I translate, I rarely go over 3-4000 words, and normally I do not take a workload much higher than 2,000-2,500.
All of this means that the bottleneck, for me, is not the typing speed, but the actual task of translating, which includes thinking, doing the occasional search (even when working with very familiar subjects), organizing the sentences, improving details here and there, and so on.
All these tasks are purely linguistic, not mechanic, and reduce the productivity by a factor of 4 or 5 compared to the simple task of typing.
Indeed. This is why I have a good laugh every time people try to tell me that typing speed is an important factor in translation. The concept of bottleneck or rate determining step (as we call it in chemistry) is simply beyond many people. I suppose, however, that it also depends in part on the complexity of the texts one translates. I can see improving my speed by typing faster with extremely simple stuff where style is of no concern - or working faster with DNS or other dictation tools. For the work I usually do, however, Dragon was more useful to relieve pain in my fingers; I can't honestly say that I worked faster. When I am trying to untangle a legal sentence that takes up half a page or more, typing speed is hardly the limiting factor.
But as I commented in the vaporized post above, each must learn his or her own lessons. Thus I would say bite off as much as you think you can handle, and if you are wrong, you will learn that soon enough and, I hope, make appropriate adjustments. It's really not that hard to keep track of personal work metrics and use these to forecast your own ability to handle particular kinds of projects. I did so for several years and was finally able to predict my work times with various texts with a margin of error well under 10% until the circumstances of my environment changed and I had to recalibrate. Talking about daily outputs of 2,000 to XX,000 per day has little general value. Each of us is going to have to know our own pace for different text types, working environments and formats, and I can't see that knowing someone else's speed and endurance is going to be of the slightest use to me in my planning. Nor is it my mission in life to prevent any ambitious individuals from self-immolating.
| | | | Lingua 5B 
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 23:14
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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Aleksandar Stanković wrote:
I easily average 600 words (two pages) per hour of work even with the most difficult of source texts, final proofreading included.
I really need to retort here. You've said " even most difficult source texts" which is so categorical... does it mean you could manage 600 w/hr x 15 hrs a day translating a text on nuclear physics? And end up with the best quality?
[Edited at 2009-12-29 20:31 GMT]
| | | | Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 14:14
English to German
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In memoriam
Lingua 5B wrote: Aleksandar Stanković wrote:
I easily average 600 words (two pages) per hour of work even with the most difficult of source texts, final proofreading included. I really need to retort here. You've said " even most difficult source texts" which is so categorical... does it mean you could manage 600 w/hr x 15 hrs a day translating a text on nuclear physics? And end up with the best quality? [Edited at 2009-12-29 20:31 GMT]
Or some thriller about tenter frames and dryers in regard to the relevant aspects of functional interchangeability.
Hehe.
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Arianne Farah
Canada
Local time: 17:14
Member (2008)
English to French
| Depends on the translator's inherent speed | Dec 30, 2009 |
When I looked at the title of the post I couldn't figure out what the fuss was about - I regularly schedule 5000-7000 words a day and I have no problem keeping that up since my inherent translation speed is 800-1100 words/hour, add to this 1-2 hours for spellcheck, Antidote and a re-read and I rarely work more than 8 hours a day. So for me this project would be business as usual except that I would have to set daily goals as I have a tendency to procrastinate (case in point, I'm on Proz and I h... See more When I looked at the title of the post I couldn't figure out what the fuss was about - I regularly schedule 5000-7000 words a day and I have no problem keeping that up since my inherent translation speed is 800-1100 words/hour, add to this 1-2 hours for spellcheck, Antidote and a re-read and I rarely work more than 8 hours a day. So for me this project would be business as usual except that I would have to set daily goals as I have a tendency to procrastinate (case in point, I'm on Proz and I have 11K words due tomorrow which I have yet to start).
However I know that I am the exception rather than the rule - both my languages are 100% native and I keep a huge master memory which, even though it might not have matches, saves hours and hours of vocabulary research so I basically type my French translation as I read the English... and I am one of those people for whom typing speed is a bottle neck... or even the time it takes to validate a cell - as I read the English I already have the French, there is almost no conscious thought process involved, it just flows naturally. Obviously if the person debating to choose the project or not has a translation speed around 500 words/hour, or even less, then this project would entail 15 straight 10-hour days, not counting the revision and quality of life would suffer (not to mention the translation created by a sleep-deprived individual)!
My point is that the person/agency posting the project was not unreasonable but rather it is not a mandate that could be fulfilled by any translator in that language pair - it would have to be some who is, simply put, quick (oh and who actually does produce good translations... no use being fast if you're no good - you would just lose your clients more rapidly):-)
Happy New Year! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Arianne Farah
Canada
Local time: 17:14
Member (2008)
English to French
| Sorry for the back to back posts but I agree! | Dec 30, 2009 |
Aleksandar Stanković wrote: I see that some of the colleagues have played the quality card in an attempt to dismiss "presumptious allegations of achieving ridiculously high work productivity". As a counter-argument, FarkasAndras's post is just so dead-on that I won't even bother to rephrase it: FarkasAndras wrote:
I also don't get why some people immediately assume that those who work faster than them do so by working through the night and generally killing themselves, or by cutting corners and producing mediocre quality at best. Some people think, research and type faster than others and are generally more efficient, and/or work harder for longer. The worst kind of mediocrity is the one you impose on others.
I completely agree, it is one of the reasons I would never consider taking an in-house position again... when your colleagues translate 1500-2000 words a day you have 2 choices - work at your "natural" speed and produce 5x more work for the same pay and feel cheated or dawdle & procrastinate and basically waste 6 of the 8 hours you spend at work to match the standard output in which case you feel bored & you p*ss off your colleagues who see you playing internet games as they are working... now if I could find a company that would 1) pro rate my salary to my output or 2) allow me to leave the premises once the daily quota is reached (ie. work 2 hours a day and be paid full time) I might reconsider but meanwhile I am quite content working the way I do...at full steam!
| | | | Paul Dixon
Brazil
Local time: 18:14
Portuguese to English
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| Yes, it`s feasible | Dec 31, 2009 |
Provided the text is not technical, 75 thousand words in 15 days is quite feasible. I could probably do this work in 14 days plus a proof-read and final check. With an extra advantage - I don`t use CAT tools, I have tried a couple of courses in Trados (in Brazil known as "Travos" from the Portuguese verb "travar" which means (of a computer or computer system) "to crash") but came our more baffled than when I started.
Of course if the text is highly technical then the plot thickens a... See more Provided the text is not technical, 75 thousand words in 15 days is quite feasible. I could probably do this work in 14 days plus a proof-read and final check. With an extra advantage - I don`t use CAT tools, I have tried a couple of courses in Trados (in Brazil known as "Travos" from the Portuguese verb "travar" which means (of a computer or computer system) "to crash") but came our more baffled than when I started.
Of course if the text is highly technical then the plot thickens a bit. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Alvaro Morales
Spain
Local time: 23:14
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
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| By "proofread" do you mean "best quality"? | Jan 1, 2010 |
Paul Dixon wrote:
Provided the text is not technical, 75 thousand words in 15 days is quite feasible. I could probably do this work in 14 days plus a proof-read and final check. With an extra advantage - I don`t use CAT tools, I have tried a couple of courses in Trados (in Brazil known as "Travos" from the Portuguese verb "travar" which means (of a computer or computer system) "to crash") but came our more baffled than when I started.
Do Aleksandar and Paul mean they can get a production, best quality version of these 75K words in just 15 days without any help?
My -maybe too skeptical- brain hardly believes it.
This clearly manifests that "proofread" is not a synonym for "quality assured".
Probably drafts from some translators are far better than double-proofed versions from another ones.
[Edited at 2010-01-01 23:37 GMT]
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Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 23:14
French to German
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| We should never assume... | Jan 2, 2010 |
Alvaro Morales wrote:
My -maybe too skeptical- brain hardly believes it.
This clearly manifests that "proofread" is not a synonym for "quality assured".
Probably drafts from some translators are far better than double-proofed versions from another ones.
My opinion at this point of the discussion is that we should never assume. While I am certainly not lazy, I won't go for such a work (and certainly not for the "average rate" we see on the Internet) and won't neither encourage, nor discourage anybody to do so.
In my opinion, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this topic is that each translator will seek the clients best suited for their own purposes and therefore will most probably mainly work for/with them.
[Edited at 2010-01-02 12:03 GMT]
| | | | Alvaro Morales
Spain
Local time: 23:14
Member (2006)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Laurent KRAULAND wrote:
In my opinion, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this topic is that each translator will seek the clients best suited for their own purposes and therefore will most probably mainly work for/with them.
[Edited at 2010-01-02 12:03 GMT]
If we also add to it that as lonely freelancers, each one of us understand quality in a different way.
| | | | | I doubt it... | Jan 2, 2010 |
maybe we can do 5,000 words/day for 15 days (and then rest for a week...), but there won't be sufficient time for proofreading, quality and consistency checks... so, in my opinion, the final product will be somewhat deficient... so, my question is: can we guarantee quality? Do we inform the client that quality might be an issue?
| | | | Vito Smolej
Germany
Local time: 23:14
Member (2004)
English to Slovenian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Nicole Schnell wrote: Laurent KRAULAND wrote: some press releases amounting to a mere 500 words can "kill" me more than 3,000 words of any IT manual . Therefore the emotional involvement coming with the job discussed could potentially leave one empty and exhausted long before the deadline. [Edited at 2009-12-29 15:40 GMT] Yes.
a warning to all, who give an unqualified yes aka commitment, when asked :"btw, would you xyz for us?"
xyz: push iron, swim, ride a bike, run, do all 3 (i.e. triathlon)... , text, translate
[Edited at 2010-01-02 13:30 GMT]
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| You got my word on that... | Jan 3, 2010 |
My opinion at this point of the discussion is that we should never assume.
If you assume, you make an ASS of U and ME.
| | | | Vito Smolej
Germany
Local time: 23:14
Member (2004)
English to Slovenian
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | reminded me of Marathon monks of mount Hiei | Jan 3, 2010 |
The greatest athletes in the world today are neither the Olympic champions nor the stars of professional sports, but the "Marathon Monks" of Japan's sacred Mount Hiei. Over a seven year training period, these "running Buddha" figuratively circle the globe on foot. During one incredible 100-day stretch, they cover 52.5 miles daily - twice the length of an Olympic marathon. The prize they seek is not a pot of gold, but enlightenment in the here and now.
the point is, the "norm... See more The greatest athletes in the world today are neither the Olympic champions nor the stars of professional sports, but the "Marathon Monks" of Japan's sacred Mount Hiei. Over a seven year training period, these "running Buddha" figuratively circle the globe on foot. During one incredible 100-day stretch, they cover 52.5 miles daily - twice the length of an Olympic marathon. The prize they seek is not a pot of gold, but enlightenment in the here and now.
the point is, the "normal" athletes (forget me and you) can keep up with them for a day or two, maybe a week...
But, given the fact I do not translate for spiritual enlightment, I can easily pass on this kind of orders - can keep up with them for a day or two, maybe a week...(g)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S06oMxdt40A
btw, Beatriz (I hope she's still reading the thread...) why did you pass on the order? Just curious.
[Edited at 2010-01-03 19:47 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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I'm having a great time reading the thread - and learning a lot.
In reply to your question: I simply failed to negotiate a convenient deadline for me (I'm no athlete...)
Cheers
Bea
[Edited at 2010-01-03 21:45 GMT]
[Edited at 2010-01-04 09:42 GMT]
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