What's within reason Thread poster: Roy Williams
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Hello all,
I'm not sure if this is the right forum for such a question but I felt compelled to ask. I've recently seen an job posint in another translator site in which the agency required that a translation of 25,000 to 30,000 words be completed in three days. Is these within reason?
It seems a bit much to me, but then 12 - 15000 words a day is a bit beyound my typing ability. What do any of you think? Is these possible to do and still maintain quality?
| | | | Dudicov
Local time: 21:48
Korean to Polish
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| What's within reason - supporting software | Sep 16, 2008 |
Hello,
It is up to the source text, maybe in many parts of the text same words or sentences occur? Moreover the contractor might expect that you have a program like CAD type - e.g. Trados, which provides you your own dictionary with basis of your translated files- the bigger one the longer you have worked with it. My friend translator once told me, that thanks to the Trados he done 20 pages within maybe 30 minutes. But his specialization is law, so he already had lots of translated documen... See more Hello,
It is up to the source text, maybe in many parts of the text same words or sentences occur? Moreover the contractor might expect that you have a program like CAD type - e.g. Trados, which provides you your own dictionary with basis of your translated files- the bigger one the longer you have worked with it. My friend translator once told me, that thanks to the Trados he done 20 pages within maybe 30 minutes. But his specialization is law, so he already had lots of translated documents as basis and rich dictionary.
However the amount of words you mentioned is for me is beyond my ability as well. It is so big like Master diploma work in Poland...
Aleksandra ▲ Collapse
| | | | Susan Welsh 
United States
Local time: 15:48
Russian to English
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| title of your post | Sep 16, 2008 |
It would be better if your title told people what the subject of the post was. Busy translators are unlikely to read it otherwise.
Susan
| | | | | You don't do 12K words a day? | Sep 16, 2008 |
WilRoy wrote:
It seems a bit much to me, but then 12 - 15000 words a day is a bit beyound my typing ability. What do any of you think? Is these possible to do and still maintain quality?
What? You don't do 12 thousand words a day yourself? How can you survive in this business? 
(Just kidding. I promise!)
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 21:48
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| You need 4 colleagues and a pizza parlour | Sep 16, 2008 |
WilRoy wrote:
I've recently seen an job posint in another translator site in which the agency required that a translation of 25,000 to 30,000 words be completed in three days.
It may be doable for a team of translators working together. If you thought the price was right, and you had 4 colleagues who would be willing to work with you for two days straight (that's 5 people, of whom 4 do translation and 1 do reviews) with regular pizza breaks (on the house), I'm sure you could do it.
| | | | Roy Williams
Austria
Local time: 21:48
German to English
TOPIC STARTER | So Im not crazy | Sep 17, 2008 |
So Im not crazy for thinking that 25k to 30k words in three days is impossible unless you just hit random keys like they do in movies to make it seem like they're typing reall fast? I also forgot to mention that this particular company stated that they would pay 1 INR per source word. I had to look up the currency and converted it to both dollars and euros. Needless to say this made the post even more ridiculous.
Thanks for the confirmation!
| | | | Allesklar
Australia
Local time: 05:18
English to German
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This would have been a straight machine translation - the difficulty is not achieving this volume, but finding a sucker who lets you get away with it and actually pays you. Pretty shaky ground, but some people are desperate enough to do it.
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Hi WilRoy,
if 80 % of the text repeats, this shouldn't be a problem. If this is an entirely new text with no or just very few repetitions, completing 25K words within 3 days is simply beyond human limits.
I hope it doesn't sound arrogant if I say that I am quite an experienced translator. I touch-type 300 keystrokes a minute, but the limit I can handle a day is around 4,000 words when working all day with few or no breaks. On average, my daily output is about 3,000 words. You ... See more Hi WilRoy,
if 80 % of the text repeats, this shouldn't be a problem. If this is an entirely new text with no or just very few repetitions, completing 25K words within 3 days is simply beyond human limits.
I hope it doesn't sound arrogant if I say that I am quite an experienced translator. I touch-type 300 keystrokes a minute, but the limit I can handle a day is around 4,000 words when working all day with few or no breaks. On average, my daily output is about 3,000 words. You simply can't produce more in decent quality. ▲ Collapse
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