| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Calling all TM users. How do you cope with price reductions? Thread poster: myska
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Keith Boak 
Portugal
Local time: 13:58
Portuguese to English
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| Hourses for Courses | Apr 30, 2009 |
I've worked for over 5 years without giving a discount for fuzzy matches, even for jobs with over 20k words. They don't save me time, I can earn more doing another project, so I say, no thanks.
However, I have come across fellow translators on shared jobs who get very excited when they find there is a high percentage of fuzzy matches, and suddenly tell the client they can do twice the word count they originally said.
On a separate but related issue, I recently advertise... See more I've worked for over 5 years without giving a discount for fuzzy matches, even for jobs with over 20k words. They don't save me time, I can earn more doing another project, so I say, no thanks.
However, I have come across fellow translators on shared jobs who get very excited when they find there is a high percentage of fuzzy matches, and suddenly tell the client they can do twice the word count they originally said.
On a separate but related issue, I recently advertised a small job myself, and had people offering to do it for half the price I offered to pay.
I suspect there is a rough price quality ratio - but I don't know for sure. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Off (this) topic - Quality/price ratio | Apr 30, 2009 |
autor wrote:
I suspect there is a rough price quality ratio - but I don't know for sure.
This is off-topic here, as the thread is about fuzzy match discounts, but I noticed that there is such a relationship, as it would be expected.
Lately, I've had an increased demand from agencies to "fix" completed translations. Quite presumably they hired someone for their "best rates" being lower, and the end-client eventually rejected the outcome.
Incidentally, our pair, EN-PT, is the same, though our different variants prevents us from being competitors. It's no secret, though Proz pools all of us together, that the average rate in this pair is 10¢/word. It's a good, round number, so people in different pairs and other averages may easily adjust my findings.
We can expand this 10¢ average to a 9-11¢ range, to accomodate various local situations. This should be what an average translator charges for an average difficulty job. I'm not discussing high level specialization here.
From the samples I've seen, the 7-8¢ range generally encompasses translators that do passable work, the type that can be found in just too many web sites. A spellchecker won't find any mistakes there, but the text doesn't flow well in the target language. It sounds unnatural, ostensibly translated all the time. Readers feel uneasy if their usual activity does not involve frequent writing; writers/translators/journalists etc. see it as thoroughly bad style in the target language.
Next, the 5-6¢ range is moderately appalling. Bilingual readers often back-translate mentally to get the meaning. Missplelled words and weird terms may abound, depending on the subject. Monoglot readers will fail to grasp most of the the ideas.
Below 5¢, it's usually a disaster. When the budget points to this level, I promptly advise all prospects to use free, automatic machine translation. The flaws will be different, but the quality level will be roughly the same. If the translation is only to fulfill some requirement, to be able to say that something was translated, it's enough. I suggest using free MT because if the result is later deemed totally unacceptable, there will be more funds available to hire a professional to redo from scractch.
These figures are not carved in stone, nor have been based on a significantly large sample. Nevertheless they show the existence of a clear segmentation in ranges, and their corresponding price relationship. Of course there will always be off-slot rates, such as cheap masters doing it for passion, as well as overpriced amateurs.
| | | | Vito Smolej
Germany
Local time: 14:58
Member (2004)
English to Slovenian
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SITE LOCALIZER | "On jobs larger than 5,000 words..." | Apr 30, 2009 |
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:... I give repeated segments (100% match) for free. That's just a keystroke. However I've never given a discount on fuzzy matches.
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| | | | | 'grading' translations; 'achievement standards' for translators etc | May 1, 2009 |
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
... the average rate in this pair is 10¢/word. It's a good, round number, so people in different pairs and other averages may easily adjust my findings.
We can expand this 10¢ average to a 9-11¢ range, to accomodate various local situations. This should be what an average translator charges for an average difficulty job. I'm not discussing high level specialization here.
From the samples I've seen, the 7-8¢ range generally encompasses translators that do passable work, the type that can be found in just too many web sites. A spellchecker won't find any mistakes there, but the text doesn't flow well in the target language. It sounds unnatural, ostensibly translated all the time. Readers feel uneasy if their usual activity does not involve frequent writing; writers/translators/journalists etc. see it as thoroughly bad style in the target language.
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Hello José Henrique
IMO, in teaching and 'assessment' terms, these are 'achievement descriptors'. The 'Portuguese rating-system' you have devised is very interesting. I wonder how you would 'rate' the English version of this site:
http://www.litwin.fr/public/Expertise/Expertise-in-carbochemical-pro.aspx?lang=fr-fr
http://www.litwin.fr/public/Expertise/Expertise-in-carbochemical-pro.aspx?lang=en-us
Lesley
[PS @ site staff. Perhaps there could be a forum or member-category for 'translator or interpreter educator/trainers', if there are any on the site ... could be interesting ...]
[Edited at 2009-05-01 02:28 GMT]
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| The assessment | May 1, 2009 |
Guys, if I go too far ot too often off-topic, any moderator is most welcome to move this (and my previous messsage) to another thread.
Lesley,
I'm not the one who raised the assessment or achievement issue. I didn't devise this system, as it's not a system. Some translators happen to post their rates somewhere on the web. Sometimes I bump into their work, and my mind attempts to draw a correlation. Sometimes the PM or client tells me how much they paid for the job I'm expected to fix, finish, or redo. My mind automatically "plots" my assessment (now I've said it) against their respective rate. Eventually, I mentally do a linear regression, to place myself on that graph and set my rates.
Before you ask, yes, now and then I see translation work that I rate as superior to my own. They get plotted as well. I am not the world's best; I try to offer a higher value at average cost.
At this point, marketing begins. In any trade, everybody tries to put the highest market value on their wares that clients will buy. If a top-flight translator is cheap, everybody will want to hire him/her, and s/he will be overworked and poor. Conversely, if an incompetent amateur charges top prices, s/he will have very few clients - if any - and will serve each only once on a lifetime.
Now, the requested assessment. Though I don't translate FR, I speak it, so I could spot the French accent in the English text. If you get a French person with a heavy accent to read that text in English, it will sound quite natural. The "developpment" with PP in the beginning is the first giveaway clue.
Anyway, proofreading there was badly needed. So the many missing spaces mean that nobody read it before posting on the web.
I put that text through Google translate, and got the situation described in my 5¢ and below: machine translation is different, but qualitywise just as bad as that level of human work.
So, answering your question, if it were EN-PT, considering there is some technical vocabulary involved, requiring a primus inter pares among the cheap ones, I'd bet that translation was done at 6¢/word, and not proofread afterwards.
To get the right number, multiply the FR-EN market average by 0.6.
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