price per word source for post edition Thread poster: Olena Kushnerenko
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Hello, dear colleagues
I have a question. The translation agency asks for TRADOS-assisted translation rates such as rates for post edition and for review based on 1500w/h. As far as I understand, these rates should be lower than standard price per word source of translation. I need your advice.
| | | | Thayenga 
Germany
Local time: 02:38
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
| Not per word | Sep 25, 2020 |
Hello Olena,
MTPE reviews should never be paid per word simply because you never know how long it will take you to complete the task. It doesn't matter what tool the agency is using. The quality depends on how poor or good (rather seldom) the "translation" is.
More often than not, you will face the challenge of trying to make some sense out of what the machine has produced, oftentimes ending up with a complete re-translation. The only fair (now, please don't laugh) way ... See more Hello Olena,
MTPE reviews should never be paid per word simply because you never know how long it will take you to complete the task. It doesn't matter what tool the agency is using. The quality depends on how poor or good (rather seldom) the "translation" is.
More often than not, you will face the challenge of trying to make some sense out of what the machine has produced, oftentimes ending up with a complete re-translation. The only fair (now, please don't laugh) way to get paid for MTPE is per hour of your time.
Unfortunately, it is true that the rates offered for MTPE projects are way below standards, ranging often between 0.01 - 0.02 in any currency per word.
If you can afford it, pass on this "opportunity".
Best,
Thayenga ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 02:38
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Olena Kushnerenko wrote:
The translation agency asks for TRADOS-assisted translation rates such as rates for post edition and for review based on 1500w/h. As far as I understand, these rates should be lower than standard price per word source of translation.
The easiest solution for you is to ask the agency what rates they prefer (suggest/recommend/demand, etc.). You can then decide whether you find those rates acceptable. You are also allowed to accept the agency's suggested rates now, and later change your mind about it after you have done a couple of jobs for them.
The "Trados" rates usually relate to translation only. It does not relate to revision or PEMT. The rates are usually defined as a percentage of your standard rate. For example, you could charge 100% of your standard rate for new sentences, 75% of your standard rate for sentences that have fuzzy matches of 85% and higher, and 60% of your standard rate for sentences that have between fuzzy matches of between 75% and 84%. The client (or you, if you use a CAT tool such as Trados) can analyse the source text to determine how many words should be charged at each of those rates.
There are no "Trados assisted" rates for PEMT (post editing). Usually, PEMT is charged per hour or by charging a percentage of your standard rate (e.g. 80% of your standard rate). Most agencies have unrealistic expectations w.r.t. PEMT and require deep discounts for it, e.g. they expect you to quote 60% or even 40% of your standard rate for it. It is up to you to decide, after having done a couple of such jobs, whether you are happy with the reduction in income.
(Some agencies calculate beforehand (based on clever technology) how many hours they expect a PEMT job to take, and then they offer that, multiplied by your usual hourly rate. For example, if such an agency determines that it will take 4.3 hours to complete the job, and your standard hourly rate is $20, they will offer you 4.3 × $20 = $86 for the job, regardless of whether you complete the job in 2 hours or 6 hours. However, it appears that your agency does not do that, since they're asking for a percentage discount on your standard rate.)
Trados can't really make revision faster (it can't show you the fuzzy match that the translator used when he edited the sentence) so your rate for revision should be either a high-ish per-word rate (e.g. 30% of your standard per-word translation rate) or an hourly rate. This client wants a special kind of hourly rate, namely an hourly rate with a minimum number of words. In such a case, you should base your rate calculation on the assumption that you can do review only 750 words in an hour, despite the purchase order saying "1500 words per hour" or "2000 words per hour" or whatever. For example, if you want to earn $20 per hour, and the client is asking for a review rate based on "1000 words per hour", you should charge $20 ÷ 750 × 1000 = $27 per hour.
[Edited at 2020-09-25 10:12 GMT]
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 01:38
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| Samuel makes an important point here, IMO | Sep 25, 2020 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
This client wants a special kind of hourly rate, namely an hourly rate with a minimum number of words. In such a case, you should base your rate calculation on the assumption that you can do review only 750 words in an hour, despite the purchase order saying "1500 words per hour" or "2000 words per hour" or whatever. For example, if you want to earn $20 per hour, and the client is asking for a review rate based on "1000 words per hour", you should charge $20 ÷ 750 × 1000 = $27 per hour.
Instead of Samuel's diplomatic "special kind of hourly rate", I'd call it a nonsensical kind of hourly rate. The whole idea of an hourly rate is you charge for what you can manage do in an hour. The client isn't in a position to tell you how many words you're going to be able process every hour! Revising a bilingual text can't possibly be done at a rate of 1,500 wph. I'm often pushed to maintain that speed with monolingual English revision, where I only have one text to read.
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 02:38
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Sheila Wilson wrote:
Instead of Samuel's diplomatic "special kind of hourly rate", I'd call it a nonsensical kind of hourly rate. The whole idea of an hourly rate is you charge for what you can manage do in an hour.
I did not think that I was being diplomatic, but perhaps I was. I don't object to clients asking for rates in this way, but one has to realise that this isn't truly an hourly rate but rather a per-word rate expressed as a unit which the client decided to call "an hour". The client's hour isn't an actual hour. In reality the client is asking for a rate per 1500 words, and he refers to this unit as "an hour" based on his expectation that it will take an hour to do 1500 words. This means that the translator should convert his real-time hourly rate into a per-1500-word "hourly" rate.
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 01:38
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| I agree but... | Sep 25, 2020 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
The client's hour isn't an actual hour. In reality the client is asking for a rate per 1500 words, and he refers to this unit as "an hour" based on his expectation that it will take an hour to do 1500 words. This means that the translator should convert his real-time hourly rate into a per-1500-word "hourly" rate.
I agree that they're really asking for a rate per 1,500 words. But then why do they refer to it as an hour? Because they know that that's what many inexperienced translators will quote for. And when the job takes them far longer than the number of hours they quoted for, the agency can stick to its guns and refuse to pay more. IMO, they do it deliberately to pull the wool over the eyes of our more vulnerable peers.
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Sheila Wilson wrote:
Instead of Samuel's diplomatic "special kind of hourly rate", I'd call it a nonsensical kind of hourly rate. The whole idea of an hourly rate is you charge for what you can manage do in an hour.
For MTPE, I might impose a surcharge for emotional damage from having to read the MT output.
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