| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6] > | Are my translation rates too high? Seeking feedback on pricing strategy Thread poster: Alisha Rice
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Alisha Rice 
United States
Local time: 08:31
Member (Jun 2024)
Spanish to English
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TOPIC STARTER
I actually never said I knew anything about how clients think. I have always expressed how new I am to this industry. I also charge in U.S. dollars so I don't know why you are quoting in Euros but they are similiar when I looked up a dollar compared to a Euro. To be honest, I have looked at many of the translators' rates for my language pair and the rates are all over the place. I think you have misunderstood a lot of what I have communicated. I am sorry for your misunderstanding.
| | | | IrinaN
United States
Local time: 10:31
English to Russian
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| Approach to translation means opening up a computer with a new job in the inbox:-) | Jul 26 |
Alisha, you are mixing two things - academics and business in the translation trade and yes, we are trying to break some ties that you regard as unbreakable and of the utmost importance, separate the two for you and stay on the business side of the discussion. Your initial question has been strictly business - how much? Let's keep it there.
No one here is trying to belittle your education. Present company of highly educated people needs no explanations or arguments in its favor. The... See more Alisha, you are mixing two things - academics and business in the translation trade and yes, we are trying to break some ties that you regard as unbreakable and of the utmost importance, separate the two for you and stay on the business side of the discussion. Your initial question has been strictly business - how much? Let's keep it there.
No one here is trying to belittle your education. Present company of highly educated people needs no explanations or arguments in its favor. The point of this discussion is very simple - "profession" is that thing that puts bread on the table, not just a framed paper on the wall. Anything and everything you'll learn will add to your value and keep enriching you as you go but market shall always rule. Market is not kind to rookies. You'll need:
1. A lot of luck;
2. Favorable geographical location for your pair;
3. Perfect timing to enter the market;
4. Nerves of steel;
5. More luck;
6. Lots of patience and some money to live on, because you'll be getting no response from 90 to 99% of the companies and agencies you'll be applying with. You'll never know to what extent this or that reason will be causing dead silence - from the routine forwarding of the excessive number of resumes to a trash bin without even looking, especially if they didn't request it, to rates, to lack of experience. When reading, they will scan the Education part of your resume in 1 second and dig into your experience. For one, corporate clients running large, continuous and diversified projects will not mess with the standalone freelancers - they need reliability, immediate backup, speed, 24/7 access to the vendor. They don't want to hear about any problems with kids, spouses, vacations, broken computers, afterhours, holidays etc. They want to deal with businesses bound by the full set of professional and legal liabilities. Only agencies can guarantee that. Direct clients or very small and often "hidden" agencies with lesser logistic requirements are primarily smaller and highly specialized. They are what we call "boutiques" and the "rap sheet" you'll need to convince them to choose you will only be filled in about 10 years or so. Usually they are the ones to initiate the hunt when they need someone, and their research will be thorough. Those are the ones that pay more money and much, much more attention to education but then again, not so much in translation but in engineering and scientific fields, the same fields they build their businesses or research on. They can be more accommodating to their invaluable translators and give them some slack now and then or even wait for their availability.
7. A valuable specialization. In my previous life I wouldn't have emphasized specialization to a degree I do now. General does not mean less valuable, easy or something equally stupid. Great writing skills and style alone could put a generalist on a very high pedestal. Unfortunately, that's where AT/MT and other acronyms compete very successfully in the price department.
8. Even more luck.
One thing to remember - our clients are businesses aka money-making machines in a race for survival. Sadly, they are not academics promoters.
Sincerely,
Irina
[Edited at 2024-07-27 21:30 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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IrinaN wrote:
Never have and never will
I get your point, but actually I received and then gave such advice. There’s a difference between those selling the courses and those delivering the content, at least in my experience.
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Kevin Fulton
United States
Local time: 11:31
German to English
| Rates are even lower than you think | Jul 27 |
Larger agencies assume you use a CAT tool and will often perform an analysis of a given text to determine frequency of terms and phrases, yielding a matrix of fuzzy matches (I won't go into an explanation of something you probably learned in grad school). In broad strokes: based upon this frequency, you may be paid 100% per word for no matches and less for more frequent matches, yielding a lower overall average rate. Thus, e.g., for a 1000 word document, you might be paid $30 instead of $50, ass... See more Larger agencies assume you use a CAT tool and will often perform an analysis of a given text to determine frequency of terms and phrases, yielding a matrix of fuzzy matches (I won't go into an explanation of something you probably learned in grad school). In broad strokes: based upon this frequency, you may be paid 100% per word for no matches and less for more frequent matches, yielding a lower overall average rate. Thus, e.g., for a 1000 word document, you might be paid $30 instead of $50, assuming a full rate of $.05/word. Direct clients, on the other hand, tend to pay the full (much higher) per-word rate, assuming the translator has subject matter expertise. ▲ Collapse
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Kevin Fulton wrote:
you may be paid 100% per word for no matches and less for more frequent matches, yielding a lower overall average rate. Thus, e.g., for a 1000 word document, you might be paid $30 instead of $50, assuming a full rate of $.05/word.
OTOH you may only have to translate 500 of those words, giving you more money per hour, which is the measure that matters.
| | | | | Yes but the words not to be translated are not invisible | Jul 27 |
Christopher Schröder wrote: Kevin Fulton wrote:
you may be paid 100% per word for no matches and less for more frequent matches, yielding a lower overall average rate. Thus, e.g., for a 1000 word document, you might be paid $30 instead of $50, assuming a full rate of $.05/word. OTOH you may only have to translate 500 of those words, giving you more money per hour, which is the measure that matters.
which means you see them anyway and will check them automatically - that's at least what I do.
| | | | Mario Chávez
United States
Local time: 11:31
Member (Jun 2024)
English to Spanish
+ ...
| That's one reason I dislike the Trados matrix | Jul 27 |
Most CAT tools offer the translator the choice of running an analysis with the Trados matrix, or the matrix suggested by that CAT tool, such as Déjà Vu X3 and memoQ. I've seen incorrect and disastrous applications of the Trados matrix, probably created by software engineers and not true practitioners of translation.
Why? First, having 100% matches doesn't mean the translation is always correct or suitable throughout the text. I prefer to go with 101% matches, a metric introduced s... See more Most CAT tools offer the translator the choice of running an analysis with the Trados matrix, or the matrix suggested by that CAT tool, such as Déjà Vu X3 and memoQ. I've seen incorrect and disastrous applications of the Trados matrix, probably created by software engineers and not true practitioners of translation.
Why? First, having 100% matches doesn't mean the translation is always correct or suitable throughout the text. I prefer to go with 101% matches, a metric introduced several years ago, to indicate contextual matches: it's a 100% match if the sentence or phrase coming immediately before and after the translated expression is 100% the same. In my experience, matches below 70% or 80% may have to be rewritten for a number of reasons, depending on the target language's syntax and grammar rules.
I once worked for a translation agency that made the terrible decision to offer discounts on a project based on the Trados matrix; they ended up losing money. As a best practice, I charge full rate for low fuzzy matches, unless I've agreed to the client team's matrix of rates in advance. For direct clients, I don't bother rearranging rates per fuzzy match band since I tend to charge per project.
Another reason the Trados matrix is inadequate is for the translation of UI (user interface) strings. I spent more than five years translating the UI strings for a very complex CAD application. We had to come up with specific workflows to handle those strings to maximize the translation memory and termbase, and fuzzy matches or even 100% matches didn't mean squat. Fortunately, I was a salaried translator and nobody but nobody, not even my managers, cared a iota about the matrix of fuzzy matches, with one exception (for help documentation, but that's a different kind of text, more amenable to exploit with fuzzy matches, naturally.)
MC
Kevin Fulton wrote:
Larger agencies assume you use a CAT tool and will often perform an analysis of a given text to determine frequency of terms and phrases, yielding a matrix of fuzzy matches (I won't go into an explanation of something you probably learned in grad school). In broad strokes: based upon this frequency, you may be paid 100% per word for no matches and less for more frequent matches, yielding a lower overall average rate. Thus, e.g., for a 1000 word document, you might be paid $30 instead of $50, assuming a full rate of $.05/word. Direct clients, on the other hand, tend to pay the full (much higher) per-word rate, assuming the translator has subject matter expertise. ▲ Collapse
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kd42
Estonia
Local time: 18:31
English to Russian
| This is what has been overlooked completely here | Jul 28 |
Christopher Schröder wrote:
OTOH you may only have to translate 500 of those words, giving you more money per hour, which is the measure that matters. Exactly.
| | | | Alisha Rice
United States
Local time: 08:31
Member (Jun 2024)
Spanish to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
You just delve into a topic I am completely unfamiiar with. I use MemoQ right now because Trados Studio is too expensive for me. I didn't even think about these things such as exact matches and fuzzy matches and how the rates works. It seems super complicated. So far I have not had companies approach me about this. When it comes to using a translation tool, not even 100% matches don't necessarily mean they are right. Do companies assume that using 100% matches mean you are working at a faster... See more You just delve into a topic I am completely unfamiiar with. I use MemoQ right now because Trados Studio is too expensive for me. I didn't even think about these things such as exact matches and fuzzy matches and how the rates works. It seems super complicated. So far I have not had companies approach me about this. When it comes to using a translation tool, not even 100% matches don't necessarily mean they are right. Do companies assume that using 100% matches mean you are working at a faster rate, so they want to pay you less? Using a translation tool helps you in your translation process, but now it seems to me that you are indicating companies now want to base rates on providing you with a project that already has specific types of matches. I am a bit confused about how that all works. Maybe people can chime in on this. I still won't drop my rates for Spanish below .10 cents per word. I still feel that is pretty low. Maybe if I still don't get any bites on jobs, I will have to lower it even more. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kevin Fulton
United States
Local time: 11:31
German to English
| Rates and exploitation | Jul 28 |
Before there were PCs, translators were usually paid by the word (or by the page or similar formula). Computer-assisted translation tools were unknown. In the mid-1980s when desktop computers were available, Trados GmbH, a German company, developed a program which allowed users to create and utilize databases based on the documents they translated. The developers realized that companies could take advantage of database use as well and developed a method of text analysis based upon repetitions. T... See more Before there were PCs, translators were usually paid by the word (or by the page or similar formula). Computer-assisted translation tools were unknown. In the mid-1980s when desktop computers were available, Trados GmbH, a German company, developed a program which allowed users to create and utilize databases based on the documents they translated. The developers realized that companies could take advantage of database use as well and developed a method of text analysis based upon repetitions. This type of analysis persists despite the creation of other software. The goal is to decrease the cost of translation while increasing profit. Many years ago I heard the head of General Motors' translation group (when they still had one) state that the goal was "1-1-1" i.e., pay one cent for one word once.
In very broad strokes: When an agency sends a document to a translator who uses a CAT tool, an analysis often is performed to determine the repetitions. This analysis may be an internal analysis (based on the document alone), or an analysis based on a related existing database (e.g., in the case of a series of instruction manuals). Humans are rarely involved in this; I doubt whether anyone ever reads through the source document for content (PMs aren't necessarily hired/assigned by language specialty). Of course, as others have pointed out, sometime a repeated word has a different meaning, depending on context, but it's up to the translator to determine that, and sometimes this determination is unpaid according to the specified matrix.
As a consequence, many translators with a week's worth of 10,000 words put in long hours to make a pittance.
[Edited at 2024-07-28 20:07 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 17:31
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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Kevin Fulton wrote:
As a consequence, many translators with a week's worth of 10,000 words put in long hours to make a pittance.
How? I've been using a CAT tool since the very beginning and repetitions and 100% matches are paid between 10 and 25% of the translation rate. If the existing translation was okay (which is mostly the case if you work with decent agencies), then this is a fair rate (and in that case 25% is even on the high side). If it's not you simply refuse the job.
And indeed, some clients don't pay for 100% matches or repetitions (or they lock pre-translated segments in a language they don't understand, probably the most stupid thing they could possibly do). Which is fine by me because in that case I only read them very swiftly for context if needed, but I won't touch them for anything else (apart from the general spellcheck). You can't be naive and work for free if you want to survive in this business. If the agency wants to cut on expenses by not paying 100% matches, then that's the responsibility of the agency, not mine. I only do what I'm paid for, apart from the occasional "extra mile" for customers who deserve it.
That said I only rarely have to deal with 100% matches from other translators. Since I have mostly long-establised customers most old translations I have to process are my own.
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 17:31
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Alisha Rice wrote:
I use MemoQ right now because Trados Studio is too expensive for me.
I don't Know MemoQ very well, but I suppose it will also have an analysis feature. It's actually not that complicated. Using that feature you can "analyse" the document to be translated with one or more existing or empty (= new) translation memories. That analysis will result into a table with "no matches" (number of words from sentences that haven't been translated before (that are not in an existing translation memory)) and "fuzzies" (number of words from senctences that partly match previous translations or translations from within your new text itself), expressed in percentages. Translation agencies use it to apply your conventional translation rate to it. No matches will be paid 100%, 0-74% matches will also be paid 100% (or at least they should be), but from then on until 100% there will be discounts applied, as for repetitions (exact same sentences that are repeated within the text).
The translation agency will normally provide you with an analysis, but it's obviously important that you perform one yourself to check it.
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Alisha Rice wrote:
I learned a great deal from receiving that degree that makes me a much more effective translator.
Can I ask, by what yardstick are you measuring that effectiveness? And much more effective than whom, exactly?
| | | | | I have always been flabbergasted | Jul 30 |
by the fact that future translators are not taught the basics of their professional life in university courses, i.e. bookkeeping, rates and so on, which are however vital to their work! Over the years, I've read utterly ludicrous discussions here, with people telling us in all seriousness that they live on 3 cents/word (in Europe), but they didn't even know how much taxes and other expenses they had to pay and therefore how much money they needed; obviously they had no idea how to start and run ... See more by the fact that future translators are not taught the basics of their professional life in university courses, i.e. bookkeeping, rates and so on, which are however vital to their work! Over the years, I've read utterly ludicrous discussions here, with people telling us in all seriousness that they live on 3 cents/word (in Europe), but they didn't even know how much taxes and other expenses they had to pay and therefore how much money they needed; obviously they had no idea how to start and run a business that is supposed to be economically viable for more than a few months. Not to mention the need to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at such rates, which might be the only way to survive in such circumstances. Nobody had taught them, and they were not able to understand the problem on their own, too bad for them. Moreover, they were quite arrogant and even accused the other participants of lying when stating that they were charging higher rates because "nobody will ever pay more than 3 cents/word"!
That's not your case, Alicia, it's just an example, because fortunately you have realised that it's impossible to make a living with similar rates. But you still had to do your own research.
And you didn't know either what "direct customer" means. This is another of the basics of our business, along with the different rates for agencies and direct customers, which I think every graduate in translation should know. Of course, it is not your fault if you have not been taught this.
Anyway, I think these are serious shortcomings that those students will have to face once they are ready to start their own business. And which, sooner or later, will affect all of us when they (or many of them) offer their insane rates because they don't know any better... ▲ Collapse
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