| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Translators: There is no future for 90 % of us. Thread poster: Maya Jurt
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| "Machine writers wanted!" | Jul 10, 2008 |
Kevin Lossner wrote:
Very good. I'd say that 90% of the source texts I receive could use some serious editing...
I have always thought that, in order to work really well, machine translation would need to be linked to machine writing. Computers writing the texts systematically, computers translating the texts the same way. As long as there is a human factor, MT will be in trouble.
I wonder, should we invent the machine reader to read and interpret the machine translations of machine-written texts? That would definitely solve the problem!!
| | | | | Let the machines do it all... | Jul 10, 2008 |
... and we fallible humans can go relax on a beach somewhere God knows I could use a bit of sand and sunshine right now.
| | | | Richard Benham 
France
Local time: 08:57
German to English
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In memoriam | Just what are your rates then? | Jul 11, 2008 |
Maya Jurt wrote:
You know what? That super translator fered EUR 0.45 per word. [/quote]
And you're complaining? The most I ever got paid was € 0.30 a word (for my first-ever job). € 0.45 sounds pretty good to me. If you can do say 2,500 words a day, that's € 1,1250.00 a day, or € 5,625 a week. So, if you work say 40 weeks of the year (let's not be greedy!), that's € 225,000 a year before tax. Most translators would be very happy with that indeed!
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I agree with Richard - 0,45 is a pretty good rate - even with direct clients I charge less than that.
What do you all charge for proofreading / editing? I want to charge half my translation fee but most agencies tell me that is too much and I usually end up with 1/3 or 1/4 of my translation rate.
It's just that I rarely get a text for proofreading that doesn't need retranslation
I am thinking... See more I agree with Richard - 0,45 is a pretty good rate - even with direct clients I charge less than that.
What do you all charge for proofreading / editing? I want to charge half my translation fee but most agencies tell me that is too much and I usually end up with 1/3 or 1/4 of my translation rate.
It's just that I rarely get a text for proofreading that doesn't need retranslation
I am thinking that if I am ever offered to proofread machine translated text, then I need to establish what kind of rate I can charge for it. ▲ Collapse
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Ralf Lemster
Germany
Local time: 08:57
English to German
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Hi all,
As Maya indicated EUR 15 per page, my best guess is that 0.45 is a typo and should read 0.045.
Maya?
| | | | Maya Jurt
Switzerland
Local time: 08:57
French to German
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TOPIC STARTER
Richard Benham wrote: Maya Jurt wrote:
You know what? That super translator fered EUR 0.45 per word.
And you're complaining? T! [/quote]
Ouch!!! I now read a proofreader before contributing to the forum. It was of course ten times less, 0,045 EUR.
She offered 225 EUR (she said) for 5009 words (she did not say).
BTW, after having received the Word document for free, this women posted the job twice on proz, on July 7 and 10, still for the pdf document....
The woman is either very shrewed or extremely stupid - maybe both.
[Edited at 2008-07-11 08:11]
| | | | | Proofreading rates | Jul 11, 2008 |
Ivana Friis Wilson wrote:
What do you all charge for proofreading / editing? I want to charge half my translation fee but most agencies tell me that is too much and I usually end up with 1/3 or 1/4 of my translation rate.
Sounds like a waste of time. In the many discussion threads on this topic, a large number of colleagues go with hourly charges - I'm part of that crowd. A "typical" editing/proofreading job involving a text from an unknown translator or author is generally not worth doing at piece rates. If the text is well done, an hourly charge may well be cheaper than what you quote, but if there are major problems, then you will be appropriately compensated for your efforts. Too many agencies try to use cheap, inexperienced to do the draft translation and then try to get someone good to clean it up. There is no reason to support that game.
Getting back to MT, a while back I remember reading a post from someone in the forums who uses desktop MT software to do his translations and then "revises" the result. I found that quite an interesting methodology and wondered what on Earth possessed him to adopt such a workflow. Maybe he produces a great product after all, but it will be due to his skills are careful checking against the source document, certainly not the MT software. However, I can't help but think that he'd be better off with a different workflow
I wish I still had copies of the rather heated e-mail exchange involving my co-worker in support who tried to use online MT for his job because he was utterly incompetent in English. Well, actually he was pretty incompetent in German too. His original text was very idiomatic and even used company-specific abbreviations for product modules in German (for example Mappenmanager = MaMa = File Manager). The original meaning involved terminating a process using the Windows Task Manager if the software hangs. The rather bizarre MT result said something about shooting your mother. You can imagine the quality of an online support database with contributions like that
| | | | Maya Jurt
Switzerland
Local time: 08:57
French to German
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TOPIC STARTER | Charge per hour | Jul 11, 2008 |
Ivana Friis Wilson wrote:
What do you all charge for proofreading / editing? I want to charge half my translation fee but most agencies tell me that is too much and I usually end up with 1/3 or 1/4 of my translation rate.
I am thinking that if I am ever offered to proofread machine translated text, then I need to establish what kind of rate I can charge for it.
Hi Ivana,
proofreading is included in the translation rate.
If we only do the proofing, it means most of the time editing: then we charge per hour.
The client who now asks us to edit every thing before translating does so because the source text is - as are the target texts - uploaded on the net.
But we get often documents needing thorough checking and editing. We are just asked to edit, not to translate.
Proofread machine translated text? Don't.
You'll be faster and more accurate translating from scratch.
Happy weekend to all of you.
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Richard Benham
France
Local time: 08:57
German to English
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In memoriam | Correction noted | Jul 12, 2008 |
I assumed it was an error, but I thought it would make the point better if I pretended to take it seriously.
At €0.045 a word, on the same assumptions as I made earlier, you would be making €22,500 a year. If you worked a lot harder, you might get it up to €30,000. That's still not very much if you live in Switzerland or Scandinavia.
| | | | Maya Jurt
Switzerland
Local time: 08:57
French to German
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TOPIC STARTER | Not enough anywhere! And why should you work for so little? | Jul 13, 2008 |
Richard Benham wrote:
I assumed it was an error, but I thought it would make the point better if I pretended to take it seriously.
At €0.045 a word, on the same assumptions as I made earlier, you would be making €22,500 a year. If you worked a lot harder, you might get it up to €30,000. That's still not very much if you live in Switzerland or Scandinavia.
Well Richard, you can't get along with 20-30 000 euro in Switzerland and it won't be easy elsewhere either (and you only make it if you have a steady flow of work and if you work fast, never spending an hour or so trying to find the right technical term because even the client does not know what it is).
And why should someone with a university education and years of experience earn so little? It is not enough in emerging economies either.
People always say life is cheaper in these countries. But it is not much cheaper if you count well:
hardware, software: VAT 20 % or more. (Does Trados give you a discount because you live in Lithuania or in Argentina?
parents at your charge, because there is/or was no retirement plan (or so very little pension money) for them
private school for your kids because you want a better future for them
health insurance for the whole family
private pension plan for you
(consider the inflation rate as well)
etc.
I always say that we should charge not according to the standard of living of the country we live in. We should charge what we are worth, what our work is worth. And frankly quality translators are worth quite a bit more.
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Daina Jauntirans wrote:
New restaurants in the US supposedly have a survival rate of about 20% after the first year. I wonder what the rate is for new small businesses across the board? Probably not better, so I guess translators would also fall into the range of these statistics.
I also agree with Kevin 100%.
Not if you get Gordon Ramsay'e help...
gosh, I need a proofreader as well...
[Edited at 2008-07-14 11:31]
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Giovanni,
No "H*ll's Translation Office," please!
After participating in this thread, this landed in my inbox:
http://www.uebersetzen-in-die-zukunft.de/
So, apparently the German Translators' Association also thinks only some of us fish will make the "jump" into the future! ... See more Giovanni,
No "H*ll's Translation Office," please!
After participating in this thread, this landed in my inbox:
http://www.uebersetzen-in-die-zukunft.de/
So, apparently the German Translators' Association also thinks only some of us fish will make the "jump" into the future! ▲ Collapse
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| Quality requires time | Jul 14, 2008 |
Which is something that all the parties involved pretend to or actually do ignore.
I dare not think that 70% of the authors are undereducated - I feel far more comfortable with the notion that they were asked to produce a piece of writing within an incredibly tight time limit and the result is unavoidably poor.
And then I am delivered the same piece of writing and expected to translate it at a speed closely matching that of a machine translation tool. Little wonder the quality... See more Which is something that all the parties involved pretend to or actually do ignore.
I dare not think that 70% of the authors are undereducated - I feel far more comfortable with the notion that they were asked to produce a piece of writing within an incredibly tight time limit and the result is unavoidably poor.
And then I am delivered the same piece of writing and expected to translate it at a speed closely matching that of a machine translation tool. Little wonder the quality is also similar. Sorry, I haven't been fitted with an 8-core CPU yet and have only a human brain at my disposal.
This is a more and more widespread phenomenon. Some end customers understand that a quality product needs time. Others turn to agencies in the hope they'll be able to deliver the same job faster. And they frequently are. How? By imposing impossible deadlines on the translators they work with. A host of translators work with those agencies for the steady flow of jobs, being told repeatedly that time is the most important factor. "Forget the quality, that's our editors' problem." How long can you resist a constant urge from many sides? You want to get jobs, after all. Don Quixote had no rent or dentist fees to pay...
Strange to think that 20 years ago I had to retype any page with more than two spelling errors, using my ages-old typewriter. Vocabulary errors were out of question. Even if the standard texts were far simpler than nowadays, the requirement worked miracles as far as quality goes. Certainly the retyping took time...
[Edited at 2008-07-14 21:00] ▲ Collapse
| | | | MariusV
Lithuania
Local time: 09:57
English to Lithuanian
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| those machines... :) | Jul 15, 2008 |
Well, I personally think that machines will replace human translation in the future, but in a distant future only (some 50 years or so). As for the time being, no need to worry as those "translating machines" shall be VERY powerful to make something close to a human translation (let alone equivalent). One more thing - languages have a lot of the things called "irrational" (this is not maths) and these things that cannot be squeezed into algorythms or something like that. And there are SO MANY di... See more Well, I personally think that machines will replace human translation in the future, but in a distant future only (some 50 years or so). As for the time being, no need to worry as those "translating machines" shall be VERY powerful to make something close to a human translation (let alone equivalent). One more thing - languages have a lot of the things called "irrational" (this is not maths) and these things that cannot be squeezed into algorythms or something like that. And there are SO MANY different languages (different in MANY aspects). Just imagine how many "working languages" (source and target) there are in the world. So far, computers just helped us - imagine a translator some 30-40 years ago and clatter souds of a typewriter, compare the turnarounds before CAT tools, and etc. And, in general, "hand made natural" things are always much more appreciated (despite the fact that there are machines making same things). Translator-Terminator era is still far away - we will still have time to retire
[Edited at 2008-07-15 05:19] ▲ Collapse
| | | | mattsmith
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:57
German to English
+ ...
| It isn't so much MT that's wrecking the industry but cheap labour | Jul 15, 2008 |
There are too many new business start up translation companies in cheap countries like India, China and also in eastern Europe with ridiculously low operating costs and that are hence offering cut price translations. This is what's really wrecking the industry. Eight years ago when I first started looking for jobs, a starting salary for an in-house translator in London was 25K. Now you'll be lucky if you find anything for 18K. You get paid far more as a proofreader at a publishing house or law f... See more There are too many new business start up translation companies in cheap countries like India, China and also in eastern Europe with ridiculously low operating costs and that are hence offering cut price translations. This is what's really wrecking the industry. Eight years ago when I first started looking for jobs, a starting salary for an in-house translator in London was 25K. Now you'll be lucky if you find anything for 18K. You get paid far more as a proofreader at a publishing house or law firm. It's the same in Germany. Even a few years ago an in-house translator could expect 2500 Euros a month. Now it's more like 1500 Euros. ▲ Collapse
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