Translation - art & business » Money matters »
(Japanese-Eng) Switching pay method from per target word to source character: How to convert rates?
Thread poster: FreelanceBass
FreelanceBass
FreelanceBass
United States
Local time: 22:56
Japanese to English
Aug 28, 2017

A client of mine and I have a contract in which I am paid per target word. We have mutually agreed to switch to payment per source character for future projects.

I was being paid $0.20 per target English word for documents with less formatting, and $0.25 per target word for those with more formatting. Could you help me come up with equivalent rates when charging per Japanese source character?

Thanks in advance.
 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 03:56
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Divide by 2.2 Aug 29, 2017

FreelanceBass wrote:
I was being paid $0.20 per target English word for documents with less formatting, and $0.25 per target word for those with more formatting. Could you help me come up with equivalent rates when charging per Japanese source character?

I estimate that for the work that *I* do (YMMV), there are 2.2 Japanese characters for every English word, or to put it another way, about 450 English words for every 1,000 Japanese characters. Obviously, it will vary depending on the type of project. So, dividing $0.20 by 2.2 gets you $0.09 per character. Personally I wouldn't work for that, but $0.25 would be equivalent to $0.11 per character, which gets into the low end of my "acceptable" range.

Dan
 


To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator:

Moderator(s) of this forum
Jorge Rodrigues[Call to this topic]
Andriy Bublikov[Call to this topic]
Rita Pang[Call to this topic]
James Heppe-Smith[Call to this topic]

You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request »

(Japanese-Eng) Switching pay method from per target word to source character: How to convert rates?







TM-Town
Manage your TMs and Terms ... and boost your translation business

Are you ready for something fresh in the industry? TM-Town is a unique new site for you -- the freelance translator -- to store, manage and share translation memories (TMs) and glossaries...and potentially meet new clients on the basis of your prior work.

More info »
Trados Business Manager Lite
Create customer quotes and invoices from within Trados Studio

Trados Business Manager Lite helps to simplify and speed up some of the daily tasks, such as invoicing and reporting, associated with running your freelance translation business.

More info »