payment of quotes in your language
Thread poster: Luisa Salzano
Luisa Salzano
Luisa Salzano  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 00:38
Member (2009)
English to Italian
+ ...
Jan 27, 2016

Dear all,
I was asked to make a translation from German into Italian of three pdf files badly scanned and containing quotes in Italian, my language. They did not send me a PO (maybe it is my fault I did not ask them to!).
In the end, they told me they would NOT pay the Italian quotes, that I had however written down, corresponding to 5,6 pages.
Their answer, that I treasure in my emails, is that I could not be paid, because I did not ask them if I had to write the quotes(!) a
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Dear all,
I was asked to make a translation from German into Italian of three pdf files badly scanned and containing quotes in Italian, my language. They did not send me a PO (maybe it is my fault I did not ask them to!).
In the end, they told me they would NOT pay the Italian quotes, that I had however written down, corresponding to 5,6 pages.
Their answer, that I treasure in my emails, is that I could not be paid, because I did not ask them if I had to write the quotes(!) and that their general conditions are made by UNILINGUE.
I am now asking you:
a) is there a policy for agencies regulating such thing at national or international level? Where can I find inter/national rules to show them? In particular, what did/would you do, if this happened to you?
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Merab Dekano
Merab Dekano  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Transcription fee Jan 27, 2016

You did not have to translate the Italian text. What I usually do is to agree on a transcription fee for the text that appears in target language.

Alternatively (and preferably) I run pdf file through my OCR software. Should this be the case, I only have to proofread the output. I may still claim a small fee (working with OCR software takes some time, then you have to check the output, etc.), but a good practice is to agree on this on beforehand with your customer.

I'm
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You did not have to translate the Italian text. What I usually do is to agree on a transcription fee for the text that appears in target language.

Alternatively (and preferably) I run pdf file through my OCR software. Should this be the case, I only have to proofread the output. I may still claim a small fee (working with OCR software takes some time, then you have to check the output, etc.), but a good practice is to agree on this on beforehand with your customer.

I'm not sure I got it right from your email, but if you intend to charge your regular per word rate for translation to the text that's already in your target language, it should come at no surprise if your customer comes forward with "unhappy" attitude.
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Andrea Halbritter
Andrea Halbritter  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 00:38
French to German
+ ...
Agree with Merab Jan 27, 2016

I agree with Merab, you should have talked about that before with the agency and have agreed on how much is paid for what kind of service.

I am not surprised neither if they are not okay with paying a translation rate for 5 or 6 pages that have not been translated. The rate for this part of the job needs to be lower in my eyes.


 
Andrea Garfield-Barkworth
Andrea Garfield-Barkworth  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 00:38
Member (2015)
German to English
Have to agree with Merab and Andrea Jan 27, 2016

I know how frustrating it must be to hear that but it is something you should have queried beforehand.

I have just received a job offer where the client mentioned there were over 3,000 words to be translated but after examining the text there were only 2,000 and the last few pages were already in English so I wouldn't need to translate those. Although I didn't take the job on as I don't have the capacity at the moment, I still told the client that the document included the English
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I know how frustrating it must be to hear that but it is something you should have queried beforehand.

I have just received a job offer where the client mentioned there were over 3,000 words to be translated but after examining the text there were only 2,000 and the last few pages were already in English so I wouldn't need to translate those. Although I didn't take the job on as I don't have the capacity at the moment, I still told the client that the document included the English text.

I think you will just have to chalk this up to experience no matter how annoying.
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Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 23:38
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Copytyping rate? Jan 27, 2016

I don't mean the rate an Italian copytypist would charge - if a translation agency calls on the services of a translator they they must pay for their time.

I mean the number of words you can type in a given time, if typing really is all you have to do. If you know that figure, you can charge for your time. I would imagine copytyping would be quite a bit faster than audio typing.


 
jyuan_us
jyuan_us  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 19:38
Member (2005)
English to Chinese
+ ...
Your case is unique Jan 27, 2016

Luisa Salzano wrote:

a) is there a policy for agencies regulating such thing at national or international level? Where can I find inter/national rules to show them? In particular, what did/would you do, if this happened to you?


Conceivably there shouldn't be any "policy" like that. I couldn't imagine this has ever happened to anybody.


 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 23:38
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
My experience Jan 28, 2016

Some years ago I had a kind of a similar case with a long-standing customer for whom I translate regularly certificates for medical devices. These have in general one or two pages of text followed by page after page (sometimes as much as 100 pages) of reference numbers. We have agreed since the very start of the project that these pages shouldn’t be charged as translation and consequently we negotiated a lower rate…

 
Platary (X)
Platary (X)
Local time: 00:38
German to French
+ ...
If not agreed Jan 28, 2016

at first who does what, in this case like in other, you may encounter problems and surprises.

I had similar situation in the past and we had to decide what to do : transcription, OCR (and proof), copy and paste or just "quote" the quotes in the final text.

The best way was to quote the quotes with a very simple system : "quote 1 p 1", "quote 2 p 1", a.s.o.

For each case there is a different charge, but it has to be agreed at first.

I understa
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at first who does what, in this case like in other, you may encounter problems and surprises.

I had similar situation in the past and we had to decide what to do : transcription, OCR (and proof), copy and paste or just "quote" the quotes in the final text.

The best way was to quote the quotes with a very simple system : "quote 1 p 1", "quote 2 p 1", a.s.o.

For each case there is a different charge, but it has to be agreed at first.

I understand your disappointment, but you learned something...
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Gabriele Demuth
Gabriele Demuth  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:38
English to German
What did the client want? Jan 28, 2016

If they didn't want to pay for you transcribing the quotes then I assume they didn't want them transcribed and this wasn't made clear from either side - so a misunderstanding? In that case I would explain and let it go as it was only two pages anyway.

If they wanted it transcribed and included then maybe you could explain that this took you some extra time for which you need to charge, less than translation rate, but still.


 
Luisa Salzano
Luisa Salzano  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 00:38
Member (2009)
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
low rate Jan 28, 2016

That was exactly what I expected. Since the rate was really really low, I though it included the quotes. The text could not be copied in ocr or else, then I wrote and formatted everything. There was still a note on foot which had a wrong number and they made me correct it. Why, if they did not want to pay for it???? I have now learnt something important: avoid such agencies.
Thank you to everybody


 


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