| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | Don't offer reductions for post-editing Thread poster: Nicholas Miller
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| Expectations | Jan 24, 2023 |
Lieven Malaise wrote:
15 euros? I apply a MTPE discount of 30-40% and that still allows for my hourly income of 35 euros. I don't lose money by practicing MTPE.
Good luck finding a plumber willing to work for €35 an hour.
I feel we could now be touching on the real issue.
| | | | Jo Macdonald 
Spain
Local time: 17:06
Italian to English
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| PEMT discounts | Jan 24, 2023 |
A 30% discount for full PEMT and a 40% discount for light PEMT is fair imo if the MT output is decent because that's how long the job takes.
You can decide not to do PEMT jobs but MT is here to stay and most of the time it does save time.
There's pro work and cheapo work, as there always has been.
For me jobs offered by some agencies asking for a 50-60% discount on all no match MT output puts the job in the "Not interesting" category.
Same for ... See more A 30% discount for full PEMT and a 40% discount for light PEMT is fair imo if the MT output is decent because that's how long the job takes.
You can decide not to do PEMT jobs but MT is here to stay and most of the time it does save time.
There's pro work and cheapo work, as there always has been.
For me jobs offered by some agencies asking for a 50-60% discount on all no match MT output puts the job in the "Not interesting" category.
Same for PEMT jobs paid at your hourly rate calculating 10,000 words/hour. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Sadek_A
Local time: 19:06
English to Arabic
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| Translators Aspiring to be Plumbers (TAP)! | Jan 24, 2023 |
Ice Scream wrote: Expectations Lieven Malaise wrote:
15 euros? I apply a MTPE discount of 30-40% and that still allows for my hourly income of 35 euros. I don't lose money by practicing MTPE. Good luck finding a plumber willing to work for €35 an hour. I feel we could now be touching on the real issue.
A "nice" proz job has lately been offering, via multiple accounts from Spain and Egypt, the "great" opportunity of 200Kw of poetry-laden literary text at the exceptional rate of €0.035/w upgradable (out of charity, I guess) to €0.045/w, and the translation needs to be delivered in less than 2 months.
They set everything, and the slave (ehm!, the translator) has to agree to it all.
At a poetry-specific production rate of less than 300w/h, you could make the ""exceptional" hourly rate of less than €10.5, increased (depending on good behavior by the prisoner, ehm! again, the translator) to less than €13.5.
Needless to say, they are STILL LOOKING.
go #TAP
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 17:06
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
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| Still no aspirations to become a plumber | Jan 24, 2023 |
Ice Scream wrote:
Good luck finding a plumber willing to work for €35 an hour.
Plumbers will charge about 60 euros (maybe more since the rise of inflation), I'm aware of that. But so what ? 35 euros is my reference price and provides me since 2005 (back then it was 25 euros) with a decent and since about 5 years a more than decent income. I can easily pay my monthly mortgage and provide myself, my partner and my 4 children (12-16 yo) with everything they need for a decent and agreeable life. My partner is also working fulltime since recently, but in the past 15 years she has been more without than with a job (4 little children, you know) and even then we had no problems to make ends meet. In fact I would even be able to keep paying my mortgage without my partner working.
Ice Scream wrote:
I feel we could now be touching on the real issue.
And what might that real issue be then ? That you feel that my rate is unacceptably low if I only charge 35 euros per hour ? The single most important thing in business is one's economical reality and that reality is more than okay in my case. Besides that I am respected by my clients (from my 15 best clients today 2 date back from 2005, 1 from 2006, 2 from 2007, 1 from 2008, 1 from 2009 and 1 from 2010), which makes it very agreeable to do what I do. The disparaging remarks of other translators that seem to think that their reality should be mainstream because according to them translators are supposed to be considered as 'artists' that should be very well paid for their long hours of artistic suffering, are something I then gladly accept.
[Edited at 2023-01-24 14:24 GMT]
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Mr Touchy wrote: His entire life story
My point is that there is a problem when translators, mostly with a postgraduate qualification behind them, are willing/forced to settle for way less than plumbers, mostly with only an apprenticeship behind them.
So translators are either selling themselves short or overestimating their worth. Probably both. And technology is increasingly forcing the issue.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:06
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| The drunkenness of things being various | Jan 24, 2023 |
Lieven Malaise wrote:
I can easily pay my monthly mortgage and provide myself, my partner and my 4 children (12-16 yo) with everything they need for a decent and agreeable life.
And there you have it. What constitutes an acceptable income varies according to one's location, time of life, family situation, and many other circumstances (including expectations). Affordability of lifestyle is also a function of location and time of purchase.
We're all in different boats. I would say that if you can get by comfortably, without too much stress, you're doing okay. After all, most people are going to be earning close to the median income. Is that something to look down on? I think not.
Dan
| | | | Sadek_A
Local time: 19:06
English to Arabic
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Ice Scream wrote: Mr Touchy wrote: His entire life story
My point is that there is a problem when translators, mostly with a postgraduate qualification behind them, are willing/forced to settle for way less than plumbers, mostly with only an apprenticeship behind them. So translators are either selling themselves short
I agree.
Ice Scream wrote: Mr Touchy wrote: His entire life story
or overestimating their worth. Probably both. And technology is increasingly forcing the issue.
I disagree. I can/did/do/will continue to do all indoors tasks a plumber does, for my own house.
Can a plumber translate in my place?
And, technology is not the culprit, it's a static object, treachers however are!
| | | | Sadek_A
Local time: 19:06
English to Arabic
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| More plumbing | Jan 26, 2023 |
Sadek_A wrote:
I can/did/do/will continue to do all indoors tasks a plumber does, for my own house.
Can a plumber translate in my place?
If they lived abroad for a while, yes. To a "doesn't leak too much" standard.
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I agree completely.
I have been working with EU translations for several years, and over the last few years they have increasingly been replaced with PEMT jobs, while linguists are expected to accept a 30% discount on their rates for such jobs.
The problem with EU documents is that (generally) there are absolutely no time savings with PEMT if you do the job properly. As a general rule, the only way to save time with PEMT for an EU translation is by not doing the resea... See more I agree completely.
I have been working with EU translations for several years, and over the last few years they have increasingly been replaced with PEMT jobs, while linguists are expected to accept a 30% discount on their rates for such jobs.
The problem with EU documents is that (generally) there are absolutely no time savings with PEMT if you do the job properly. As a general rule, the only way to save time with PEMT for an EU translation is by not doing the research properly or by not reviewing the segments properly.
However, the agencies refuse to see that and it seems they have no problem finding people who are willing to do the PEMT jobs with that discount.
In the beginning, the agency I worked for told me that "initially" I might not see any time savings, but I would "quickly" get it - it was just a matter of time. Three years later, I still see no time savings. In effect, my hourly income often came out to about 40% of what it should have been.
I know there are EU translators who say they process EU documents quicker with PEMT, but I also know there are many EU translators who produce low-quality, hasty translations, often with PEMT, without a clue they are doing that.
Besides EU translations, I have also occasionally been asked to accept discounts for PEMT jobs for other kinds of documents. Again, I couldn't see any substantial time savings in the end.
I am very skeptical about people who say they achieve time savings with PEMT, and I suspect they are not producing proper quality. ▲ Collapse
| | | | toasty
Italy
Local time: 17:06
Member (2013)
Italian to English
| Totally agree Thomas | Feb 28, 2023 |
I've tried a few post-editing jobs and to be honest they took longer than a normal translation, yet the clients want at least a 50% reduction on the fee. Not worth it in any way for me. The only way for it to be economically feasible is to lower the quality of the translation, i.e., dedicate less time to the project.
This might have to do with the field and type of text (garment descriptions) and the language pair (Italian to English), in that the sentence structure between the two ... See more I've tried a few post-editing jobs and to be honest they took longer than a normal translation, yet the clients want at least a 50% reduction on the fee. Not worth it in any way for me. The only way for it to be economically feasible is to lower the quality of the translation, i.e., dedicate less time to the project.
This might have to do with the field and type of text (garment descriptions) and the language pair (Italian to English), in that the sentence structure between the two languages is often completely inverted, and the terminology is very specific, out of range for most MT programs. Moreover, if you are typing above 60 wpm, there is absolutely no way that deleting parts of a sentence and moving fragments around is faster than just typing the translation properly in the first place.
The other thing we need to remember is that if MT truly does (eventually) make translation faster, that means each translator will be able to translate more per day. Will the quantity of text to be translated increase? Or will the pool of translators necessarily have to shrink? ▲ Collapse
| | | | | MT output = hourly rate | Feb 28, 2023 |
Don't accept per word rate to fix MT output. Charge your hourly rate, as you do not control MT output quality.
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I usually have them show me a sample of the translation first. I cannot just give out a rate without knowing the content. Clients do not seem to understand that just using an MT doesn't produce high quality text, not yet.
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
A gold dinar is 4.25g of gold. Gold sells for $59.25/g.
500 gold dinars is ~$125,000.
Per month!
Sadek_A wrote: https://www.translationscertified.uk/post/2018/12/14/greeks-arabs-and-certified-translations Ancient invoices tell us that translators were earning up to 500 gold dinars a month. That’s about £20,000 in today’s money! They were extremely prestigious individuals with skills that were very important for the Caliphate and its success, and that’s why they could command such prices for their work. But aside from the practical value of the translations, there was symbolic value too.
[Edited at 2023-03-02 16:52 GMT]
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