Need help regarding fees of inherent translation activities Thread poster: Maximiliano Jara
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Hi, I'm a translation student currently researching market managing. As said in the title, I need bits of information, mainly fees and personal experiences/preferences about inherent activities of translations, i.e: post-editing, checking the text for gramatical/redaction coherence, pdf editing, image editing etc., how these are made, if you include them directly on the translation quotation or count it as external job, ask for a different fee depending on the text and such.
I'd be ... See more Hi, I'm a translation student currently researching market managing. As said in the title, I need bits of information, mainly fees and personal experiences/preferences about inherent activities of translations, i.e: post-editing, checking the text for gramatical/redaction coherence, pdf editing, image editing etc., how these are made, if you include them directly on the translation quotation or count it as external job, ask for a different fee depending on the text and such.
I'd be glad if any of you could help me out, thank you in advance! ▲ Collapse
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Self-check of documents and running QA in Memsource is part of normal translation and is not charged extra. Likewise, work responding to comments and corrections made by another translator/editor is not paid extra.
Most of my work comes through agencies, and only the careful and high-level agency has ever offered a surcharge for fixing layout (DTP: desktop publishing) in PPT after translation. It's mostly adjusting font sizes and text box widths. Sometimes I have to add a text box t... See more Self-check of documents and running QA in Memsource is part of normal translation and is not charged extra. Likewise, work responding to comments and corrections made by another translator/editor is not paid extra.
Most of my work comes through agencies, and only the careful and high-level agency has ever offered a surcharge for fixing layout (DTP: desktop publishing) in PPT after translation. It's mostly adjusting font sizes and text box widths. Sometimes I have to add a text box to replace text embedded in images.
Usually I send the work back as a Trados return package, and the agency does DTP on their own. In these cases, text embedded in images is typed up and added somewhere inside the document like the final page, or comments on the PPT slide.
When I had a very complicated PDF (30 pages long, related to programming, lots of tables) that couldn't be easily converted into a DOCX. I had to go through and copy-paste all content of the PDF into a new DOCX file. I informed the customer of the need for this work (sent them an auto-generated DOCX to show how terrible it was), and added a second charge of 1 yen/character (20% of translation rate) to my estimate. They agreed, I did all the copy-pasting, translated the file as normal, and provided them with both the output DOCX and a new PDF.
When I get scanned documents like birth certificates, I often type up all the content into a DOCX file before starting translation work. I charge 1 yen/character (same as above) for typing work like this. Sometimes I forget, or ignore this cost for short documents. Converting the document into a format that works with my CAT tool is like taping around the windows before painting the wall. It's time consuming and boring, but it makes the real work much easier. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Adieu 
Ukrainian to English
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Heavy graphic editing jobs (like comic books) are typically negotiated at entirely different prices. Other labor-intensive or slow tasks like deciphering handwritten texts can and should be charged at far far higher rates too (for example, I charge 0.18 USD/word for handwritten text). That said, tiny bits of handwritten text like a "Duly noted - date - signature" note scrawled on a printed document are typically done for free as part of the job.
"Post-editing" doesn't mean what you ... See more Heavy graphic editing jobs (like comic books) are typically negotiated at entirely different prices. Other labor-intensive or slow tasks like deciphering handwritten texts can and should be charged at far far higher rates too (for example, I charge 0.18 USD/word for handwritten text). That said, tiny bits of handwritten text like a "Duly noted - date - signature" note scrawled on a printed document are typically done for free as part of the job.
"Post-editing" doesn't mean what you think it means at all, it refers to reworking machine translation supplied by the client. It should be charged at almost/full translation rate because all CAT tool users are post-editing to some degree anyway and nearly everyone uses CAT tools now.
Oftentimes, clients pressure you to set a lower price for "post-editing"/MTPE/PEMT, so just set your translation rate for this and bump up + 1-1.5 cents for "translation" when quoting.
Review/Revision also means something different than what you think. It is a QC rework of a completed translation/MTPE job by a second translator. Charge half or more if you plan to do an honest thorough job, because most translators are pretty bad and some are outright horrible. If there's a Revision role on the job, the final responsibility for the output is on the person who did that, not the translator.
Also, back in pre-CAT tool days, I would charge way way more for Power Point. Nowadays, if they rip it into MemoQ, I'll take it at normal rates if they don't abuse it too often.
Stuff like Excel tables? JUST SAY NO. ▲ Collapse
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