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Productivity: Translate 10 thousand words per day is possible? (No Cat Tools involved)
Thread poster: Evelyn de Almeida
Josephine Cassar
Josephine Cassar  Identity Verified
Malta
Local time: 18:40
Member (2012)
English to Maltese
+ ...
@ Mirko Aug 1, 2018

They go together, don't they? Fortunately so you feel you are doing yourself more than just one favour by ignoring them or answering them in that fashion.

Evelyn de Almeida
 
Nikki Scott-Despaigne
Nikki Scott-Despaigne  Identity Verified
Local time: 18:40
French to English
Previous posts along the same lines Aug 1, 2018

Some people do claim to be able to do that type of volume. As a one-off, why not. As a matter of course providing high-quality work, high-quality checks and consistently over time, no. Do you actually want to produce that many words in a day over a number of days? If you were to accept, do you realize how much time and therefore money you would be risking if you had problems getting paid? When a client is in the same economic space, it can be complicated and costly getting paid. The furth... See more
Some people do claim to be able to do that type of volume. As a one-off, why not. As a matter of course providing high-quality work, high-quality checks and consistently over time, no. Do you actually want to produce that many words in a day over a number of days? If you were to accept, do you realize how much time and therefore money you would be risking if you had problems getting paid? When a client is in the same economic space, it can be complicated and costly getting paid. The further away the client is, the more complicated it becomes. I would not want to take that sort of risk, particularly for a large amount of work. As already mentioned, too many red flags. I'd say, "no thank you" and look elsewhere.

Sleep deprivation can lead to hallucinations. Perhaps thinking this is possible - consistently and over time - is probably hallucinatory.

[Edited at 2018-08-01 15:20 GMT]
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Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 17:40
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Ridiculous requests deserve ridicule Aug 1, 2018

Josephine Cassar wrote:
I am not surprised when I see a job for translation of a children's book with rates of €0.017-€0.034 per word and there are already 10 quotes submitted for this!

I noticed that FR>EN job today, and I noticed they also wanted native German speakers . Hopefully at least some of those who "quoted" were actually tearing them off a strip about the appalling rate. I used to.

Evelyn, you're corresponding with the worst type of sweatshop imaginable. I'm almost 100% sure that you'd find they complained about the quality and refused to pay, or at least demanded a discount - however good a translation you managed to deliver. And then you'd have to wait 90 days before they paid (after several reminders, of course). It's just the normal operating procedure of that type of broker. I'm curious to know what rate they were offering. Was it as "high" as that one above from a Chinese agency?

By the way, have you checked out the Wikis about Risk Management on the site? They're in the Education section. There's a lot you/we can and should do to assess the reputation and trustworthiness of companies that aren't so obviously dire. With this one, you can take our collective word for it .


Evelyn de Almeida
 
Evelyn de Almeida
Evelyn de Almeida
Brazil
Local time: 14:40
English to Portuguese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
grateful for your advice Aug 1, 2018

Sheila Wilson wrote:

Josephine Cassar wrote:
I am not surprised when I see a job for translation of a children's book with rates of €0.017-€0.034 per word and there are already 10 quotes submitted for this!

I noticed that FR>EN job today, and I noticed they also wanted native German speakers . Hopefully at least some of those who "quoted" were actually tearing them off a strip about the appalling rate. I used to.

Evelyn, you're corresponding with the worst type of sweatshop imaginable. I'm almost 100% sure that you'd find they complained about the quality and refused to pay, or at least demanded a discount - however good a translation you managed to deliver. And then you'd have to wait 90 days before they paid (after several reminders, of course). It's just the normal operating procedure of that type of broker. I'm curious to know what rate they were offering. Was it as "high" as that one above from a Chinese agency?

By the way, have you checked out the Wikis about Risk Management on the site? They're in the Education section. There's a lot you/we can and should do to assess the reputation and trustworthiness of companies that aren't so obviously dire. With this one, you can take our collective word for it .



I'll check the Wikis, this is a great advice! thanks!


 
Evelyn de Almeida
Evelyn de Almeida
Brazil
Local time: 14:40
English to Portuguese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
you're right! Aug 1, 2018

Mirko Mainardi wrote:

Evelyn de Almeida wrote:

The e-mail says "We are looking to create a team for each language-pair who can handle a total of more than 10000 words per day, therefore we are expecting your co-operation."


So, they are looking to set up A TEAM that can handle A TOTAL OF 10k+ words per day, not individual translators who can handle 10k+ each...

Tell them how many words you can handle per day and see where that goes... although something tells me they wouldn't be offering anything higher than 4/5 USD cents per word...


I deeply apologize for my misunderstanding. Thanks a lot!


 
Daniel Frisano
Daniel Frisano  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 18:40
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
Let's make it interesting Aug 2, 2018

Teresa Borges wrote:

Though I’ve received CVs from people (I wouldn’t call them translators) who claim to translate circa 300,000 words per month. They went straight to the bin, I’m afraid.


This issue has been long debated. Shall we settle this once and for all?

I hereby claim that, given the right (reasonable) conditions, I can do 300k in one month, few to no repetitions, top-quality human translation, all documented via video capture. Not every month, but one single month, yes.

Anybody up to the challenge?


 
Josephine Cassar
Josephine Cassar  Identity Verified
Malta
Local time: 18:40
Member (2012)
English to Maltese
+ ...
I go one further Aug 2, 2018

Daniel Frisano wrote:

Teresa Borges wrote:

Though I’ve received CVs from people (I wouldn’t call them translators) who claim to translate circa 300,000 words per month. They went straight to the bin, I’m afraid.


This issue has been long debated. Shall we settle this once and for all?

I hereby claim that, given the right (reasonable) conditions, I can do 300k in one month, few to no repetitions, top-quality human translation, all documented via video capture. Not every month, but one single month, yes.

Anybody up to the challenge?

I include formatting and when I say formatting, it is not just align but tables of all sorts, graphs, any which kind you like, bring them on, the more, the merrier, it is the merry season after all


 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
blatant provocation Aug 2, 2018

The last thing we want to say is "NO", so if you're not yet competent to do 10'000 words a day for $0.05, how about some 5000 words for $0.035?

Such false requirements are but door-in-the-face tricks to make one refuse it, then--feeling guilty--likely to agree to the second, a bit more reasonable demand, which is still bad (yet looks better comparing to the first one). The point is if they would make the second offer first, translators would just give them a cold shoulder and more)


 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 17:40
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
No, thank you! Aug 2, 2018

Daniel Frisano wrote:

Teresa Borges wrote:

Though I’ve received CVs from people (I wouldn’t call them translators) who claim to translate circa 300,000 words per month. They went straight to the bin, I’m afraid.


This issue has been long debated. Shall we settle this once and for all?

I hereby claim that, given the right (reasonable) conditions, I can do 300k in one month, few to no repetitions, top-quality human translation, all documented via video capture. Not every month, but one single month, yes.

Anybody up to the challenge?


Record-breaking is not my thing!


Angie Garbarino
 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 01:40
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
Don't assume your competence (or lack thereof) on others Aug 2, 2018

Josephine Cassar wrote:

How on earth can anyone translate 10K per day, with or without TM? The mind boggles. This is the fault of some translators (just a few but we'v had posts with this) who profess they can do it. Unimaginable! And they cannot do it for just one one day let alone one day after another.

Just like some people can play something they've heard only once by memory, or hit a baseball coming at them at 160 km/h with a wooden bat, or be fluent in 5-6 languages, or perform lengthy multiplication by heart. Translating 10k words in a day doesn't rank very high at all on the list of things that exceptional humans can do.

I'm quite willing to put my money where my mouth is. If you aren't, you should probably keep yours shut.


Erik Freitag
Grace Anderson
 
EvaVer (X)
EvaVer (X)  Identity Verified
Local time: 18:40
Czech to French
+ ...
Every day, no Aug 2, 2018

It happened to me to translate about 10.000 words in 24 hours - after a well-filled day, a client came with a biggish rush translation and begged me to do it overnight. BUT they didn't care about quality - just wanted to know the content in the morning. AND I had to rest for 2 days afterwards. This was long ago, I didn't use any CAT then.
Asking people to do that every day is clearly nonsense.


Oleksandr Ivanov
neilmac
 
Mirko Mainardi
Mirko Mainardi  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 18:40
Member
English to Italian
Stats Aug 2, 2018

Not sure why some people get they knickers in a twist about this...

Most people can't do 10k per (working) day (±8 hours), even more couldn't sustain that speed over long periods, let alone do that routinely. If I could, I'd be filthy rich by now (even working for peanuts...) and I'd be the dream translator of every client out there, being able to single-handedly tackle projects of most sizes while ensuring consistency of terms and style. Well, I can't. Bummer.

There's
... See more
Not sure why some people get they knickers in a twist about this...

Most people can't do 10k per (working) day (±8 hours), even more couldn't sustain that speed over long periods, let alone do that routinely. If I could, I'd be filthy rich by now (even working for peanuts...) and I'd be the dream translator of every client out there, being able to single-handedly tackle projects of most sizes while ensuring consistency of terms and style. Well, I can't. Bummer.

There's been an astonishing number of ProZ polls about this over the years, with 1 to 2 thousand participants each time, so I'd say those results are statistically fairly representative of average productivity among translators: http://tinyurl.com/y7qfmrku

The vast majority of respondents (around 75%) usually claims to be able to translate up to 3,000 words per day. Those who claim to be able to do more than 7/8k per day are generally below 1%, so they do exist, although they are an absolute minority.

This should directly answer the original question from the OP.


P.S. The polls mentioned above do not exclude CAT tool usage, therefore those figures also include any productivity boost (if any) afforded by CATs.

[Edited at 2018-08-02 09:16 GMT]
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Natasha Ziada (X)
Vera Schoen
Angie Garbarino
Oleksandr Ivanov
 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
No Aug 2, 2018

I did 25,000 words over a weekend once and let me tell you it is not sustainable. I had to rest for a week afterwards.

Yes there are some very special people out there, some even more special than me, but I still cannot believe anyone can produce that much high-quality translation day in, day out.

Of course, we can all turn out 10,000 words of literal, unimaginative, unresearched and not entirely accurate translation.

Otherwise known as a first draft. ... See more
I did 25,000 words over a weekend once and let me tell you it is not sustainable. I had to rest for a week afterwards.

Yes there are some very special people out there, some even more special than me, but I still cannot believe anyone can produce that much high-quality translation day in, day out.

Of course, we can all turn out 10,000 words of literal, unimaginative, unresearched and not entirely accurate translation.

Otherwise known as a first draft.

And that’s the crux. Whenever I see high output, I see low quality.

Most translators can’t even produce 2,000 words a day without major flaws.
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Christine Andersen
Oleksandr Ivanov
Michele Fauble
Kay Denney
neilmac
writeaway
Nikki Scott-Despaigne
 
Daniel Frisano
Daniel Frisano  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 18:40
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
300.000 words in 30 days Aug 2, 2018

I should have been more specific. I am willing to bet $30,000 that I can do it.

- if I can, you pay $30k for the job + $30k extra.
- if I can't, I pay you $30k.

So?


[Edited at 2018-08-02 12:27 GMT]


 
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:40
Member (2004)
English to Italian
High quality? Aug 2, 2018

Daniel Frisano wrote:

I should have been more specific. I am willing to bet $30,000 that I can do it.

- if i can, you pay $30k for the job + $30k extra.
- if I can't, I pay you $30k.

So?


Publication material?


 
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Productivity: Translate 10 thousand words per day is possible? (No Cat Tools involved)







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