Rate Per Target Word or Source Word

zahra razavi wrote:

The default is to charge per source word but if your employer agrees charging per target word will be to your benefit.

Katalin Horváth McClure wrote:

Quoting based on source count makes sense to the client, because they know exactly how much they are going to pay. It also makes sense for the translator, because you know how much you are going to earn.
However, sometimes it is difficult or outright impossible to determine the number of source words, for example if the source file is a scanned PDF file that cannot be converted into an editable text file. In that case it makes sense to quote a "per target word" rate, knowing that the exact amount will only be known when the translation is finished. Another method is to charge per hour, if the project is complicated in a way that a per word rate would be disadvantageous (for example, handwritten old documents where deciphering the source takes a lot of time), or if when a creative process is needed, such as for slogans, advertisement phrases, etc. where the amount of resulting words does not correspond to the amount of time used for doing the work.

At the end of the day, you want to be paid for the time you spend. Whether you use a rate applied to source word count or another rate applied to target word count, or an hourly rate, you should be getting paid approximately the same amount on a per hour basis, regardless of which quoting/billing method you use.

Christine Andersen wrote:

When I worked in house, the agency went from counting target words to counting source words. The reason was that earlier, most of the source documents were hard copy, and it was not easy to count the words, while the translations were all available in electronic form, so the words were easier to count.

During the transition, the company kept careful statistics of word counts, to ensure that they charged end clients the same for a given translation, regardless of which language they counted words in.

I always translated from Danish to English, but they paid me DKK 0.85 per word as default - when the Danish words were counted. If it was not possible to count the source words, they paid me DKK 0.72 per target word. I accepted this, because when I worked in house I had kept statistics on my work, and could see the difference in the word counts.

It is often an advantage to charge per source word, but don't let agencies tell you that the rate is the same for any language or any language pair. It should not be, at any rate.

EvaVer wrote:

but you must take into account the difference in length between languages. For example, French will be 20% longer on average than English. So that I always agree when French agencies use "per word in French" rates (whether French is the source or the target). In this example, if words in English are counted, your rate needs to be 20% higher.
By default (with my direct clients), I use target standard pages (the legacy method in my country). The target is what you must write, the actual physical work you do, so this seems right to me. I also work with a non-negligible part of non-editable sources, so target is the only practical method.