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Should word counts be based on Source? If so, where can I find industry proof?
Thread poster: tglobalinc (X)
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 11:02
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
No industry standard, and counter-intuitive Feb 25, 2017

tglobalinc wrote:
We transcribed the French and then translated the transcription. ... Only after the submission of the invoice did they contest the word counts, source versus target.


In future, this can be avoided by making it clear from the start that the translation rate is based on the source word count.

I'm sorry, but it is counter-intuitive to price a translation based on the source word count. The client wants a translation and he thinks that he's going to pay for the final product, which is the translation, not the source text.

Those of us who mainly quote by source text do so because it making quoting easier and because it allows the client to know the final amount upfront (though in your case, quoting on source text did not allow the customer to know the amount upfront). We here all know it, but do clients?

I'm sorry for your loss. I can offer no solution. There is no "industry standard" in this regard, sorry. I suggest that you try to stick to your guns, though.


[Edited at 2017-02-25 08:53 GMT]


 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 11:02
French to English
source is standard Feb 25, 2017

When I worked in-house, we started out billing target simply because most translations arrived by fax yet we then sent them a Word document which gave us the target tally.
Once clients started e-mailing the files, we were able to bill source. Some translators adjusted their prices at this point.
Thing is, whatever the target language, everyone's starting with the same source. Of course there may be words that are trickier to translate from French to German than from French to Itali
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When I worked in-house, we started out billing target simply because most translations arrived by fax yet we then sent them a Word document which gave us the target tally.
Once clients started e-mailing the files, we were able to bill source. Some translators adjusted their prices at this point.
Thing is, whatever the target language, everyone's starting with the same source. Of course there may be words that are trickier to translate from French to German than from French to Italian, then again perhaps the Italian translator will need to look out more sharply for false friends. Nitpicking is pointless.
Billing source means far fewer nasty surprises between quoting and billing stages for the client and at least as far as my own FR-EN combo is concerned, I noticed many translators got less wordy when billing source. "un succès mondial" would be translated as "a global hit" instead of "a sure-fire success story in all four corners of the globe" and this mostly made less work for the proofreader/editor.
I don't think I know of anyone who bills target in my combo nowadays.
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Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 11:02
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Different rates for different languages and different pairs Feb 25, 2017

How much does a kilo cost?

It depends on what you are selling a kilo of.

A thousand words is not just a thousand words - or a page is not just a page, even though people try to standardise by using pages or lines - I believe Germans try to quote rates per line because the word count is often much lower in German than in other languages.

When the agency I worked for went from charging for target words to source words, they changed my rate from 0.72 Danish K
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How much does a kilo cost?

It depends on what you are selling a kilo of.

A thousand words is not just a thousand words - or a page is not just a page, even though people try to standardise by using pages or lines - I believe Germans try to quote rates per line because the word count is often much lower in German than in other languages.

When the agency I worked for went from charging for target words to source words, they changed my rate from 0.72 Danish Kroner per English word to 0.85 Danish Kroner per Danish word. The idea was to pay me the same for the actual work I did.

I found there was suddenly more work in 2000 words per day... because now we were counting Danish source words, not English target words.
It really is important to shift the focus away from things like how much paper you would use if you printed the text out or how many typewriter strokes or words you use.

Any translator can choose the wordiest options if you count target words. If space is limited and the English text must not take up more than the Danish, you may end up with slightly fewer words in a more concise translation, but believe me, it takes longer and is harder work to keep counting and selecting the briefest version. So the rate for the job should be higher, not lower.

If you are translating from Danish to Lithuanian and compiling the dictionary as you go... using English as an intermediary language, as in a project my husband was involved in, then the translator should be paid by the hour, not according to the word count.

That is why there are no 'industry standards'. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions either.


[Edited at 2017-02-26 11:51 GMT]
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CafeTran Training (X)
CafeTran Training (X)
Netherlands
Local time: 11:02
It's Dutch too, and German, for what it matters ... Feb 25, 2017

Michael Newton wrote:

"the customer is king" is from Japanese ("okyakusama wa ohsama").


It's Dutch too, and German, for what it matters ...

Not sure, why tglobalinc focusses on the wording when a colleague is kind enough to reply to the content of his question.


 
Valery Kaminski
Valery Kaminski  Identity Verified
Belarus
Local time: 13:02
English to Russian
+ ...
A standard for a non-standard situation... Feb 26, 2017

Actually, the source word count is practical when the customer sends a document with those source words that can be counted by both the customer and the translator. It was a bit different in this particular case. I wonder if the customer saw the transcribed files at all. I guess the only "material" indicator of the amount of work done was the target file. It may be the reason why the customer insists on the target word count.

 
Merab Dekano
Merab Dekano  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Standard Feb 27, 2017

If you quote, you are free to use source or target word count, so long you explicitly state it in your quote. For target it will have to be an estimate. For EN>ES, you add about 13% to the source word count.

If you are already collaborating with a client, PO will control. In my case, a customer may send a PO based on source word count if the number of words is known or based on target word count if it’s a pdf file and cannot/should not be converted.

By the way, you ga
... See more
If you quote, you are free to use source or target word count, so long you explicitly state it in your quote. For target it will have to be an estimate. For EN>ES, you add about 13% to the source word count.

If you are already collaborating with a client, PO will control. In my case, a customer may send a PO based on source word count if the number of words is known or based on target word count if it’s a pdf file and cannot/should not be converted.

By the way, you gain if you invoice based on target word count if you work in EN>ES language pair, but folks who work in, say, ES>RU language pair would be suffering as the Russian language is more “fusional” than Spanish.
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Should word counts be based on Source? If so, where can I find industry proof?







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