Poll: How much translation do you typically produce in an hour, not including final proofing? Initiator des Themas: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How much translation do you typically produce in an hour, not including final proofing?".
View the poll results »
| | | | | It depends on my familiarity with the subject matter and the difficulty of the text | Dec 20, 2018 |
I've done jobs where I've managed only 100-200 words per hour, others where 600-700 words per hour is a breeze. Some projects require much terminological research, others don’t: usually, projects from a repeat customer tend to become easy over the years. Lately, I have been doing a lot of transcreation and these projects take much more time: the number of words is not the point, it’s how one conveys the message, sometimes it flows quite easily until you stumble upon a X-words expression or s... See more I've done jobs where I've managed only 100-200 words per hour, others where 600-700 words per hour is a breeze. Some projects require much terminological research, others don’t: usually, projects from a repeat customer tend to become easy over the years. Lately, I have been doing a lot of transcreation and these projects take much more time: the number of words is not the point, it’s how one conveys the message, sometimes it flows quite easily until you stumble upon a X-words expression or slogan which can take X hours to get it right. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Muriel Vasconcellos 
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 03:31
Mitglied (2003)
Spanisch > Englisch
+ ...
| 400-499 if there are no serious problems | Dec 20, 2018 |
That's my usual average for the kind of document I do. Until I run into trouble. Problems can slow me down a lot.
Today's update: The worst is long sentences. Right now I'm dealing with a sentence 131 words long with multiple embeddings.
[Edited at 2018-12-21 04:37 GMT]
| | | | | Depends on subject, style and language | Dec 20, 2018 |
I agree with Teresa, it's not (just) the number of words. My translation speed also depends on the subject - is it something I am familiar with, do I enjoy working on the subject? My mood might also play a role, and texts with a poor style slow me down, on the one hand because I have to figure out the meaning sometimes, on the other hand because it annoys me, and I "waste" time eye rolling For me, the language combination is also ... See more I agree with Teresa, it's not (just) the number of words. My translation speed also depends on the subject - is it something I am familiar with, do I enjoy working on the subject? My mood might also play a role, and texts with a poor style slow me down, on the one hand because I have to figure out the meaning sometimes, on the other hand because it annoys me, and I "waste" time eye rolling For me, the language combination is also a point. I translate from English and French into German but French actually occurs only once in a while since everybody seems to be writing their texts in English nowadays, and I always need some time to work my way into French texts and to re-activate it in my brain though I enjoy that very much! ▲ Collapse
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Jennifer Forbes
Local time: 11:31
Französisch > Englisch
+ ...
In stillem Gedenken | It depends on the complexity of the files, too. | Dec 20, 2018 |
Some documents require a lot of formatting: columns of figures and the figures themselves, boxes, numerous footnotes, etc. etc., all of which slows me down, while others are perfectly straightforward.
| | | | Ümit Karahan
Türkei
Local time: 14:31
Englisch > Türkisch
+ ...
| Speed vs. Quality | Dec 20, 2018 |
Hi to all,
I personally do translation at an average speed of 200 words per hour. It may sometimes be as low as 100 words, and sometimes as high as 300 or higher. It depends the difficulty of source text to me.
But I also want to discuss a different issue related to this tread. It is about the jobs that are put on very tight schedules. For example, they may want you to translate 4000-5000 words per day. And the more important one, and the point interests the translators is th... See more Hi to all,
I personally do translation at an average speed of 200 words per hour. It may sometimes be as low as 100 words, and sometimes as high as 300 or higher. It depends the difficulty of source text to me.
But I also want to discuss a different issue related to this tread. It is about the jobs that are put on very tight schedules. For example, they may want you to translate 4000-5000 words per day. And the more important one, and the point interests the translators is that they find someone who says yes.
I am an engineer and I know that I can do technical translations 300-350 words per hour depending upon the difficulty of the terminology in the source text. But I never say my clients that I can do their job at those speeds. I generally say 250 or sometimes 200 words per hour if I am not very comfortable about the subject. By doing so, I probably miss many potential jobs but I ensure a more quality translation and I believe I prevent some disturbing discussions with the outsourcer in case something goes wrong and slows down me.
In brief, deadlines defined by outsourcers should be in a reasonable range and translators may say no to unrealistic requests of their job providers. Quality needs time. If they want very fast translation, they must accept and be happy with what google translate gives them. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Over 600 words? | Dec 20, 2018 |
Somebody voted for it. I can't even just type so fast... Or do you use voice recognition software? Please share how is it possible at all?
| | | | Thayenga
Deutschland
Local time: 12:31
Mitglied (2009)
Englisch > Deutsch
+ ...
My translation speed depends on several factors, including the mood and time of the day factors. Subject, familiarity, language combination, and even the delivery deadline. In short, I'd rather be a little "slower" than translate below my personal standards.
Additionally, translating subtitles might have an impact on my translation speed, depending on the audio quality. Besides that, I normally don't take the time to count the words I produce in an hour. ... See more My translation speed depends on several factors, including the mood and time of the day factors. Subject, familiarity, language combination, and even the delivery deadline. In short, I'd rather be a little "slower" than translate below my personal standards.
Additionally, translating subtitles might have an impact on my translation speed, depending on the audio quality. Besides that, I normally don't take the time to count the words I produce in an hour. ▲ Collapse
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Peter Simon
Niederlande
Local time: 12:31
Englisch > Ungarisch
+ ...
I agree with those who say it depends, even though I've provided a number as well. Familiarity with subject is a factor, but when there's a difference of around 20% between the number of words between the source and target language, the answer is anyone's guess.
| | | | | Agree with Teresa; depends on subject, complexity, style, language... | Dec 20, 2018 |
Legal translations, for example, are quite easy for me in general because of my many years practicing law in a multilingual context, but frequently what is sent out as "legal" just has legal language at the beginning and the end, and may relate to a previously unknown subject for me (such as "cold rooms!"). I spent most of a day on a translation having to do with earth-moving equipment until I happened to ask a friend who used to drive these and he "opened" the door to the topic!
... See more Legal translations, for example, are quite easy for me in general because of my many years practicing law in a multilingual context, but frequently what is sent out as "legal" just has legal language at the beginning and the end, and may relate to a previously unknown subject for me (such as "cold rooms!"). I spent most of a day on a translation having to do with earth-moving equipment until I happened to ask a friend who used to drive these and he "opened" the door to the topic!
I also have issues with the way words are anglicized into Spanglish or Franglish... and these days that happens in medical translation, and especially in translation (and interpreting) of "computerese." Annoying.
Another thing that is hard to keep up with is the current slang...
What I do love about the work is how often I will learn something I knew nothing about. This happened with "sous vide" cooking, which fascinated me so much I had to order the equipment...
So while 600/700 words per hour is not so difficult, sometimes a number of the above factors slows me down considerably!
[Edited at 2018-12-20 14:51 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Seeing the numbers above, it's no wonder agencies don't like my per-hour rate when they ask for one instead of the per-word I base it on
Excluding proofreading, I typically expect to produce close to a thousand words per hour on content I am familiar with, which is most of the jobs I accept. In projects where I measured my output, I've exceeded 1100 words per hour at times, and 6000 words a day (I try to avoid the l... See more Seeing the numbers above, it's no wonder agencies don't like my per-hour rate when they ask for one instead of the per-word I base it on
Excluding proofreading, I typically expect to produce close to a thousand words per hour on content I am familiar with, which is most of the jobs I accept. In projects where I measured my output, I've exceeded 1100 words per hour at times, and 6000 words a day (I try to avoid the latter now because that's frankly too much for my body to keep up with on a regular basis). Most of the work I do is marketing and instructional material, which I find rather straightforward to just "write as it comes" without a need to embellish further. I've done some literary and fiction translation for practice or hobbies and the numbers are certainly quite different there; I might still come close to 1000 words in an hour, but I'll spend about as long reviewing and rewording them afterward and feel that they can still be improved.
Platon Danilov wrote:
Somebody voted for it. I can't even just type so fast... Or do you use voice recognition software? Please share how is it possible at all?
I tried out voice recognition software several years back, but overall I felt like it was slowing me down, and I use keyboard shortcuts so much that it felt impractical to mix the two (and it prevented me from listening to music while I work!). VRS might "type" fast, but having to correct mistakes and redo so much punctuation and formatting that I would immediately get right if I typed it myself was too much of a hassle. Plus, at the time at least, you couldn't use it in any program you wanted, which made it useless with CAT tools. I don't know my typing speed exactly, but I think it's under 100 words per minute and it's not flawless. I would certainly say a bit of touch typing training would be worth it if you find that you type slower than you translate in your mind
I will say, though, that in my estimation I have it easy translating English to French compared to others working across much more different languages. With so many words sharing roots, there is often very little questioning to do about word equivalence, so transposing a simple sentence is a quick process. It's when I need to research terminology, puzzle out meaning, pull out my hair recreating puns or rhymes, or waste time because of bad tagging or messy formatting that I need to slow down the most. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | With voice recognition, 600+ | Dec 20, 2018 |
Platon Danilov wrote:
Somebody voted for it. I can't even just type so fast... Or do you use voice recognition software? Please share how is it possible at all?
Exactly. It depends on the kind of the text: Sometimes I get game translations with longer, literary-style passages (for example, the background story of a hero in the game). With voice recognition, I can do 600-800 words per hour of this content, not counting proofreading. There are some pitfalls with voice recognition, sometimes you get words that are phonetically similar but with different spelling and meaning. Also, the German compound words and some capitalisation issues are tricky. Therefore you need a good proofreading afterwards.
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Edith van der Have
Niederlande
Local time: 12:31
Mitglied (2016)
Englisch > Niederländisch
+ ...
| Over 600 words is possible. | Dec 20, 2018 |
Platon Danilov wrote:
Somebody voted for it. I can't even just type so fast... Or do you use voice recognition software? Please share how is it possible at all?
I am one of those people, and indeed: voice recognition software is really helpful here. I also leverage the possibilities of my CAT software (I am very proficient in using it, e.g. to look for fuzzy and exact matches - my tool, Déjà Vu, allows to select the source by alphabetical order - look up terminology and partial matches in the TM, copy source to target and translate in between tags, etc.), and I am a very fast typist, which is useful even when using voice recognition (because it won't understand everything).
[Edited at 2018-12-20 20:07 GMT]
[Edited at 2018-12-20 20:08 GMT]
| | | | Mario Freitas
Brasilien
Local time: 08:31
Mitglied (2014)
Englisch > Portugiesisch
+ ...
| It depends on the subject and other factors | Dec 21, 2018 |
If I'm translating a document that does not require a lot of researching for strange terms, I could translate more than 600 words in an hour. If I'm translating a document in an area I'm not so familiar with, and the author uses that language they believe show their intellectuality, with lots of technical terms or words that were used for the last time 100 years ago, this number could go down to 300.
| | | | Muriel Vasconcellos
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 03:31
Mitglied (2003)
Spanisch > Englisch
+ ...
| True confession | Dec 21, 2018 |
I posted this poll, but I made it anonymous because I didn't want to sound like a bean counter. The question that I submitted started out:"On average, ..." which was a key point. As usual, the site administrators reworded it.
The reason I posted it is that one of my steadiest clients recently upped their daily quota to 2,500 words a day deliverable translation (including weekends!). The jobs I get from them usually start at 10,000 words, so the work stretches out over a number of da... See more I posted this poll, but I made it anonymous because I didn't want to sound like a bean counter. The question that I submitted started out:"On average, ..." which was a key point. As usual, the site administrators reworded it.
The reason I posted it is that one of my steadiest clients recently upped their daily quota to 2,500 words a day deliverable translation (including weekends!). The jobs I get from them usually start at 10,000 words, so the work stretches out over a number of days.
I've taken the position that the quota is very unreasonable. While I could maintain that pace for 2 to 4 days, it would mean postponing regular commitments and appointments. When a job lasts three to six weeks, as theirs often do, I would have to put the entire rest of my life on hold, not to mention other clients. It's bad for business, and it makes for a lifestyle that I couldn't accept. I'm single and I'm not studying or splitting my time with other work, but it would be an impossible situation for people with a family.
Thanks to your responses, I feel that at least I'm not a decrepit old snail left in the dust by a different generation of colleagues. ▲ Collapse
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