Burton | Van Iersel | & Whitney
Why should I worry about what the translator gets paid?
The customer who posed the question informed me that our offer for his 100-page website project was ‘a good fifty percent higher’ than the bid he had accepted from an agency.
12 to 15 euro per hour…
I had calculated that at least 100 or more hours would be needed to produce a carefully worded translation suitable for web publication in English. Deducting the agency’s margin from the rate it offered the customer, this would leave the translator with around 12 to 15 euro per hour – “a good deal less than your plumber earns” I remarked.
It stands to reason, I argued, that when translators’ earnings fall below a certain minimum per hour, they’re only left with two options: refuse the contract, or work faster than would be required to produce a good translation. Freelancers don’t get paid by the hour, but by the number of lines, words or pages they translate.
… or two pages plus per hour
The translator in this case would have to work at a rate of two pages plus per hour. The quality risk involved in forcing the translator to work at this sort of speed was not likely to help the high-profile nature of the project. “It’s your experiment,” I acknowledged. Our high quality standards, demonstrated in previous major projects, were not the issue; this customer just assumed he could have them for less elsewhere.
When the customer took me up on my offer to review the translation, it was much too late. The English version had already been completed in its entirety and published on the web. Cost of repair? Downstream measures are always more expensive than getting it right the first time: the layout process will have to be repeated for the reworked or retranslated text, which is why things are often left as they are. “Aber es ist doch Englisch, oder?” This attitude should and does damage a company’s image, and certainly does not encourage readership in markets it hopes to reach.
A replicable skill?
My own experience convinces me that there are practical, image-building and ultimately cost-saving reasons to correct the prevailing picture of translation as a replicable skill – a cottage industry toiling away at directly comparable rates.
Translators have different, personally acquired talents. It’s a mistake to limit qualifications they require to a foreign language degree, the right specialist knowledge, or a Translation Memory made available to them for reference. It simply takes more time, inquisitiveness, thinking power, iterative loops and linguistic talent to translate a press release, marketing brochure, magazine article or website presentation, than it does to update a translation of an operator’s manual or spare-parts catalogue.
Blurred distinctions
Customers can not be blamed for the fact that low-price competition has done so much to erase all-important quality criteria when comparing translations and the rates at which they are offered. The rates themselves disguise the core issue: the lower they are, the faster the job must be done if the translator is to earn anything at all. Most of them are freelancers, and can not afford to turn the job down.
Although what a translator ultimately earns is no guarantee, it is a prime motivator towards ensuring that enough time will be taken to produce quality. That’s the only reason to worry about what the translator gets paid. And that’s why it should be everybody’s concern, in corporate communications, at least.
A few benchmarks that are worth looking into when evaluating rates
- What impact is the translation supposed to achieve? (exchange of information, promotion, PR)
- What is a reasonable amount of time to allow for translation?
- How can the rates offered be converted into what the translator earns?
- Is it appropriate to apply TM rebates to all types of texts?
- How does the cost of translation relate to the total cost of the project?
- Who is responsible for quality assurance?
- Cost of repair: What are the costs incurred if the translation is inadequate?
Can you translate this by tomorrow, please?
People in corporate communications work under pressure most of the time, and drive hard bargains to keep their deadlines for the press, the print shop, a trade fair or other keynote events.
But if the question above refers to 40 pages, a few uncomfortable compromises to quality are likely. Four translators (with the right background) must be immediately available, and there’s no time to check the final translation for consistency of style or terminology if they have slightly different ideas (and they do) about what needs to be done. A Translation Memory, which may be useful for straightforward technical texts, is seldom a good way to cut time when good wording in marketing or public relations depends on a bigger picture of the topic.
But what is the time that should be allowed for translation? Different agencies quote anywhere between 1000 and 2400 words per day, per translator, which means nothing, frankly. This will depend on the size of the project and whether it can be divided up sensibly between two or more translators.
Let's assume it takes around six weeks to get your company's website in shape – with well-structured, appealing content and wording. Comparable media projects include major company periodicals, image brochures, or even films. A certain proportion of the hours already invested in the project will be needed to produce an equally good translation, since it deserves every bit the same attention to detail, (creative) appeal and readability as the original.
Step 1: The translator has to spend some time getting acquainted with the ideas presented, but that only takes a fraction of the time that it took website authors to transform those original ideas into real content.
- Website content development: 45%
- Translator: 5% of that time to get acquainted with the entire website
Step 2: How the content is structured on the website, an often time-consuming task, is something that only affects translation when options are dictated by where the text occurs on the site.
- Website structure/layout/design: 25%
- Translator: 5% of that time to review how the content is interlinked, cross-referenced, where topics are related, or refer directly to visuals, where text space is limited.
Step 3: Choice of words, consistent style, terminology and creative presentation – how the appeal of the message is generated (readership focus, pitch and benefit) – are indeed directly relevant to the translator's own work. If both the author and the translator are ideally qualified and talented, the latter will be able to make the author's choices and creativity work in another language, when given enough time to do so.
- Website text author(s): 30%
- Website translator needs at least half that time, or 15%
The translator should be given at least 25% of the time it took to produce the original website, magazine, brochure, etc. in order to generate an equally appealing version in another language.