Cheers.
Might anyone have an idea what the going rate is (per word) for translations? The text would not be anything too technical like science or IT. It would be for wine so some technical words would need to be understood. But getting an idea of what an average rate might be, would be helpful.
I only work with legal translation companies and they tend to charge from CHF 120-200 per hour.
A recent document of mine had approx. 9000 characters (incl. spaces) | 5 pages and took 5 hours. Of course the level of difficulty will always factor in on their average price per hour.
Hieronymus is the best one I've worked with.
Give or take I "budget" 1 hour per page for topic translation (German to English in my case) - which includes finding suitable replacement expressions and topic specific terminology
Thanks. I have a friend who does wine translations from French to English in France and she told me that the going rate there is €0.70 per word so it looks to be different for legal translations.
Thanks. So do you charge by hour as well? And are your pages double spaced, meaning that would be around 250 words?
I charge by the hour - and quote 150chf per hour to new clients for German to English translation.
Thanks. Do you specialise in really technical translations or are you more of a generalist?
Here are the rates of ASTTI:
http://new.astti.ch/web/tarife_trad_23.pdf
An experienced translator, or one who commands the specialist vocabulary of a certain field, will charge in the upper range, or even more than these rates. A junior or newby at the lower end of the range.
Sometimes, a translator might be appointed with the agreement that a certain - additional - amount of time can be allocated to either research into the terminology of the field or the language style of the client's business, or fancy formatting, should the client want the document back in a certain form.
If the translation is to be professional, and not just from Joe-who-speaks-that-language-amongst-others, then one really has to pay for it. Put the other way, someone without training and/or advanced language skills is unlikely to turn out a polished piece of work.
Thanks so much. It would be a specialised field which requires good knowledge and not a newby, who would be lost.
So, if I were to understand this document correctly, for a specialised text, they charge CHF 4-6 for every line of 50-60 characters? It's a bit confusing.
If you aren't quite sure what the rates mean, I suggest you contact ASTTI directly, at [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) .
I@ve used www.onehourtranslation.com before and they are fast and you can request the same person and its quite personable. I have used them for DE FR and IT. I needed to get a language school to do Romansch for me.
That has traditionally been the charging method in Germanic countries; the UK, Benelux, France etc. tend to charge by the word. However, neither system is particularly transparent and as a "unit rate", it means that the more complex and difficult the work, the less the translator earns because the text usually takes rather longer to translate.
Like Dodgyken, if I take on new language clients I always quote them an hourly rate: it's a more understandable pricing system for the clients and puts the service providers on a more professional footing like lawyers etc (instead of the "language factory" mindset that a unit rate tends to engender).
Being a translator myself, I usually charge based on a variety of factors. I usually charge per document, because I don't believe in hurrying something up because your budget might only be for four hours of my time or prolonging my work because it only took me two. I take into account complexity, vocabulary and some other factors to come to a conclusion.
Generally, my clients have told me that my prices and services are more than reasonable and I like doing it. so I have a working system in place.
That said, I'd be up for translating your wine document (shameless self advertising and stuff )
With Google Translate getting ever better, and peoples' expectations getting ever lower (with kids' "Text Speak" and such like corruptors of the language), the writing is on the wall for you professional translators. There may still, however, be a bit of pocket money to be made translating Swiss German text messages that suspicious partners have found when browsing through unsecured mobile phones. Even that will dry up when Google add a Swiss Language module to their renowned translator.
I am currently translating a book for the sheer hell and passion of it - and my retired fees are the best around (no advertising here- I am retired )
As a translator, your Forum name always me me laugh btw...
In what kind of world are you living?
If Google Translate goes on improving at the same rate it has since its inception, I sure won't live to see a decent result that can be used, say, in a business letter. Not even in a fifth grade composition.
Well, it's perfectly OK for selling us Chinese electronic/electrical and other stuff. It's not poetry, but in terms of business volume it's much more important than a few immaculately formulated business letters. Anyway, I don't think fifth grade composition is a pretty sight these days either.
I do see this argument quite often, to be honest. However, there's two layers you have to look at here (which you kind of do in your later post):
Meaning Form If you're solely after the meaning, but not necessarily the intricacies of a text, then Google Translate will get the job done. In fact, I'm quite glad that GTranslate is around for these kind of things as I can do my job better, more efficiently and - following my business model - more profitably with texts that aren't just "Can you translate this letter my aunt sent me?" I enjoy the fact that the texts I get are more often for public rather than private consumption.
A lot of documents, however, have a fixed form. They have nuance, they have style. GTranslate currently can't translate this. Therefore, you need a human being to do it. Someone who actually thinks about a text in the context of a human brain, someone who's able to maintain the nuanced way of writing. What I also get a lot is that people are grateful, because I can explain things to them. Like, I can explain the reason why I chose one word over a synonym and we can debate whether or not it's the right choice given the intended consumers of the final text.
While I do see your point and I do hope and kind of think that GTranslate will one day be able to do meaning as well as form, translators are currently still valuable members of some people's and companies' lives.
I do what now? I kind of chose this name at random after the first book I saw in my shelf when turning right. As for rates, Odile probably wins. Grrrr... old people!
Sorry- I know I am unfair competition- but I do it for fun as a volunteer, for associations in my region and in the case of this book- it would not be translated ever if I had not volunteered. An American author, who has written a book on the fascinating story of the most famous and best ever watch-maker, from my region BREGUET.
Don't worry, I am not taking your job
It's not your Forum name that makes me laugh, its KONOKU - as it is very rude in French, lol.
Google translate is a total disaster, I agree. I have Finnish and Danish friends on FB and they often write in F or D - google translate is hilariously funny, and total googledigook!
Hi Odile,
Are you interested in doing an english to french translation for a somewhat large amount of documents?
I have started a legal case against a very large independent financial advisory company who have fraudulently mis-invested many peoples money. To the tune of nearly 100 million! It's a David vs Goliath type challenge! I have just been informed yesterday that the Swiss Procureur has accepted the case, and it's looking good at this early stage. However I now need to find a way to get lots of these documents translated from English into French.
Let me know if this interests you.
My Swiss mobile is [removed] if you prefer to call to discuss.
Kind Regards
Steve