Friday, February 22, 2013

11 Dumb customers - True story (I)

cartoon dumb customer
Click image to enlarge

Based on an idea by Miloš Švantner. Miloš is a German, Swedish and Norwegian into Slovak translator. Did you know that in his country, Slovakia, and in other European countries translators usually charge per side, meaning 1800 characters? He explains it in his website.

11 comments:

  1. I guess it was supposed to be 1800 characters instead of 18000.

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    Replies
    1. Wow, I laughed so hard reading this. Can't believe it. Thanks, again you made my day!

      Delete
  2. 1800 characters excluding spaces or 2000 characters including spaces, this also applies to Romania

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  3. Actually, this customer is rather smart – canny!

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  4. The word is page, not side. And while the so-called standardized page (normostrana) remains in use as a unit of translation for some purposes (mostly certified translations and literary ones), every profesional translator switched to counting words like seventeen Grados versions ago.

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    Replies
    1. Right. In my country (Uruguay) we quote per target translated standardized page for certified translations (hardcopy, signed and stamped). Other than that, it's wordcount.

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  5. hi!,I like your writing so a lot! percentage we keep in touch extra approximately your post on AOL?
    I require a specialist on this area to resolve my problem.
    May be that is you! Taking a look forward to look you.



    My webpage :: online Businesses

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  6. A Great One!
    :)

    Have wonderful weekend!
    Greetings from Sicily

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  7. This reminds me, in some way, of the practice in school of students who would pad their essays in order to reach the page requirement dictated by their teacher. Really, this is just the opposite (trying to cram huge number of words onto as few as pages as possible), but somehow the attitude exhibited by both students and clients here is similar in their desire to thwart the rules of either the teacher or translator.

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  8. Funny as always, Alejandro! But, as you say, a true story - I once got a translation with a font type 6pt! ("Just a few pages")

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