Tuesday, July 2, 2013

8 Discount for repetitions

cartoon discounts for repetitions in translation
Click image to enlarge

8 comments:

  1. Yes, so good (though #2 is only a dream) and i think this also applies for large quantities... Large quantities can be so boring, there should be a surcharge for hardship! We translators don't have extra quantities of "best-before" words we want to get rid of before the expiry date!

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  2. I never never accept a rep rate per word for precisely this reason, and on more than one occasion I have taken the quote # 2 line with clients - not to actually apply it but to make the point, which I believe is entirely valid for most if not all work with multiple repetitions.

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  3. The whole repetition issue is a disgrace propagated by agencies to get out of paying for work and push prices downward. As soon as translation tools began generating automated matches and confidence levels, agencies immediately determined that they should only pay for how much "work" was actually done, rather than how much volume. If anyone in the world should be aware of what goes into the translation process, it's a translation agency - but that is apparently not enough to overcome the CEO's and MBA's looking to improve the bottom line - always at the expense of the talent.

    Translation is an art. No one says to a successful novelist, "Well, we're going to pay you less because you used a word processor instead of paper and pencil to write your best-seller;" but the entire translation industry has swallowed this load of garbage hook, line, and sinker.

    Small wonder that I got out of the racket.

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  4. The trouble with the translationb business - especially when working for translation agencies - is that the invested "brainwork" for special subjects, themes or topics are not honoured in the "price per word" agreement.
    The times when we got "correspondance type" texts are gone and done by "google", so we have to start where online translation starts to fail!

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  5. So true! I love it :-)
    Just one thing... Why are you using "There a" and no "There are a"? Just wondering in case it's something I didn't know.
    Take care!

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  6. Sometimes I get offered huge jobs to negotiate lower rates due to high volume. Once agreed on a lower rate they just give me a portion of the huge job because "client needs this done in a week". F.U.

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