In praise of project-based pricing in translation

 

[Fiddler on the roof*]

Tradition is the last justification for continuing long-established business practices long after they are no longer relevant. As an example, translation prices are generally quoted in price per word, just as Dickens and Melville were paid for publishing chapters of their books in newspapers two centuries ago. Yet, although writing by pen and typewriters have essentially become curiosities, every request for translator still involves those classic words: “What is your rate per word” as if this measure is still relevant and fair.

To be clear, uniform unit measures can be relevant if all goods are equal and randomly variable. For examples, today in most industrialized countries at least, all supermarket potatoes of the same kind are more or less equally tasteless. The difference between them is natural and unpredictable. It is impossible to make any connection between the farm and potato. Thus, comparing the cost of a pound or kilo of potatoes is legitimate and reflects the sole actual value difference, cost.

By contrast, the per-word price comparison in translation is illogical, as Spock would say. Even if the field of the translation is identical, e.g., medical or legal, all words, or texts to be more precise, are not created equal. Aside from the quantity of words, format potentially adds hours to a project. If the document is in PDF, it requires preparation before it is useful for CAT (Computer Assisted Translation) tools, which almost all translators use. Charts and special formatting add time after translation as they often only can be arranged after translation especially if one language is significantly wordier than another. In additional documents, more technical document require research as a professional translator must be 100% sure that the term is correct, a time-consuming process even for those who are expert at searches. For larger projects, QA can take no less time than the translation as it is impossible to properly reread 10,000 words without frequent breaks. Finally, every translation, including the most technical ones, reflects the language and expertise of the translator, i.e., no translations are identical. As such, a higher price may result in greater value if the result is more effective. So, unlike potatoes, the price comparison by itself is meaningless.

Project-based bids are fundamentally good for translators. Obviously, the quoted price better reflects the total effort of the translators as it includes all the factors specific to that project. The psychological effect of translators setting rates according to their reality is greater productivity as they “own” the project. Furthermore, overall quotes allow for invisible and seamless rate increases over the years, solving the issue of how to raise rates with long-term customers that act as if inflation does not exist. An additional benefit is the ability to create win-win situations for unpleasant work. All freelancers have certain type of works that they find very tedious and/or unpleasant. By factoring this element into the price, as plumbers do with sewer work, the service provider either avoids the project or is highly paid, both positive outcomes. Finally, it is not necessary to explain source-word and target word to customers, saving countless emails and avoiding unpleasant misunderstandings. Thus, translators gain in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, flexibility and clarity.

LSPs (Language Service Providers) all benefit in terms of price clarity and reliability.  In per-word cost quotes, it is necessary to assess the word count to calculate the price for the end customer. In relations with the translator, the parties must factor in repetition rates, the percentage of the full rate paid for partial or total repetitions of the same sentence. By contrast, in a project-based quote, after review of the document, the translator provides a single quote, which provide a basis for the agency quote, a much simpler process. Furthermore, translators meet deadline more often as they have carefully reviewed the document in order to prepare the quote. While it may delay the LSP quoting process, that period of time is minimal. LSPs also gain from this pricing method.

In all cases, the end customer finds project-based quotes much simpler. Most end-customers do not understand industry jargin. They do not know that a page is 250 words, not all the words on a A4 piece of paper nor can they grasp why there may be a difference, sometimes up to 50%, between the number of words in the source and target. They simply want to know how much the job will cost. One sentence with a cost and deadline answers their main question in short work. That is the art of keeping it simple.

There are at least two ways to calculate the total amount of a translation project. It is possible to multiply the total number of words by the base rate and then add or subtract elements that affect the total time. For example, on a project of 1000 words at rate of .10 USD per word, the base rate is 100 USD but the quote will be higher if the document is in PDF form and requires another hour of work. Another method, especially relevant for a multitask project, is estimating the total time for each section or task, totalling the amount,  multiplying it by the hourly rate and adding a “fudge” factor to reflect unpleasant surprises. Of course, the amounts are adjusted for local factors, i.e., how much the paying party is willing and able to pay and to what degree the project is desirable. In either case, the final offer should reflect the total time that will be invested and cost of living of the translator.

I have been using project-based pricing for four years now with both end-customers and translations agencies. The former finds it much simpler while the latter accepted it rather quickly. I am never automatically out of the consideration for a project due to my price since they first need to query me nor do I turn myself into a “potato”. I admit to have miscalculated a few quotes but the overquotes have easily compensated for the underquotes. Using project-based quotes, I “own” my prices while simplifying life for others. Tradition makes for a good song but poor business practice.

*Picture captions allow the blind to enjoy your posts. 

Everybody and his third cousin

 

[Crowd*]

If you got it, flaunt it.  The English language simply has an incredible number of words. Almost every concept is covered by a multitude of options, each word with its own nuances and register. Grasping and recalling each option is probably the most difficult challenge for non-natives, not the English grammar system. As an example of the generosity of English is the universal concept of people, derived from a Latin-based word that William the Conqueror brought to English with his French-speaking Vikings in 1066. Since then, matters have become much more complicated.

For the generalists, it is possible to emphasize the parts of the whole. Individuals or persons, refer to the mass but personalize it. On the other hand, if there is a need to zoom out, humanity or mankind, not to mention the whole world, blurs individual distinction. Once the term men was understood to include everybody, sort of. To clarify, the American Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, states that “All men are created equal”, an extremely radical idea in its time whether or not it included women and blacks. Today, it is necessary to say men and women. That brings up the issue whether the latter phrase necessarily includes children as the phrase men, women and children is used in certain contexts. Admittedly, people is so much simpler.

Researchers, being researchers, have their own terminology. Paleontologists refer to homo sapiens while sociologists choose mankind or the human race, not to mention society. Psychologists like human beings or so they say. Politicians, who finance quite a bit of research, must please their public but don’t like the populace, which does not understand them. Romans and American Republicans love their citizens and prefer to ignore the existence of those who do not have that status. There is no room for people in these worlds.

The tribal approach can be practical. The peoples of the earth include all national and ethnic groups while the use of the term human races takes a more colored approach. By contrast, the whole population of a country includes everybody (even those that cannot vote) while the inhabitants of the planet also include that are not listed on any computer file. There are still a few of those, mainly in isolated tribes.

So, people, it is not hard to avoid repetition in English. Everybody and his third cousin can do it, granted not always correctly or with the proper register. Live and learn, especially with language. As Porky Pig said so eloquently, “that’s all, folks!”

*Label captions to allow access to the blind. Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/8385-8385/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2152653">Reimund Bertrams</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=2152653">Pixabay</a>

Literary refusal in translation

 

[Man writing*]

One of the great pleasures of being a freelancer, its greatest perhaps, is the right to say “no”. Employees cannot refuse a normal task without risking the loss of their entire livelihood. Entrepreneurs have the privilege on passing on work that we would rather not do for whatever reason. Of course, I do not recommend blunt refusals as it creates as it creates more problems than it solves. Better ways exist as I have written in the past. Still, many a time I have received “inappropriate offers” and thought to myself or said out loud in the privacy of my office “No!”

To my surprise and fascination, I learned from an article in the Canard Enchainė of July 8, 2020 that Herman Melville, in a short story in 1853 entitled Bartleby, the Scrivener:A Story of Wall-street, had already published an extremely elegant way to refuse requests. Readers may be confused for several reasons. Canard is known for its articles, which is why I read it, but not necessarily regarding ideal business practices unless by negative example. Secondly, I had no idea that Melville wrote short stories as he is famous for endless novels, most famously Moby Dick. To be fair, he was paid by the word, like Dickens, rendering the writing of short stories even less probable. I was indeed amazed that the response formulated by Melville some 170 years earlier in a completely different word both technologically and industrially.

To explain, in this story, a recently-hired clerk at a stock exchange office works day and night, literally, copying legal texts. His boss is impressed with his skill and even temper, unlike his three other clerks. However, on his third day of work, the boss politely asks Mr. Bartleby to come over and read a text out loud so they can assure the accuracy of the copying. The clerk’s unlikely response to this request is “I would prefer not to”. He responds to all requests to do anything besides copying in the same manner, including the request to resign and leave the office. The beauty of the British English construction is its clear indirectness. On the one hand, it is fully understood that the clerk will not get up from his desk. On the other hand, the refusal is subtle and almost respectful. The boss, like the reader, find it hard to be angry at the clerk in spite of his behavior.

The Canard article mentioned that French has seven translations of the story and its famed phrase. The latest one, proposed by Noёlle de Chambrun and Tandrėde Ramonet, is j’aimerais autant pas. Previously, translators wrote Je préfėrais ne pas, je préfėrais and j’aimerais mieux pas. The autant in the new translation means as much or so much. This element formally does not appear in the original English but, in my opinion, expresses its slipperiness. It flows well in French, a notoriously ambiguous language.

For curiosity’s sakes, I checked the translation in Russian and Hebrew. In the Russian version translated by Maria Federova Loria in 1987, the clerk’s answer is Я бы предпочел отказаться [ya bae predpochel otkazatza] , which literally means I would prefer to forego. Note that Russian version includes a verb while the English one is elliptical. The Hebrew version, translated by Dafna Levi reads הייתי מעדיף שלא [haiti ma’adif shello], is word for word like the English. I have to admit that the Hebrew phrase that entered my mind was הלוואי שכן [halavai sheken], which literally means it would be wonderful if I could. I admit this comes from the opposite direction but somehow also expresses the indirect but clear refusal.

It is amazing how decisive passive resistance can be not just in great political movements but also small human dramas. As a technical translator, I work on nuts and bolts, occasionally literally, but the art and beauty of literary translation fascinates me due the challenges of transmitting the subtleties of simple but powerful words from one language to another. I am so inspired that I plan, one day, on an appropriate occasion of course, to write the following words to a project manager: I would rather not to. The question is how the project manager will take it.

*Add caption to picture for the benefit of the blind. Picture: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/Barbara-Iandolo-732060/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4134455">Barbara Iandolo</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=4134455">Pixabay</a>

Game of thrones – Special political traditions in France, Israel and the United States

 

[Throne*]

The art of translating goes beyond knowledge of language and encompasses comprehension of culture. A professional translator must know how the societies of the source language handle a given situation and translate the whole concept in such a way that the speaker of the target language can understand. For example, while the United States uses the common law system of law, France uses Droit publique, thus requiring the legal translator to understand the function of each court level in both systems in order to properly translate court documents. Similarly, while many democracies exist, fortunately, each has its own peculiarities. Thus, translators of political and journalistic materials must be familiar with the electoral processes in order to transmit them from one language to another. As an example, I will present a special, sometimes unique, aspect of the French, Israeli and American democratic processes.

[Bed]

2^nd tour or strange bedfellows - France has multiple political parties, with ever changing names. As a result, all French elections, from municipal to the presidential, are conducted into two rounds. To clarify, in the first round, any person, with or without party identification, may run for a public position but only the top two finishers appear in the ballot for the deuxieme tour. So, the deuxieme tour does not refer to the 1904 running of the Tour de France but instead to the second round of voting. This reduction to two candidates requires the losing local representatives and national parties to choose whether to remain neutral or recommend a vote for one of the two remaining candidates. Given the fluidity of modern French political alignment and the interaction between personal dislike and future ambition, the result is rather comical to an outside observer as personal and/or ideological enemies suddenly unite because they both despise or fear the challenger even more. The recently completed round of municipal elections in France provides numerous examples with a potpourri of local ideological alliances. Thus, the 2^nd tour exemplifies that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least for the moment.

[Bread and crumbs]

Remainders or waste not, want not – Israel also has a multiparty parliamentary system. In fact, Israel has never had a non-coalition government. Thus, the distribution of seats in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is of vital national interest. To determine the final result, the national election committee calculates the total number of actual, not only registered, voters and remove all votes for parties that did not meet the legal minimum for a seat, currently 3.25% of the total vote. The resulting number is divided by 120, the number of seats in the Knesset. For example, in the latest national election in March of 2020, each seat was equal to 37,943 voters. The interesting issue is what to do with the votes from 37,944 to 75,885. To avoid throwing them away, each party signs a heskem odefim, an agreement on how to distribute the remaining, unused votes, right before the election. The goal is to help the party closest to gaining one more seat, which may be the difference between being the government or opposition. The how and why of these agreements are for the politicians but the result is that the official results take up to three days so that some ballots can be checked and the heskem odefim can be applied. Every little vote counts.

[Jigsaw puzzle]

Gerrymandering or scribbly lines – The United States is a federal government and has effectively two parties. Individual elections are much simpler, i.e. the winner of hte one and only election is the person getting the most votes. However, the U.S. Constitution, written with its typical ambiguity, creates a unique process for defining the voting district for a member of the House of Representatives, which is legislatively limited to 435 members. Article 1 of the Constitution merely states that a representative must be elected every two years by a district with no more than 30,000 registered voters. Having observed the dead borough phenomenon in the UK, i.e., districts where most of the voters has long died, the Congress allows the redistricting every change of decade after the census. Now the fun begins. Whichever party controls the legislative branch in a state gets to redraw the map, guided only by the Constitutional limit of equal districts of no more than 30,000 voters. The considerations are not administrative but electoral. To clarify, as a rule, most minorities tend to vote Democrat while many white suburban voters tend to vote Republican, depending on the local politics. So, if a party wishes to diminish the impact of a concentrated voting bloc, it divides up its voters among several districts while the opposite is true if the goal is to maximize electoral impact. The district lines do not have to resemble any known geometric shape. In recent years, the courts have started to reject extreme gerrymandering but it is clear that one of the strengths of the Republican Party has been its control of many of the state legislatures for several decades. The devil is in the details, even in politics.

Seen from the outside, these traditions are curious, even amusing, a bit like reading or viewing the Game of Thrones.  However, from the inside, they have a huge impact on the residents of the country. A customer requiring translation of an economic or political text must make sure that the translator understands the concept and can transmit it to the target audience. Unlike the series, this game is real.

*Caption pictures to allow full access to the blind. All images via Pixabay.

Back to the legal future

 

                                                                 [Polar bear on iceberg*]

On Friday, 24 July 2020, I participated in the virtual 7^th Annual Access to Justice Conference organized by the Concord Law School in Los Angeles. It was an eye-opening experience for me in terms of the observing the extent of change in the legal services profession over 35 years. To clarify, I attended the University of Oregon School of Law in 1985, studying one year and finishing in good standing. I chose not to continue my studies as I did not see my future in any of the traditional specializations provided by the University but later became a legal translator, thus applying that knowledge. Notwithstanding my decision, I have been always attracted by the law and its goals. As I listened to the presentations and heard the practicing attorneys, I understood that today I would happily become a lawyer.

The first major eye-opener was the variety of business options available to new and experienced attorneys. Just as freelancing and cooperatives were underground in the general business world back then, it was especially true for law.  Law students assumed that the way to success was to work incredible hours at low pay for many years at an established firm so that one day they could become a partner and own a Porsche. If those conditions or results were not personally relevant, the person had no future in the profession. Those rebels who wished to strive for social justice were smiled upon and had their illusions quickly corrected. At this conference, established attorneys talked about incubators, cooperatives, freelancing and small independent firms as viable professional options. These options probably existed then but they not only have broken the surface but have now made a mark on it.

Another major change in approach I noticed was the destruction of the barrier between law and business management. When I studied law, there may have been one course on managing a legal business and its components. In other words, fresh lawyers were completely ignorant of the most basic tasks of billing, customer relations and business planning. It is no wonder the vast majority did not consider going out on their own. The conference showed that in today’s legal world, knowledge of billing options and price scaling are no less important than tort law for success. On the marketing side, the discussions of understanding customer needs and wants would be equally at home at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (or the Leicester University Business school, where I got my MBA). Today’s lawyers are much better prepared for real life.

The greatest pleasure I received from the conference was in regards to the enthusiasm, not idealism, of both more and less experienced attorneys to attain justice. The keynote speaker, Jack Newton, used the allusion of an iceberg to describe the mass of people without access to legal services and its significance for social justice and professional success. In other words, he emphasized that it was for the mutual good of both clients and attorneys to make law available to the large mass, more than 60% of the public, that cannot afford legal services and are ignored by traditional law services. In the presentations that followed, speakers detailed how to attain this dual benefit, public and personal, and help the people really in need. It is possible to make protecting people’s rights a full-time profession.

As I turned off my computer, I could not but help feel a bit of pain for not having taken that route although I know it was the right decision at the time. For some, the motivation to become a lawyer - to work hard to complete law school, pass the bar and learn the ropes – is the passion for justice. It is clear today that that passion is no longer mere idealism but an attainable dream. With all the current economic problems and social problems, attorneys can help create a better society in the present and future.

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