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There is a concept in law involving purchase of stolen goods stating in
some cases a buyer should have known that the price was so far below market
value that it was too good to be true. In the competitive businesses, including
translation, service companies and providers reach to achieve an edge over
their competitors by lowering prices and reducing deadlines. As I have already
discussed market price in a previous post, I will now focus on practical deadlines
for translation tasks, delving in the elements that determine the minimum work
time, to provide translator purchasers the information needed to know when a
translation agency or provider promises the impossible.
To clarify, I will be relating to human translation, not machine
translation (MT), which involves running a series of document through a program
linked to a neural memory or another memory system, often based on publicly
available existing translations. Depending on the languages involved and content, the results range from almost human text to completely confusing
garbage. As part of the process, a human editor then either does a simple
readthrough to ensure that the content is identical or a complete workover to also
refine the language, depending on the needs of the client. This translation is
relatively inexpensive and allows translations of large bodies of text in a
short period, albeit with sometimes mechanical language. For example, attorneys
can use this method to decide which foreign documents among a large discovery
require exact translation. The human time element in MT is the editing process.
Anybody interested in more information about MT should consult an expert.
By contrast, human translation involves, by definition, significant time
investment by a translator. To begin at almost the end, as far as I know, full
time technical translators can effectively produce a first draft at a
pace of 1500-4000 words per day on their own. Admittedly, a small percentage of
translators use voice-to-text technology such as Dragon Naturally Speaking and
achieve more. Granted, there are a few people with superhuman strength and concentration
can do more for a short period. However, expecting a proper translation beyond
that number is unreasonable. The actual amount is influenced by the actual
languages involved, format, content and purpose.
Languages differ, among other ways, in terms of word structure and
syntax. The more the two languages resemble each other, the faster it is to
translate them as the switch from language to language is smoother and requires
less effort. For example, Spanish and French have similar word building
strategy, roots and syntax, allowing the translator to use the source language
as a model for the target language, saving much mental energy and time. By
contrast, some languages apply different word-building strategies. For example,
German combines elements into a single noun, creating words that require multiple
words in English while Hebrew integrates the preposition and article (the) into
the noun, creating a meaningful difference in word counts, sometimes as much as
25% in German to English and 50% from Hebrew to English. If the roots are
different, the translators must invest more energy in identifying the correct
term. Most importantly, when languages use different sentence syntax
strategies, translators must read the entire sentence carefully and create an
equivalent in the target language. For example, English is a word-order
language, i.e., subject-verb-object, while Russian is a case language, i.e.,
the grammatical function of a word is marked by an ending, rendering word order a stylistic
element. As a result, translating from Russian to English involves constant
reordering of elements, a jigsaw puzzle, which is a very tiring process over
time. Thus, the combination of languages affects the practical amounts of words
that can be translated in a day.
Another important factor is the digital format of the document. Clearly,
Word documents without significant formatting element allow the fastest
translation. If the document is in Word and merely involves texts in paragraph
without additional elements, the translator merely translates the received
document, most efficiently in a Computer Aided Translation (CAT) tool such as
MemoQ or Trados. Repetitions, identical or almost identical sentences, can speed
up the process. However, a significant
percentage of documents are in .pdf or .jpeg formats, which require conversion
to Word to be able use a CAT tool. Depending on the complexity of the
formatting, quality of the image and type of font, the difficulty involved
converting those formats to Word range from quite easy to impossible. The lower
the quality of the resulting the Word document, the more time is required after
translation to restore the original formatting. In the worst cases, the translator
must manually create the form, a laborious process. This issue is aggravated
when working in language pairs involving reverse directions, e.g., Hebrew and
English as it often creates additional formatting issues before the document can
be sent. When calculating time to complete a translation, the translator buyer
should take this conversion time into account (as well as provide the best
possible source documents, in Word preferably). Sometimes, the translator
company or provide has templates, but that cannot be taken for granted. Thus,
non-Word formats add time to the process of translation.
The most important element is content. The simpler, more general the content,
the more words a translator can produce in a day. Clearly, people do tasks that
are routine and do not require extra thought work more efficiently. In technical
translation, the texts tend to be narrower and more specialized, requiring
extra effort and time to ensure quality. For example, legal pleadings use very
specific terms. Translators often invest significant time making sure that
their choice of words is correct as they are paid for being 100% sure, no less.
Clearly, experience and knowledge allow the translator to work quicker but, as
mistakes can have serious consequences in such field as law and medicine,
precision and caution are required, which dictates a certain pace. On the other
hand, if the document to be translated are standard forms, it is possible that
the translator has previously translated all the difficult terms and sentences,
accelerating the translation. In general, translation of specialized content
takes more time.
The purpose of a translation also has an effect. If a translator only
needs to faithfully reflect the content in the original, the translation task
is quite straightforward. However, if the translation client wants the
translation to create a persuasive document, a marketing document of some kind,
the translator has to carefully consider not only the content but also how to
express the same idea in a manner that would persuade readers of the target document.
This process requires time and energy, further reducing the maximum number of
words.
Having produced the translation, the translation agency or provider has
not finished the task. QA is an essential part of the task, as recognized by the
relevant ISO standards. Depending on the length and complexity of the document,
QA can take from 25% to 50% of the translation time. Clearly, longer documents
provide opportunities for more mistakes, requiring very careful checking, often
many times. As it is quite difficult to maintain the required concentration
without breaks, lengthier documents require proportionally greater time.
Furthermore, if the translator had to enter numbers manually as in a financial
report or cope with very complex sentence structure as in a contract, QA
becomes as significant in terms of time as the actual translation since poor
results can have serious consequences. Therefore, the translation buyer should
be aware of the QA time element.
Proper translation involves sufficient time, which can vary quite
significantly depending on the number of words, languages, format, content,
purpose and required level of QA, not to mention the specific translator. Even
allowing for this variance, there is a minimum time to produce a professional
translation. If a translation agency or provider promises a finished product of
5,000 words of technical translation in one day or 40,000 words in a week (yes,
I have seen such requests) by a single translator, buyer be aware. There are
impossible dreams, which can become the buyer’s avoidable nightmare.
* Picture captions help the blind fully access the Internet.
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