Anybody that has ever asked for a quote for translation of documents
probably was rather surprised by the price range. The highest proposal can
easily be two times or more than the lowest one. The reasons for this high
variance include both personal situations and market conditions. For the
translation buyers, I present some ways to process and interpret the rates in
order to identify the most appropriate translator.
Both individual considerations and market realities affect specific
proposals. Since translators operate on the Internet, including email and
professional sites, geography does not play a major role in limiting potential
customers. Translators in Germany and India compete for the same buyers.
However, the local standard of living creates a minimum level of effective
income. In simple terms, translators have to know how many hours at a certain
rate they have to work to pay the rent and buy groceries. In that sense, low
and high are also relative terms in relation to the local standard of
living. Of course, many freelance translators choose low rates as the consider
it as a side-occupation, closer to a hobby than an occupation. On the other
spectrum, other linguists need to make a living from their work and demand commensurate
rates as they wish to live at a certain standard of living. On a more conscious
level, many translators deliberately choose a strategy, including low- or
high-end pricing. To explain, if income is defined volume multiplied by rate, some
prefer to increase volume by opting for lower rates while others opt for rate
by seeking deep-pocketed buyers. Experience level often influences this choice. With experience,
it is natural and healthy to demand higher rates while new translators are
hesitant or nervous about demanding upmarket rates.
All these issues are overshadowed by a major market force in
translation: nobody knows what the market rate is (see post). Freelancers and even some agencies rarely post translation rates. National laws may even
prevent it as some countries consider rate discussion as price fixing. Even
among colleagues, most translators considerate it “indelicate” to ask how much
the other is charging. This fog leaves everybody in the dark. Even with years
of experience, it is often unclear whether a given rate for a given job in a
given year is high or low. Thus, aside from individual choices, translation
quotes can vary greatly simply because nobody knows what the market rate is.
The issue is how should a translation buyer process the proposals and
identify the most appropriate. The usual policy of automatically eliminating
the highest and lowest is not relevant as the price does not necessarily
reflect quality or base cost for the service provider. It is important to keep in mind that agency quotes generally do not specify the actual cost of the translator. This rate, especially for the some of the larger agencies, can be rather low. The ideal buying process
is to first identify the level of specialized knowledge required for the
translation, the level of quality required for the actual use of the translated
material and the budget. For example, if an attorney needs translation of a
foreign court decision to submit to a local court, such a translation requires
thorough understanding of the concepts, must be completely accurate in terms of
content and should be stylistically appropriate for court use. Otherwise, the
translation is defective or useless. By contrast, staying in the legal field,
the translation of a series of legal documents for purposes of firm-level
identification of issues requires far less expertise and polishing. The message
must be clear. In the first case, it may be worthwhile choosing the high bid as
the resulting translation will be “less expensive” than that produced a translator
with less expertise. In the second case, even a translator with little
experience at a commensurate price but sufficient knowledge may be able to
provide a “good enough” result at a lower price. The key is to identify (as
much as possible) the most appropriate translators for a specific job and then
take the budget into account.
Like a statistician facing too much outlier data, translation buyers are
sometimes confused by the lack of any industry standard rate range. The key to
dealing with this variance is to focus on the solution, i.e., an appropriately
knowledgeable translator as demonstrated by previous exposure to the genre, formal or informal, regardless of the level of experience, for the
quality required of the job and then compare prices, obviously taking into
account budget limits. It is important to remember that, in translation, to a
certain degree, but only for a certain degree, you get what you pay for.
* Picture captions help the blind full access the Internet.
No comments:
Post a Comment