| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7] > | 75,000 words in 15 working days? Thread poster: Beatriz Ramírez de Haro
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Nicole Schnell wrote: If you never find any other inquiries from regular clients in your mailbox that need to be answered, and if nobody else ever calls you up anyway. Also, if you have a generator in your backyard that will prevent you from power failures. Also if you happen to work in a language pair that doesn't expand the target text by 15-20%. Also, if you are some kind of bionic person or android who is immune to the common cold, headaches and upset stomachs. Oh, that's right - there is no time for meals.  Even if it might be "doable", I would never take the risk of breach of contract by delivering late. Murphy's Law... If I really get the urge to prove myself, I might go skydiving or something but I don't put my client's deadlines and the quality of my work at risk.
You seem to be confusing opinions with facts, and yourself with every translator out there.
The fact of the matter is that there are translators who can handle this sort of workload with no problem. A perfectly normal schedule of 8 hours a day, 5 days a could allow a really fast and hard-working translator to get this job done on time with an adequate amount of time to spare as a safety buffer - text permitting, of course. And I don't see why working on Saturdays or putting in 10 hours a couple of times would be so extraordinary. Stranger things have happened, and for lower goals than satisfying a client's wishes and earning a month's wages or more in two weeks.
It just takes good skills and a solid work ethic.
Numerous people have chimed in in this very thread saying they have done projects like this in schedules like this, so I don't see the point of coming in again to say it's impossible. It's obviously not, and it doesn't require superhuman feats.
I also don't get why some people immediately assume that those who work faster than them do so by working through the night and generally killing themselves, or by cutting corners and producing mediocre quality at best. Some people think, research and type faster than others and are generally more efficient, and/or work harder for longer. That doesn't make them superior, inferior, hateful or bionic, only faster.
[Edited at 2009-12-27 12:37 GMT]
| | | | Nicole Schnell 
United States
Local time: 06:52
English to German
+ ...
In memoriam | No confusion. Experience. | Dec 27, 2009 |
FarkasAndras wrote:
You seem to be confusing opinions with facts, and yourself with every translator out there.
The fact of the matter is that there are translators who can handle this sort of workload with no problem. A perfectly normal schedule of 8 hours a day, 5 days a could allow a really fast and hard-working translator to get this job done on time with an adequate amount of time to spare as a safety buffer - text permitting, of course. And I don't see why working on Saturdays or putting in 10 hours a couple of times would be so extraordinary. Stranger things have happened, and for lower goals than satisfying a client's wishes and earning a month's wages or more in two weeks.
It just takes good skills and a solid work ethic.
Numerous people have chimed in in this very thread saying they have done projects like this in schedules like this, so I don't see the point of coming in again to say it's impossible. It's obviously not, and it doesn't require superhuman feats.
I also don't get why some people immediately assume that those who work faster than them do so by working through the night and generally killing themselves, or by cutting corners and producing mediocre quality at best. Some people think, research and type faster than others and are generally more efficient, and/or work harder for longer. That doesn't make them superior, inferior, hateful or bionic, only faster.
[Edited at 2009-12-27 12:37 GMT]
I can speak from my personal experience only. Nobody ever, anywhere on this planet, should feel entitled to tell how much any other translator's output should amount to, and/or tell them that they are slow.
At times, my phone goes off every 30 minutes. It may be phone solicitors, co-workers or clients. YES, we DO have caller ID, in case you may ask. It is a disruption anyway. No, we do not have a secretary.
I also have to adjust my schedule to my business partners, and vice versa.
I also have bookkeeping to do.
In short: Dedicating myself and my undivided energy, attention and focus on one single job during the course of two weeks (!!) is out of the question. I am not a factory worker, and I do not and never will intend to be one.
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Having gone through the responses, I'd say that the yays have it.
FarkasAndras wrote:
I also don't get why some people immediately assume that those who work faster than them do so by working through the night and generally killing themselves, or by cutting corners and producing mediocre quality at best. Some people think, research and type faster than others and are generally more efficient, and/or work harder for longer. That doesn't make them superior, inferior, hateful or bionic, only faster.
[Edited at 2009-12-27 12:37 GMT]
Thank you for wording the point that I've been trying to make in the past three years. Also, delivering translations ahead of schedule or accepting tight deadlines doesn't necessarily mean that you are just a corporate minion or your clients b***h.
| | | | Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 06:52
English to German
+ ...
In memoriam | Ahead of schedule | Dec 27, 2009 |
Aleksandar Stanković wrote:
Having gone through the responses, I'd say that the yays have it.
Thank you for wording the point that I've been trying to make in the past three years. Also, delivering translations ahead of schedule or accepting tight deadlines doesn't necessarily mean that you are just a corporate minion or your clients b***h.
How are you planning on managing to be ahead on this one? That's exactly why I don't take on tasks like that anymore. Together with a brilliant team of the finest colleagues I managed a highly sophististicated and darn well-paid 150k words EU project in a similar time frame. I typed with elastic wrist bands and pillows in my back, and soothed my headache with an amount of Aspirin that would have replaced a meal. I held ice bags on my wrists because of the pain. Wonderful. Yayyy, the money was good. Then I was sick for a week. Nevermore. Should I ever encounter the irresistible urge to physically feel sore from work again, I go and clean stables.
Yay? Nay. Health comes first.
Edited for typo.
[Edited at 2009-12-27 19:51 GMT]
| | | | | Health does indeed prevail over money | Dec 28, 2009 |
Nicole Schnell wrote: Aleksandar Stanković wrote:
Having gone through the responses, I'd say that the yays have it.
Thank you for wording the point that I've been trying to make in the past three years. Also, delivering translations ahead of schedule or accepting tight deadlines doesn't necessarily mean that you are just a corporate minion or your clients b***h. How are you planning on managing to be ahead on this one? That's exactly why I don't take on tasks like that anymore. Together with a brilliant team of the finest colleagues I managed a highly sophististicated and darn well-paid 150k words EU project in a similar time frame. I typed with elastic wrist bands and pillows in my back, and soothed my headache with an amount of Aspirin that would have replaced a meal. I held ice bags on my wrists because of the pain. Wonderful. Yayyy, the money was good. Then I was sick for a week. Nevermore. Should I ever encounter the irresistible urge to physically feel sore from work again, I go and clean stables. Edited for typo. [Edited at 2009-12-27 19:51 GMT]
Yay? Nay. Health comes first.
Fully agree with that! And that was even a very well paid job, which it ought to be, so let alone jobs of similar volume offered at a rate of € 0.03 per word, or less....
[Edited at 2009-12-28 00:54 GMT]
| | | | blomguib (X)
Local time: 10:52
English to Flemish
+ ...
I have been following this thread with some mild form of amusement the last couple of days....To all these so-called yay's, I would like to point out that running 100 meters in 10 seconds, doesn't mean that you can run 10 km (or 100 times 100 meter) in 1000 seconds....moreover, I can assure you: whenever you try to pull off a stunt like this (75000 words in 15 days, or 5000 words a day) something eventually (and definitely before the end of these 15 days) will give way: physical health, mental h... See more I have been following this thread with some mild form of amusement the last couple of days....To all these so-called yay's, I would like to point out that running 100 meters in 10 seconds, doesn't mean that you can run 10 km (or 100 times 100 meter) in 1000 seconds....moreover, I can assure you: whenever you try to pull off a stunt like this (75000 words in 15 days, or 5000 words a day) something eventually (and definitely before the end of these 15 days) will give way: physical health, mental health, quality of your work, and probably all three of them....of course this implies that you have to be willing to judge your own work in a critical way, as well as your own state of mind....but as already mentioned: everybody is entitled to his or her opinion....as one of the optimists so elegantly put in one of the foregoing replies: there is a difference between facts and opinions, so let us stick to the facts; experience (facts) has taught me to be weary of people who claim (opinions) to be able to run 10 kilometers in 1000 seconds....as a matter of fact, I haven't seen or met any....at least not so far....
[Edited at 2009-12-28 01:55 GMT]
[Edited at 2009-12-28 02:00 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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| Should be double in 21 hours, 44 minutes and 17 seconds | Dec 28, 2009 |
Kevin Lossner wrote:
I suppose that under the right alignment of the stars and isolation in solitary confinement this crazy project might be doable by one translator.
Thanks to SDL, no need to hope for the right alignment of stars or solitary confinement, Kevin: we know exactly how long this project should take: 21 hours, 44 minutes and 17 seconds (21.738 hours): Since SDL claims a single translator, working with rados Studio 2009, completed a 34,501-word translation in 10 hours (i.e., at a rate of 3,450.1 words per hour), it therefore means that to complete a 75,000-word translation, the time required is exactly 21 hours, 44 minutes, and a few seconds.
[/sarcasm]
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 15:52
French to German
+ ...
| Sarcasm continued | Dec 28, 2009 |
Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:
Thanks to SDL, no need to hope for the right alignment of stars or solitary confinement, Kevin: we know exactly how long this project should take: 21 hours, 44 minutes and 17 seconds (21.738 hours) .../...
[/sarcasm]
Could we not say that it is also because of such ads that outsourcers dare to post jobs like the one discussed here?
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Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:
... to complete a 75,000-word translation, the time required is exactly 21 hours, 44 minutes, and a few seconds.
I had forgotten about the amazing productivity of SDL Trados Studio 2009. However, perhaps you missed out on the even greater productivity to be achieved with DVX during a toilet break or with MemoQ in your dreams?
In any case, it's obvious to me now that if the translator uses of of these three amazing software packages, two weeks is a very generous amount of time. In fact, the whole thing can be done in a day by an efficient translator, and there are even a few hours left for sleep. Two weeks is enough for 750,000 words. Why not more? As I mentioned above, we must protect our health by proper pacing and taking time off, so I wouldn't advise working on the weekends. But then younger translators with more brain cells to burn might see that differently....
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 15:52
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
*laughs* at the above comments.
By the way they present those products and software packages, it makes me think the people who designed them never had firsthand experience with translation. It's just too obvious. They created them based on presumptions and imagination.
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gianfranco
Brazil
Local time: 10:52
Member (2001)
English to Italian
+ ...
| My experiences | Dec 28, 2009 |
I have been able to translate, occasionally, close to 6000 words per day. It was an emergency situation, due to some software problems, that led me to rush a job to completion.
After another rush to finalize, polish and clean up as better as possible (at that point I was very tired), I delivered in time.
The client was happy with the result (they were informed about the emergency) but my brain was not. I needed a couple of days of rest before starting another job.
The t... See more I have been able to translate, occasionally, close to 6000 words per day. It was an emergency situation, due to some software problems, that led me to rush a job to completion.
After another rush to finalize, polish and clean up as better as possible (at that point I was very tired), I delivered in time.
The client was happy with the result (they were informed about the emergency) but my brain was not. I needed a couple of days of rest before starting another job.
The total productivity (2 days at 6000 and 2 days of almost complete rest) resulted in about 3000-3400 words per day, translated and properly reviewed, which is not much more than an intense but possible regular workload.
I would not dare to accept 75,000 words in 15 days because the quality would suffer, no matter what is the language pair, the subject or the TM tool used.
I have seen some colleagues claiming to do 6-7-8000 words per day or a regular basis, and I felt humbled by it. I felt slow and inadequate, but only until when I had a chance to see their output.
In particular, I remember one of these "fast" colleagues delivering a job of almost 20,000 words in 3 days. I was the reviewer. He still doesn't know about me because we were not cooperating. I was contracted directly by the same agency as a reviewer.
It was a translation from English into Italian, a technical subject (Information Technology) but not particularly difficult. In 20,000 words there were many inconsistencies, because the translator rushed through it without ever looking back, without thinking and without any consideration for terminology or style. There were also literally hundreds of typing mistakes, many untranslated words (forgotten in the process of typing, or simply skipped instead of looking for a good translation), truncated sentences, incorrect or missing prepositions, other assorted grammar mistakes, misunderstanding of the originals text, sentences that followed the English structure but very awkward to read for an Italian customer, and so on.
The whole gamut of translation mistakes was there, in quantities.
After that experience I simply do not believe that 6000 words per day can be delivered with good quality, unless the translator is capable of maintaining a constant level concentration for over 12 hours per day (400 words x 12), which is possible in a case of emergency, but not planned for 15 days in a row.
bye
Gianfranco
[Edited at 2009-12-28 11:53 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 15:52
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
| Presumptions | Dec 28, 2009 |
gianfranco wrote:
After that experience I simply do not believe that 6000 words per day can be delivered with good quality, unless the translator is capable of maintaining a constant level concentration for over 12 hours per day (400 words x 12), which is possible in a case of emergency, but not planned for 15 days in a row.
Yes, some people presume a human being can maintain a constant level of quality attention and concentration for 12 hrs a day for 15 days in a row. Those are, again, just presumptions by enthusiastic + unrealistic people, and not facts. Just like they presume reviewing a MT can speed up a translation process.
While they play with their presumptions, we actually have some real work to do.
| | | | | You can handle it! | Dec 28, 2009 |
I remember, I have faced such situations several times in my life. Ten years back from now when I was not computer savvy at all and I used to write my translation on paper and my typist used to type it, I send my sample to a client. To my surprise, I was told that board of directors has selected my sample as the best and I was awarded a job of 2, 50,000 words. The client’s expectation was an average delivery of 5,000 words per day. Instead of being happy, I was shocked! How to handle this situ... See more I remember, I have faced such situations several times in my life. Ten years back from now when I was not computer savvy at all and I used to write my translation on paper and my typist used to type it, I send my sample to a client. To my surprise, I was told that board of directors has selected my sample as the best and I was awarded a job of 2, 50,000 words. The client’s expectation was an average delivery of 5,000 words per day. Instead of being happy, I was shocked! How to handle this situation? My heart was sinking but I was not ready to leave this lucrative offer. Neither I had any CAT tool nor had I heard about it. I started translation and despite my best efforts, my output of the first day was hardly 2,500 words.
Next day, when my typist came I was feverish; even unable to move from the bed. I asked her whether she can type on computer if I dictate her. She told me that though she had never taken any dictation in her life but she will try. We started work and by the lunch break we had translated around 3000 words but she was tired. She told me that her brother’s typing speed is amazing. I requested, rather prayed her to call him at once. He was a young chap of 18 or so but when we started work, by the day end our total output was around 6000 words. I took a breath of relief.
Next day, I called both of them. I was dictating to her brother and asked her to check spellings of already translated materials. When her brother was tired, I asked him to check spellings and called her at computer seat. By the end of the day, I used to give final touch to translation. After a week when I submitted the first lot of the translation, my average output per day was 8 thousand words. When the project was finished, my average per day output of the entire period was 9,400 words and that too when I used to devote too much time in QA check (of course at night).
I had not imagined that I could do so!
I mean to say, identify yourself. Tap your potentialities and make best use of your resources and time. After all this work will be done by any one so why you can’t do? Life is not a bed of roses but a challenge. So, face it.
Remember: if you are able, prove yourself; if you are not, improve yourself!
Shashi Kant Singh
New Delhi. ▲ Collapse
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