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10400 words in 24 hours
Thread poster: Nicole Coati
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:52
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Spanish into German? Very doubtful Jul 7, 2017

Nicole Coati wrote:
I have been contacted with a job offer of 10.400 words and the deadline is the following day (24 hours). It's a medical document. I replied that this turnaround is not feasible for me and the reply was "yes, it is."

I do not translate into German, but translate from German daily. Personally, I think that, unless you are very acquainted with the subject matter, have excellent glossaries and termbases, are a fast typer and a fast thinker, it would be quite a challenge. While not impossible, it would be risky work that could bring about an unhappy end client and a lot of lost time in reworks.

What this feels for me is that the outsourcer will want to pay very little for the job "because it is a lot of money for a 24-hour job". It is best to wave them goodbye.

BTW: Nice scarf!

[Edited at 2017-07-07 14:45 GMT]


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:52
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Scholastics Jul 7, 2017

Walter Landesman wrote:
10,000 words in 24 hours? If you look for quality, accuracy, no grammar issues, that's not possible at all.

Contra facta non valent argumenta. Several colleagues here report that they have done it, and I have trust in the quality of their work, then it cannot be argued that it is possible.


 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:52
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Red flag Jul 7, 2017

Nicole Coati wrote:
I replied that this turnaround is not feasible for me and the reply was "yes, it is."

That response would be an immediate red flag for me. I have several times in the past translated 8,000 characters a day, without MT or even much help from CAT tools, but it is certainly not something I would do as a matter of course.

Only I can decide whether a particular job is feasible, and I certainly would not accept the client telling me what I am or am not capable of. More to the point, no professional client would think of pushing one of their freelancers like this. Avoid.

Dan


 
Nicole Coati
Nicole Coati  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:52
Spanish to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Thank you indeed! Jul 7, 2017

Dear all,

Thank you very much indeed for so many reassuring replies (I cannot comment on financial documents as I translate life science exclusively). I have to say I was quite puzzled by the reply I received from the agency ("Yes, it is!"), which I also find rude and disrespectful. It's not the first time I work with this (American) agency and generally they have hefty timelines but this one was far beyond anything I have ever seen before.

I also agree with a turnaroun
... See more
Dear all,

Thank you very much indeed for so many reassuring replies (I cannot comment on financial documents as I translate life science exclusively). I have to say I was quite puzzled by the reply I received from the agency ("Yes, it is!"), which I also find rude and disrespectful. It's not the first time I work with this (American) agency and generally they have hefty timelines but this one was far beyond anything I have ever seen before.

I also agree with a turnaround of 1800-2500 words per day (final, proofread quality) depending on the technicality of the document. I have translated medical marketing folders in no time and spent hours on one sentence of an SPC ( I am not a newbie

Really, thanks for your support. The nature of this business, where it's mostly just the translator and the computer, sometimes makes me doubt things that should be no question at all.

Have a lovely evening, best regards,
Nicole.

PS: Thanks for the nice remark about my scarf
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Enrique Bjarne Strand Ferrer
Enrique Bjarne Strand Ferrer
Spain
Local time: 09:52
Member (2017)
English to Norwegian
+ ...
Extraordinary Jul 7, 2017

I would assume it is possible, but it would require an extraordinary effort (and off course extraordinary terms) and the client should be aware that the translation will be of poor quality.

I would transmit it to the client, wait for their offer and demand them to rescind any rights to complain on quality.

Off, course, assuming you have the opportunity to make the extraordinary effort overnight and are comfortable with delivering a poor quality medical translation....
... See more
I would assume it is possible, but it would require an extraordinary effort (and off course extraordinary terms) and the client should be aware that the translation will be of poor quality.

I would transmit it to the client, wait for their offer and demand them to rescind any rights to complain on quality.

Off, course, assuming you have the opportunity to make the extraordinary effort overnight and are comfortable with delivering a poor quality medical translation.....





[Edited at 2017-07-07 15:08 GMT]
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gayd (X)
gayd (X)
newbie... Jul 7, 2017

in the translation community!

 
gayd (X)
gayd (X)
Other post Jul 7, 2017

Not long ago, someone has posted a message on this forum about Glassdoor. You should read it.

 
Nicole Coati
Nicole Coati  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:52
Spanish to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Glassdoor Jul 7, 2017

Hi David,

Thanks for the suggestion. I will have a look.

Best regards,
Nicole.


 
Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 09:52
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Manipulation tactic. Jul 7, 2017

"Yes, it is" is a cheap and dated manipulation tactic. Please don't fall for this. Use your reason, it's pretty self-explanatory as to why this is not possible to handle in 24 hours, providing we are talking about translation of professional standard.

 
Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 09:52
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Dictating 10400 words to a typist in 24 hours. Jul 7, 2017

enrfer wrote:

I would assume it is possible, but it would require an extraordinary effort (and off course extraordinary terms) and the client should be aware that the translation will be of poor quality.

I would transmit it to the client, wait for their offer and demand them to rescind any rights to complain on quality.

Off, course, assuming you have the opportunity to make the extraordinary effort overnight and are comfortable with delivering a poor quality medical translation.....





[Edited at 2017-07-07 15:08 GMT]


Dictating 10400 words to a typist in 24 hours would result in a text full of errors, or the typist fainting, or both. As the time passes by, the typist will become slower and slower. Now I don't have to remind anyone that translation is much more than typing.

[Edited at 2017-07-07 16:09 GMT]


 
Enrique Bjarne Strand Ferrer
Enrique Bjarne Strand Ferrer
Spain
Local time: 09:52
Member (2017)
English to Norwegian
+ ...
8 seconds per word Jul 7, 2017

Lingua 5B wrote:

Dictating 10400 words to a typist in 24 hours would result in a text full of errors, or the typist fainting, or both. As the time passes by, the typist will become slower and slower. Now I don't have to remind anyone that translation is much more than typing.

[Edited at 2017-07-07 16:09 GMT]


10400 words in 24 hours is more than 8 seconds per word. Assuming you would want to eat and have some rest, you are looking at 4-6 seconds per word. With CAT and coffee you might even have time to research a few terms!

What I am trying to say is that it is not an impossible task. It is doable if accept lower quality standards. But it would require very hard work and should be rewarded accordingly.

[Edited at 2017-07-07 17:56 GMT]


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 09:52
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Don't underestimate professional typists Jul 7, 2017

Lingua 5B wrote:
Dictating 10400 words to a typist in 24 hours would result in a text full of errors, or the typist fainting, or both.


Although real words don't have the same number of characters per word as typists' words, on average, if a typist claims that he can do e.g. 60 words per minute, then he can do at least 40-60 real words per minute anyway. A professional typist produces 99% error free output at rates of 60 to 90 to 120 to even 150 words per minute. This means that it would take a slow professional typist no more than 3-4 hours to type 10400 words.

What is your typing speed? You might be surprised.
* According this quick test, mine is about 60 words per minute, and I'm not a professional typist.
* And according to this quick test, I can type 50 words per minute, in a foreign language.
* And this quick test says I type 70 words per minute with 95% accuracy (note: the "accuracy" includes corrected mistakes, so 95% accuracy here means that 100% of the final text was accurately typed and I had used the back-space key 5% of the time).



[Edited at 2017-07-07 18:41 GMT]


 
Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 09:52
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
I have found an interesting article. Jul 7, 2017

enrfer wrote:

Lingua 5B wrote:

Dictating 10400 words to a typist in 24 hours would result in a text full of errors, or the typist fainting, or both. As the time passes by, the typist will become slower and slower. Now I don't have to remind anyone that translation is much more than typing.

[Edited at 2017-07-07 16:09 GMT]


10400 words in 24 hours is more than 8 seconds per word. Assuming you would want to eat and have some rest, you are looking at 4-6 seconds per word. With CAT and coffee you might even have time to research a few terms!

What I am trying to say is that it is not an impossible task. It is doable if accept lower quality standards. But it would require very hard work and should be rewarded accordingly.

[Edited at 2017-07-07 17:56 GMT]


Somebody asked on Quora: How long it will take to write 200 pages if my typing speed is 40 wpm?

An excerpt from one of the answers:

Factors which will cause you to take longer:

No one maintains peak test typing speed. I’ve seen an estimate of 100-wpm typists’ daily output breaking down to less than 20 wpm.

Therefore, in your scenario, with real-life interruptions, a dedicated 8-hour block could result in a total throughput of only 5 wpm. This would push your actual session time(s) to a total of 266 hours 40 minutes, which means that your original 33 hours now becomes 33 days.


Source: https://www.quora.com/How-long-it-will-take-to-write-200-pages-if-my-typing-speed-is-40-wpm


 
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
Germany
Local time: 09:52
English to German
In memoriam
Rudeness might be unintended Jul 7, 2017

I would not speculate much about the "rudeness" of the answer you got. They might not be native speakers and maybe it was not meant as a rude remark.
Apart from that, I don't see your problem here. You have been asked to do the virtually impossible. Say no and move on. I think we all have had similar strange proposals of sorts.


 
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei  Identity Verified
Ghana
Local time: 08:52
Japanese to English
To which I reply Jul 7, 2017

Nicole Coati wrote:
I have been contacted with a job offer of 10.400 words and the deadline is the following day (24 hours). It's a medical document. I replied that this turnaround is not feasible for me and the reply was "yes, it is."

I would write back, "Very well, but my fee for this job will be $10,400, payable in advance."
Them: "We can't pay that much!"
Me: "Yes, you can."


 
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