Japanese-English rate Thread poster: Irena Dukoska Kjupev
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Hi everyone,
I just want to share with you a job proposal.
I received mail yesterday from a very big company asking to translate 1 page Japanese to English for 0.025 per target word!!!
How far can this go??
In my opinion this is very offensive offer !!! What kind of quality can they have for that rate? MT maybe???
Does anyone accept this rate?
Would You be willing to do the job for this rate?
Can't ... See more Hi everyone,
I just want to share with you a job proposal.
I received mail yesterday from a very big company asking to translate 1 page Japanese to English for 0.025 per target word!!!
How far can this go??
In my opinion this is very offensive offer !!! What kind of quality can they have for that rate? MT maybe???
Does anyone accept this rate?
Would You be willing to do the job for this rate?
Can't we just give a minimum rate and make them not make such a hilarious offers??
..........................just shocked and confused.......
I wish you all a great day!!! ▲ Collapse
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Irena Dukoska wrote:
I received mail yesterday from a very big company asking to translate 1 page Japanese to English for 0.025 per target word!!!
After a few bad experiences, I just hit "Delete" when I come across a client who wants to pay per target word. They're either cheap or ignorant or both.
| | | | conejo 
United States
Local time: 10:04
Japanese to English
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TransAfrique wrote:
After a few bad experiences, I just hit "Delete" when I come across a client who wants to pay per target word. They're either cheap or ignorant or both.
As long as the rate is good [which it isn't in this case], paying per target word in itself is not ignorant. Many clients do this or are willing to do this.
| | | | conejo
United States
Local time: 10:04
Japanese to English
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| Not for that price | Mar 26, 2012 |
Irena Dukoska wrote:
I received mail yesterday from a very big company asking to translate 1 page Japanese to English for 0.025 per target word!!!
Does anyone accept this rate?
Would You be willing to do the job for this rate?
Can't we just give a minimum rate and make them not make such a hilarious offers??
No, I would never accept a job for that price. I have even gotten emails asking for $0.01 per English word. I think that in some countries with lower costs of living, like China or India, this rate level may not actually be that bad. (Although I am not sure on this point--maybe someone in China or India will respond.)
Usually I just delete the emails when I get asked that. Or I just tell them the rate is too low.
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| My personal experience only | Mar 26, 2012 |
conejo wrote:
As long as the rate is good [which it isn't in this case], paying per target word in itself is not ignorant. Many clients do this or are willing to do this.
While correlation is not causation, I've yet to meet the client for whom "give me a rate per target word" was not a coded message saying "Slash your rates for me."
| | | | Shannon Morales
United States
Local time: 10:04
Member (2005)
Japanese to English
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| Target rate / Too Low! | Mar 26, 2012 |
To TransAfrique: I've had plenty of clients over the years who have paid target word rates, and it's never been a problem.
As for the crazy low rate this company offered, I agree it IS insulting. I would just delete/ignore or, if I had a free moment, send a quick reply telling them their rate is shockingly low and if that is all they can pay, they should consider machine translation. I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that rate is too low for a human translator in ANY part o... See more To TransAfrique: I've had plenty of clients over the years who have paid target word rates, and it's never been a problem.
As for the crazy low rate this company offered, I agree it IS insulting. I would just delete/ignore or, if I had a free moment, send a quick reply telling them their rate is shockingly low and if that is all they can pay, they should consider machine translation. I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that rate is too low for a human translator in ANY part of the world! ▲ Collapse
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replied and tell them the rate is too low. They never replied to my mail!
My point is,no matter if price is per target word or per page-still is too low.
Let's think about the same offer pricing the page 15$. Is the same thing.
Receiving this type of offers is just annoying!
I don't think that costumer actually pay so low price for translation.
It is obvious what agencies are doing with us ... See more replied and tell them the rate is too low. They never replied to my mail!
My point is,no matter if price is per target word or per page-still is too low.
Let's think about the same offer pricing the page 15$. Is the same thing.
Receiving this type of offers is just annoying!
I don't think that costumer actually pay so low price for translation.
It is obvious what agencies are doing with us ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dung Bui
Japan
Local time: 00:04
Japanese to Vietnamese
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| It's so cheap but.... | May 25, 2012 |
It's so cheap if you live in Japan or the same country. But if you live in the third country, it's quite acceptable price!!! At least for that country!!! I wonder which price is acceptable?
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| Target language | May 30, 2012 |
My fee is always per target language word (in this case finished English).
I don't see anything wrong in this practice.
As for ridiculously low price such as your case, I simply ignore the email inquiry.
| | | | Harunari (X)
| Isn't it ''per japanese letter'' ? | Jun 13, 2012 |
I'm a newcomer for translation field , but I suggest you to reconfirm to that company
if it is ''per English word'' or '' per a japanese letter''.
They could've made a mistake to write ''target'' in stead of ''source''. Impossible? Could be.
| | | | Ravi Kumar
India
Local time: 20:34
Japanese to English
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| Rates based on Japanese source word | Aug 24, 2012 |
humbird wrote:
My fee is always per target language word (in this case finished English).
I don't see anything wrong in this practice.
As for ridiculously low price such as your case, I simply ignore the email inquiry.
I agree as rates based on Japanese source word may be unfair in case of documents such IT related documents with a large percentage of Katakana words. For example, "インド" in MS-Word is shown as 3 source characters where as in English it will be considered as single word "India". In case of 10 yen per source character then the cost would 30 yen for a single english word.
| | | | | It all evens out in the pig picture | Aug 25, 2012 |
ravi kumar wrote:
I agree as rates based on Japanese source word may be unfair in case of documents such IT related documents with a large percentage of Katakana words. For example, "インド" in MS-Word is shown as 3 source characters where as in English it will be considered as single word "India". In case of 10 yen per source character then the cost would 30 yen for a single english word.
It is true, that katakana words may have more than 2-3 characters and may end up as one word in English. However, if you think about it, Japanese is a compact language, and in many cases more then one English word is necessary to express what can be written with 2-3 characters. You are right, in the case of certain fields with a lot of foreign words, katakana can be more than average, but than again, there are fields where very compact language is used (legal language, patents, medical texts, some chemistry texts could be very compact, too, and surprisingly political journalism, too). It tends to even out, though, at least within a field that a translator specializes in. Therefore, everybody can figure out a good ratio between source characters and target words that works for the types of text he/she usually works with.
We had several forum threads about it in the past, and as far as I remember, the general consensus was 2.5, which means on average, 2.5 source characters would turn into 1 English word (A 250-character long Japanese text would end up being 100 English words.) So, if your per source character rate is 10 yen, that is equivalent of approx. 25 yen per target English word. In some specialties the ratio is closer to 2, in some, it is closer to 3.
I can charge either way, I have my rates set to work either way, in fact, if the source is a scanned PDF, than I pretty much have to change by the word count of the target text.
It is just that usually clients prefer to know up front, how much they will have to pay. That is true for the end client, and consequently for the agency, too.
If the payment is based on the source text, then there is no incentive to be overly verbose in the translation. If the payment is based on the target text, then all kinds of problems could arise, for example the client may accuse the translator of being too wordy (which may be true or not), and can try and reduce the payment by editing the text to be shorter, etc. The whole situation could be a mess. (There were forum posts about such cases in the past, too, where the agency wanted to pay the translator based on the text that was heavily edited by their editor, making the word count less.)
So, in general, it is best to agree on the price up front, and if you base it on the source text, the total is clear right away, there would be no surprises at the end to anybody. The client can agree to it or not. In my mind, fair is when the translator is compensated for his/her total time spent on the translation. We can break it down to units of source character, or target word, or hour, or breaths taken, or strands of hair lost in the process, or whatever unit, in the end, it is the total that matters.
Katalin
[Edited at 2012-08-25 02:32 GMT]
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