{"id":9952,"date":"2014-03-14T11:32:00","date_gmt":"2014-03-14T11:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musik.a-z-translation.com\/prices-and-costs\/"},"modified":"2020-01-03T11:35:43","modified_gmt":"2020-01-03T11:35:43","slug":"prices-and-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/prices-and-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Prices and costs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\nI came across an excellent article<\/a> on prices and costs over at Ferris Translations this week, and I wanted to share it with you:<\/i><\/p>\n

Dumping
\ncosts? What?!? <\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nPosted on February 10, 2014 by Michael Ferris <\/span><\/div>\n
\nWithin the language industry, like any industry, there
\nare also translators and language service providers that offer dumping prices.
\nWhat are dumping prices? These are prices that are considered
\n\u00abunfair\u00bb to the competition because they falsely misrepresent current
\npricing, thus causing overall price pressure on the market along with false
\nassumptions and expectations. It is my intention in this article to set things
\nright by informing you what translation pricing entails. Said in short, it is
\nby no means wrong to work with an agency offering cheap prices, you just have
\nto be aware of what you are buying and what is realistic.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nTo start, let’s examine why companies look for the
\ncheapest of the cheap.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nAlong with it being a sign of the times to increase
\nquality and productivity and lower costs, the effort behind translation work is
\noften misjudged. Furthermore, texts in general tend to be associated with very
\nlittle value due to the fact that there is much of it. Today’s world is getting
\nmore and more cluttered. Just look at how complex bureaucracy has become. A lot
\nof documentation is required to be translated into several different languages
\nas a matter of conformity and principle and not necessarily according to need.
\nWhen I think of how many hours a translator sits on a single translation or how
\nmuch a customer is required to pay for a \u00abhandbook of guideline
\nstructures\u00bb or \u00abstatistical project documentation\u00bb for example,
\njust to have it archived somewhere, never to be touched again. It is only
\nunderstandable that many companies nowadays are saying, \u00abI don’t care who
\ndoes it or how good it is, let’s just get it translated.\u00bb On the other
\nside of the spectrum, translations are often the first line of communication to
\nthe outside world, do a lot for corporate image, and should therefore be
\ntreated with the utmost care.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nIn order to understand how dumping prices are achieved
\nand what challenges are behind these methods, it is firstly important to define
\nthe roles required to perform translation services:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n1. The project manager acts as an interface between
\nthe customers and organizes the translation services. In some agencies this
\nrole is split between a salesman and a project manager in the background
\nmanaging the project itself.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n2. The translator performs the translation and a
\nquality control <\/span><\/div>\n
\n3. The proofreader(s) carry(ies) out quality assurance
\nto ensure that nothing of bad quality gets sent to the customer.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nHere are some of the techniques involved with
\nachieving the \u00abcheapest\u00bb translations possible:<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nMachine
\ntranslations <\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nContrary to belief, language service providers rarely
\nfeed text into a machine and send it onto the customer. What does often happen
\nentails the usage of an API (Application Programming Interface) to have
\nsegments of the translation translated automatically. These segments are
\nproofread and, in the case of error, corrected. 
\n<\/span>This method can be effective in finishing a translation quickly at a
\nreduced level of effort, although depending on the language combination, the
\ntopic at hand, and the ability of the \u00abproofreader\u00bb, such
\ntranslations are often riddled with errors. Part of this has to do with the
\nspeed at which the translation is done and carelessness on the one hand. On the
\nother hand, the aspect of performing re-work has to be taken into account. When
\na good translator translates, he\/she writes the text from scratch. If you have
\nto go through correcting texts that have been automatically generated, the room
\nfor error is increased to a great extent.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nIn this connection, I would like to present a parallel
\nin the construction industry. Would it be more efficient to build a house from
\nscratch, making sure that it is of 100% from the foundation up, or would it be
\nmore efficient to have robots build the house with a lot of structural faults
\nand try to fix it? Rework is always less efficient than doing something right
\nthe first time.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nCheap
\nTranslators <\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nDue to the price pressure on the translations
\nindustry, some agencies have found a solution to this by finding translators
\nlocated in low-cost countries. There are, for example, many Indian nationals
\nthat speak English very well for example asking a fraction of the cost a UK national
\nwould ask for. This strategy is associated with great challenges and risk. The
\nchallenge has to do with finding an experienced translator that works for these
\nprices among so many people that are trying to do exactly the same. I would
\nlike to draw a parallel to English to Chinese translations. There are millions
\nof Chinese translators that translate into this language combination and
\nincredibly inexpensive prices can be found, but only a small fraction actual
\ntranslate at a professional level. The good ones are normally not so
\ninexpensive. Since numerous corrections are required in order to assure the
\nbest quality, this is one reason why the market rate of Chinese translations at
\nagencies tends to be so high.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nOn another note, keep in mind that you do not need a
\nlicense to be a translator. Anyone with a computer who possesses knowledge of a
\nsecond language can be a translator, but that does not mean that they can
\ntranslate well or at a very professional level. Unfortunately, a large
\npercentage of the population has little understanding for this. This is why
\ngood agencies require documented proof of extensive experience, an education in
\ntranslation and even ask for test translations. Even then, constant evaluation
\nhas to be made in order to maintain a continuously high level of quality.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nLeaving out
\nthe proofreader <\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\nThe easiest way for your supplier to save on
\ntranslations costs is to leave out the proofreader or work with unqualified
\nproofreaders, assuming that the translation has already been checked by the
\ntranslator. In the case of common languages, to save costs, agencies often only
\nhave the target text read without looking at the source.<\/span><\/div>\n
\nThis may ensure that the translated language has no
\nerrors in it, but this does not ensure that no mistranslations have been made.<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nAll in all, it is not wrong to go with cheap
\ntranslations, but it is important to know what you are getting yourself into
\nand that there is a very high risk of errors being made. Let’s not forget the
\ngood old saying, \u00abYou get what you pay for.\u00bb<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across an excellent article on prices and costs over at Ferris Translations this week, and I wanted to share it with you: Dumping costs? What?!? Posted on February 10, 2014 by Michael Ferris Within the language industry, like any industry, there are also translators and language service providers that offer dumping prices. What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[524,90,525,790,791,792,208,793,166,683],"class_list":["post-9952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unkategorisiert","tag-business","tag-english","tag-freelancing","tag-independent","tag-practice","tag-pricing","tag-quality","tag-translating","tag-translation","tag-translator","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9952"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10577,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9952\/revisions\/10577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.a-z-translations.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}