In the early days of Thoughts on Translation (March, 2008 to be exact), I wrote a post on charging by the word versus charging by the hour. For a long time, it was the most active post on my blog and it inspired some interesting and heated discussion. Get Rich Slowly’s post today is on hourly versus salaried jobs and it got me thinking about this issue again.
The translation industry complicates this issue in a couple of ways:
- We’re normally paid by the word, rather than by the hour
- For whatever reason, most translation agencies will pay much more per word than per hour (in relative terms, not just absolute terms)
- Most of us don’t rigorously track our output, so we don’t really know how much we make per hour
- We usually work from home, so the client has only a vague idea of how long a given job takes us
Confused yet?
My first job in the translation industry was as an FBI contract linguist; a job that pays by the hour. Looking back, I see some advantages and disadvantages. On the up side, there’s much less incentive to rush through a translation when you know that whether you produce 1,000 words an hour or 100 words an hour, you get paid the same amount. I think that a lot of translators use the per-word payment model as a rationale for doing a less than thorough job: why take an hour to research one term if you’re getting paid 15, 20 or even 50 cents for it? When you’re paid by the hour, you don’t have that egg timer full of pennies hanging over your head and you can take as long as the translation requires.
However, being paid by the hour removes the translator’s incentive to work more efficiently. In the comments on my original post, a few people pointed out that while there may be a fairly narrow range of per-word rates in our industry, experienced translators undoubtedly earn more than beginners (even if they charge the same amount per word) because they work much faster. Translators might be motivated to learn new software or to focus in a very specialized area because they know that their speed, and thus their income, will go up.
The confusing part of this is the disparity between the per-word and hourly rates that our industry will bear. For example, if a translator works with agencies, charges 15 cents per word and produces 500 finished words per hour, he/she is earning $75 an hour; and I think that both of those figures are realistic for experienced translators. But I have yet to hear of an agency that will pay $75 an hour for projects that are billed hourly; if I had to hazard a guess at the average agency rate (not a pricing recommendation, just my unscientific guess), I would say $35-$50 per hour is more common.
At an ATA conference years ago, I attended an excellent presentation on business practices by Jonathan Hine. His argument for charging by the hour for editing is that it’s a zero loss risk situation. Rather than taking the risk of receiving a poor translation and re-translating it for 4 cents a word, the editor can charge by the hour and be guaranteed of being compensated for all of the time that the edit takes. Maybe the reverse phenomenon is at work here; agencies would rather pay a higher per-word rate for translation, because then they know exactly how much the job will cost? Feel free to add your own thoughts on this!
Another area where this conflict surfaces is transcription. $6-7/audio minute seems to be a common rate for experienced linguists (foreign language audio transcribed directly to English). That makes about $400 for an hour of audio, which will typically contain about 6000 words. If you do the math, that less then 10 cents per word. But hey, Math does not always make sense anyway 🙂
“being paid by the hour removes the translator’s incentive to work more efficiently”
Freelancing is about self motivation and is not for everyone. Both parties get in to this loose relation for obvious benefits. If the translator does not see any incentives in translating faster, that’s his/her problem, and if one cannot self-remedy this problem, it is a good sign of a mismatch between his/her personality and freelancing.
I think per word makes the most sense for traditional translation. However as the services in our industry expand as a result of the different applications of translation, I think we will see more and more hourly charges (MT editing, localization QA testing etc.)
I’d rather be paid by the word than by the hour because, like the agencies, I know how much money I am getting per job and it’s up to me to be as productive and efficient as possible. Being productive can be achieved when I translate topics I am familiar with, sticking to my specialist subjects. If you know what you’re talking about, you can be quick. And I can always decide to venture slighlty (or a lot) out of my comfort zone, which implies more research and more time spent on a project.
We, as an agency are currently considering this very topic. Particularly because of a big shift of our work to post editing of MT. The only way we can see this working is if the editing is done in an environment we have built and control. Under these circumstances I think it could work for agencies and there will be a mechanism to incentivise the translator by placing the most work with the productive translators.
I always think in terms of hourly rate. Even when I provide a rate per word to the client, I always calculate what rate per hour it implies.
On another note, it’s been ten years, but I’m not much quicker than when I was fresh out of translation school. The knowledge I’ve gained means I can work at the same pace on certain specialised subjects as I would on a general text, but my general pace is pretty much the same that it was back then.
The agencies that I work for and that pay editing by the hour, also use a throughput rate to calculate how many words per hour their reviewers are supposed to review. So essentially they’re still paying by the word.
The issue that you are raising, about agencies not paying the hourly rate that you would make if you were paid by the word, is the very reason that I hardly ever take on work that is paid by the hour. From the very first day that I started out as a freelance translator, almost ten years ago, I have kept track of my ‘virtual’ hourly rate. This varies per job, obviously, but it gives me a very good idea of my average earnings per hour. And they are at least 3 times as high as the average rate per hour that agencies pay.
Another downside of paying by the hour is that experienced translators who translate more efficiently than starters are punished for working fast. They are much more productive, and do more work in the same time, but don’t get paid for it. Payment by the hour would therefore only be effective if good, experienced, productive translators were paid higher hourly rates.
I’m not sure if this is what Gavin wanted to imply in the above comment, but a major problem with hourly rates is that it creates some desire for supervision and a feeling of insecurity. I don’t want to be supervised by an agency in an environment they built. What if I work in their web system and then need to look up a word in my dictionary (“offline”)? My computer will be idle, so, does that mean I don’t get paid for the time? No, thanks. At the same time, I can absolutely relate to the client’s anxiety. I’m sure many of us have been there ourselves: you had to hire a lawyer or broker or any other professional who charges by the hour, and when you saw their invoice and their deliverables, there was a huge discrepancy. Well, at least I’ve been there and have been ripped off by a lawyer once. That’s why I always try to see my client’s perspective, and I avoid hourly rates whenever possible. And when my client says my rate per word is too high, I usually break it down for them and they’ll see that their desired rate would probably be less than what they’d pay their babysitter. Based on my experience, it’s easier to explain your rates and convince your clients if you charge by the word, not by the hour. So, I basically agree with your assumptions here. 🙂
If you get paid by the hour, and you get faster, you are in effect penalizing yourself.
I’ve moved to an hourly rate in the last year after coming up with my salary goals and figuring out what I needed to make hourly to reach them. As a consultant, I work with a day rate, so I figured why not as a translator. This implied investing in some time tracking tools, coming up with a good Excel sheet and taking the risk to underestimate jobs, but it’s been worth it. I actually manage my time better, since I know to earmark X amount of hours for job 1, and Y for job 2–and the time tracking software is great for keeping me in line. It’s still a challenge is to accurately estimate the time I’ll spend on a text. I don’t agree with John Bunch, since I don’t charge my client post-translation–we agree on a pre-translation price. But there still is a risk of penalizing myself, if I drastically underestimate the job.
Before anything else, I have a good look at the text and think about what aspects of it could make for more or less effort.
I always calculate a rate based on standard lines (1 line = 55 characters including spaces; commonly used unit in Europe) first.
Then I think about how many days the job will take. Of course, I have in mind roughly how much I should earn per day/per week. And so I see if that tallies up with the rate I calculated.
So I size up jobs both in terms of time and amount of text. When I have the right feeling both ways, the price is in the right ballpark.
With editing rather than translation, though, the amount of effort needed per unit of text varies hugely: this means that in principle, I need to use an hourly rate. Sometimes I make offers of, say, € 50 per hour up to 5 hours (and then work for 3.5 hours and charge accordingly). But I feel my way with a particular client until we find a level of editing intensity and price that they’re happy with. But since my editing is mostly of scientific manuscripts, and the German-speaking scientists mostly have a fairly consistent standard of English, by now I also have a ballpark figure per page in my mind.
I’ll often take an hour or more to prepare an offer for a 500-Euro job. I believe this investment pays off. I write detailed offers and people can see that I am taking the trouble to appreciate the individual communication task that they need the translation for.
I was recently offered a job by the hour but politely refused the terms of payment. I answered talking straight: I told them I don’t do hourly rates because I am too fast. Instead I made them a price for the whole project, and they accepted immediately. Keep in mind that you are the expert; you know how translation works and how people should pay for it.
I gave my thoughts on this issue in an ATA Chronicle article in February 2011, “How Much Per Word?” Essentially, I think we are all paid for our time. The word measurement is also about time. I think the free-lancer ought to have an hourly rate in mind, and therefore can have a shifting rate schedule, depending on the difficulty of the text. As for editing by the hour, I usually negotiate the number of hours ahead of time, rather than clocking myself. I try to get the number of hours that will give me my desired hourly rate, rather than settle for the miserly amount offered by agencies.
Good point Lawrence. We really are paid by time. When looking at a new job offer, I usually calculate how much I am going to earn per hour. You might accept a poorly paid job but find afterwards you are still being paid € 40 per hour, which means you really can’t complain!