Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!
Greetings, Training for Translators readers! I hope you’re all enjoying the change of seasons in your various corners of the world (although it’s still snowing here in Colorado!!). Here’s what’s happening this week:
Upcoming class for Spanish interpreters
- On Wednesday, April 30, guest instructor Carola Lehmacher teaches a two-hour master class on Preparing for the oral component of the U.S. Federal court interpreter certification exam. This class is for anyone planning on or contemplating taking the Federal oral exam, and will help you understand what it takes to pass the exam and how to prepare a study plan.
This week’s topic: a lightning round of reader questions!
In the past few months, I’ve received a bunch of great questions from newsletter readers and from students in my classes (if you have a question you’d like me to answer in a future newsletter, just drop it in the comments and I’ll put it on the list!). Here we go!
Question: Can you talk about translation speed? How many words or pages should a translator be expected to translate in a day, and about how many words are on a standard page?
My answer: You’ve got a couple of questions here: how fast do clients expect you to translate, and how fast do most translators actually translate? Let’s break it down. If you work for agencies, they often expect 2,000–3,000 words a day of “pure” translation (not from an MT draft), so the key is how long it takes you to reach that output. The idea of a standard page being 200–250 words likely comes from the days of double-spaced type; today, a full page of typed text is more like 500 words.
Some in-house employers set lower expectations—translators in the UN system, for example, are often said to average five pages a day, with a page considered 250 words. That’s about half what a freelancer might produce, likely because in-house translators attend meetings and handle other tasks.
In my experience, the “slower” translators I know—who are often excellent and thorough—produce around 250 words per hour. On the high end, some translators (with tech help or just speed) hit 900 words an hour. I average about 500 finished words an hour, including proofreading, and I’d say 400–600 is typical.
Question: How to handle feedback from a client’s in-house editor that is partially helpful and partially unhelpful, even introducing errors into the translation?
My answer: This has happened to me too, and it’s tricky. On the one hand, how often do all of us complain about clients who seem to not even read the translation, much less send any feedback? At least this client took the time to have your translation edited. On the other hand, these kinds of “edits” (for me, often coming from in-house bilingual staff who know the entity’s programs very well but aren’t native English speakers) can be really difficult to handle, both in practical terms (now you’re correcting the corrections), and emotionally (the client butchered your work!). I would:
- Thank the client for this thorough review. “Thank you so much for taking the time to have my translation reviewed so thoroughly.”
- Point out what the editor did well. “It’s always a huge help to get corrections and suggestions from someone who knows your programs inside and out.”
- When you address the introduced errors, don’t make judgments (“This person clearly isn’t a native English speaker”), make observations. “The editor did introduce some errors into the translation.”
The touchy part is what happens next. Do you charge the client to correct the corrections? My usual M.O. is to do whatever it takes to create a finished translation that the client is happy with, and then (after I’ve submitted that project) to set different parameters for the next project. That might involve charging them to review the edits, or it might involve the in-house editor commenting only on in-house issues (their style sheet, their program-specific terms) and my own proofreader doing the final read-through, or something else. But personally I would address that after you’ve wrapped up this project, assuming you want to keep working with this client.
Question: Several people asked about non-compete agreements with agencies. We all know that you should never circumvent an agency and work directly with their end clients. But what about grey areas? What if a different department of the end client contacts you? What if you’re interpreting for a deposition and someone from the opposing law firm asks for your contact information?
My answer: I place a lot of value on my relationships with my agency clients. A good agency should allow you to feel like you have a “regular job,” (with very little administrative overhead) but where you set the hours, and to some extent, the rates. That’s worth a lot. For that reason, I am very, very cautious about anything that could be remotely perceived as poaching. If a different department of the end client contacts me, I tell them to go through the agency. If the opposing law firm wants my contact information, I tell them to go through the agency. My rationale is that I never would have made that contact without the agency, so I’m going to refer all of that work to them. It’s also worth asking if any of your agency clients pay referral fees for these kinds of things!
OK, that’s three interesting topics for this time! If you have a question you want me to consider for a future reader questions newsletter, just add it in the comments!
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