Danish-English/English-Danish translation, proofreading, editing rates Thread poster: Lene Henriksen
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Just wondering how realistic the ProZ.com Community Rates are for English-Danish/Danish-English translation. Does anyone stick to these rates? Or do you charge more or less - if so, approximately how much? What are realistic rates for proofreading and editing? Thanks in advance for your input.
| | | | | I do not go below the average | Sep 14, 2021 |
Average rates and sample sizes for different language pairs here:
https://search.proz.com/employers/rates?source_lang=dan&target_lang=eng&disc_spec_id=¤cy=eur&submit=Submit
(Tools -> Proz.com Tools -> Community Rates)
I do not know about others, but I stay above the averages show... See more Average rates and sample sizes for different language pairs here:
https://search.proz.com/employers/rates?source_lang=dan&target_lang=eng&disc_spec_id=¤cy=eur&submit=Submit
(Tools -> Proz.com Tools -> Community Rates)
I do not know about others, but I stay above the averages shown for English to Danish.
In fact I translate mainly from Danish to English, or occasionally Norwegian or Swedish to English, almost exclusively for agencies. My rates vary considerably - I charge lower rates for long-standing regular clients who provide packages ready to open in Trados (and they get discounts for repetitions).
I have one client who pays a basic rate of DKK 0.80/word for everything, but increases it by 50% to 100% for rushed jobs. That rate is low for some jobs, but with Trados repetitions it works out comfortably above average for most. He is also a long-standing regular, but the others pay higher basic rates.
I charge 30-40% higher rates for specialist subject areas (law and medicine), and I no longer work full time, as I have my pension to fall back on. Translating pays for travel to see my widespread family in several countries, and other things you can't afford on a Folkepension alone.
I sometimes suspect my rates are too low, but I find the client looks for another translator if I try to go higher, and I know there is a lot of pressure on rates, which I can afford to resist.
I don't proofread/edit much, and only when I know the translation or text is top quality. Several times a year I revise/edit research papers written in non-native English for a Norwegian client, and I charge by the hour. The average rate is low, but I only get through about 1000 words an hour. They pay without complaining, and I earn reasonably on those jobs anyway.
I charge UK clients GBP 30 per hour, but there are not many of them!
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Many years ago, when I started freelancing, my biggest client paid me DKK 0.85 per word for Danish to English, but if it was necessary to count (English) target words, they paid 0.72 per word. This was because you get about 25% more English words than the Danish source words. They aimed at the same rate for the job, regardless of whether you counted source words or target words. I worked for them in-house for a few years, where we kept statistics of both source and target words, and I accepted the freelance rates as fair.
We did not use Trados so much then! I use it for practically everything now. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lene Henriksen 
Denmark
Local time: 11:45
Danish to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Rates for translation without CAT-tool | Sep 15, 2021 |
Thank you very much for your input, Christine. That was very helpful.
What would you - or anyone else - think would be a fair minimum rate or a realistic maximum rate per word for translations done without using a CAT-tool?
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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CAT tools are like heroin, but yummier
My drug of choice is MemoQ. Non-CAT, non-server-based projects in this day and age are just a nuisance. Attaching files to emails and google drives and keeping track of that nonsense by hand... ugh. No thanks.
LeneH wrote:
Thank you very much for your input, Christine. That was very helpful.
What would you - or anyone else - think would be a fair minimum rate or a realistic maximum rate per word for translations done without using a CAT-tool?
[Edited at 2021-09-15 08:09 GMT]
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| Direct clients will probably accept translations without CAT tools | Sep 15, 2021 |
Some direct clients do not worry about whether you use a CAT tool, but many big clients work with agencies who use CATS to coordinate multiple languages, keep track of terminology, and a whole lot of other functions.
I don't know much about those, or what rates would be acceptable, as clients vary enormously. In principle you are charging for doing the agency work yourself - marketing, coordinating multiple languages, formatting and DTP if any, etc. etc. So your rate per translated ... See more Some direct clients do not worry about whether you use a CAT tool, but many big clients work with agencies who use CATS to coordinate multiple languages, keep track of terminology, and a whole lot of other functions.
I don't know much about those, or what rates would be acceptable, as clients vary enormously. In principle you are charging for doing the agency work yourself - marketing, coordinating multiple languages, formatting and DTP if any, etc. etc. So your rate per translated word should be higher.
Agencies tend to insist on a CAT, though some smaller ones may accept translations without. In any case, you are competing with translators who do use a CAT.
I hated Trados when I started, but my in-house employer at the time insisted on using it. I have had my hassles, but Trados has grown and improved since then, and for me it really is worth the effort. I use it even when there is no need, because of the advantages.
I might go for MemoQ or one of the others if I started out now. Different tools suit different styles of working, but I have fine-tuned Trados to mine. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Adieu
Ukrainian to English
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| My vote is for MemoQ | Sep 15, 2021 |
Mainly because it never loses your work (there's no save function, it autosaves everything you do) and the few bugs I've had were literally resolved by support request within 3-5 minutes regardless of time of day.
It's gotten to the point where I've accidentally forgotten to save the few things I did in Word because I've started to forget that saving your work was a thing you had to do.
PS there IS one critical weakness: spellcheck doesn't want to work with old Word dic... See more Mainly because it never loses your work (there's no save function, it autosaves everything you do) and the few bugs I've had were literally resolved by support request within 3-5 minutes regardless of time of day.
It's gotten to the point where I've accidentally forgotten to save the few things I did in Word because I've started to forget that saving your work was a thing you had to do.
PS there IS one critical weakness: spellcheck doesn't want to work with old Word dictionaries and doesn't want to load up Hunspell like it says it can (and some people who have managed to somehow get it to work say it creates hundreds of gigabytes of temp files it forgets to clean up when it does work)... but for me, this quirk has actually become a part of my workflow process. I export or copy paste the preview into word and take a second look at the text before delivery while I spellcheck. It also has the nice side effect of leaving me with saved files of stuff that circumvents clients' locked translation memories, different source languages, etc.
It's surprisingly useful. I've (back)translated slight variations of the same file from 3 different "source" languages a few times before. Translation memory doesn't work for that, but good old save files help a lot. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lene Henriksen
Denmark
Local time: 11:45
Danish to English
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TOPIC STARTER
Thank very much for sharing your insight.
I tried Trados and Wordfast several times some years ago, but the technical issues and crashes were too many and too frequent, and I just find it much faster to translate without a CAT. I worked at a translation office that used Trados, and we frequently spent quite a lot of time trying to solve Trados issues, time that would have been better spent on actual translation work. So, I am not that keen on using CATs.
| | | | | Danish to English | Sep 15, 2021 |
Largest agencies are willing to pay 50% more, and small agencies and direct clients a lot more again.
I guess it depends partly on what you have to offer.
I do use a CAT tool but I only deliver Word files, with one exception.
I am well established but on the other hand I don't speak Danish and do no marketing.
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Lene Henriksen
Denmark
Local time: 11:45
Danish to English
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TOPIC STARTER
Thank you very much, Ice Scream, for your interesting info.
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