Beating a dead horse (aka volume discounts) August 23, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.8 comments
Most of you haven’t been reading my blog since the very beginning, so I wanted to mention a post I wrote back in May 2008 on volume discounts. The topic came up last week on the ATA’s Business Practices list. As expected, most of the seasoned translators were vehemently against the practice for all the reasons I mentioned in 2008. Interestingly enough, two translators spoke in favor of volume discounts, citing “economies of scale.” Sorry, folks, but I still can’t justify offering a volume discount due to economies of scale either. Even if I am being more than adequately compensated based on an hourly rate my little fingers are still typing all those words. If I am typing it I am charging for it.
I don’t know about you, but I have more than enough work to keep me busy at my normal rates. (In fact, that is one of the reasons it has been so quiet here at TranslationMusings lately.) I would not be a very good businessperson if I were to turn around and say “hey, wonderful client, I know you just offered me 22,000 words. Tell you what, I’ll do them for 2 cents less just because there is so much.” That’s insane. I’m going to type all those words out and my arms are going to be hurting or at least sore afterward, so I want to be compensated for it – and I would hope my client respects me enough to feel the same way. And that’s all I have to say about that.
Operating as a business August 12, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings.8 comments
I don’t even know where to start with this, so I’ll just come out with it. I just found out today that one of my colleagues is owed €20,000 by a client (a client with whom I used to work and gave the boot to several years ago). To make things worse, some of those jobs had been given to another translator to translate and he has paid her for her work. So essentially he has LOST money on this customer! How on Earth did this person let it come to this? I was completely speechless when I heard about it (which, believe me, almost never happens).
I don’t know about you all, but I would have cut this “agency” off after being owed €1,000. Never in a million years would I have allowed the bills to pile up to €20,000. That’s just insane. I also would have been reporting my experience on Payment Practices after the first majorly overdue invoice (my rule of thumb is 30 days overdue is too long), so other translators won’t fall into the same trap. People, people, we aren’t translating for the fun of it – or at least we shouldn’t be. I don’t know about you, but I have rent to pay, groceries to buy, a dog to feed, and bills that need to be paid. I am not in the business of working for free. I am absolutely aghast at some of my colleagues’ business practices.
If you learn nothing from this blog but this I will have achieved my goal – to be successful you need to act like a professional! That means treating your clients with respect, responding promptly to e-mails and phone calls, billing within a reasonable time frame and following up on overdue invoices. If a client lets the overdue invoices pile up you need to stop working for them. Whether you decide to continue working with them after they have caught up on the invoices is entirely up to you, but please don’t ever let the overdue invoices total half, a third or even a fourth of your annual revenue. Read Corinne’s book on How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator. Read Judy’s book called The Entrepreneurial Linguist. For goodness’ sake act like a businessperson!
CONGRATULATION YOU HAVE WON USA GREEN CARD VISA2010/11!!! August 11, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Random musings, Scam alert.2 comments
Woohooo, everybody! I won “USA Green Card VISA2010/11″.
Oh wait…
30% upcharge for using Trados? August 3, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Random musings.8 comments
I received the following e-mail first thing this morning:
Dear Sirs,
I am a freelance translator with more than ten years experiences. I am a Korean but leave in China with my husband who is a Chinese. So I can do English<>Chinese<>Korean natively.I can use Trados myself.The rate is 0.08-0.12USD per word,extra 30% fee if use Trados. First cooperation, I can provide a free testing. If need, I can send you my CV.
Erica
Wow, this is just good stuff. There are so many things wrong with this I’m not even going to get into it. The thing that made me go “hmmm, I need to write about this!” is the “extra 30% fee if use Trados.” I think I’m going to have to give that a try with my customers. Do you think anyone will go for it 
?
Scam alerts on Payment Practices August 2, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Scam alert.add a comment
Payment Practices is now offering a wonderful service to translators by allowing us to post scam alerts on all kinds of possible variations of names and e-mail addresses we receive that strike us as strange. Every translator should have this page bookmarked in your browsers. So if you receive an e-mail and it sounds kind of fishy, you should check here first before responding!
Revenge of the Sith… Errr I mean Backstroke of the West July 29, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Fun stuff.add a comment
One of the folks I follow on Twitter recently posted a link to hilarious screencaps of English subtitles for a Chinese DVD of Revenge of the Sith (Episode III of the Star Wars film series). As the author explains, “a couple of years ago when i was living in shanghai i bought a revenge of the sith dvd off the street. it came with hilariously mangled subtitles that ranged from somewhat close to what the actors were saying to far, far away….” It is a very amusing analysis of failed subtitles. I hope you all enjoy it!
Caution is good, but trust is better July 23, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices, Random musings.9 comments
I was sitting at my computer the other day and received a Skype message from one of the agency owners with whom I work, out of the blue, thanking me for being such a professional. I believe the quote was, “THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for being such a professional.” Turns out she was filling in for her Director of Translation, who is out on vacation, and was having all kinds of troubles with the vendors. The incident that was making her want to bang her head against the wall – hard – was with an into Spanish translator. The job had been assigned on Tuesday and two days later (on the due date) the vendor told her he wouldn’t do the job because “we never sent a contract.” She had sent him all the preliminary stuff she had sent me when I started working with them and told him “if you have something else, we’ll sign it.” He told her flat-out “I don’t trust your agency.” In fact, his response was: “I am paranoid of not getting paid. If you are reputable agency that is in this type of business you would have had an agreement ready. I asked you that several days ago and you played games with me. I really do not trust your agency.” She had to scramble to find someone who could translate the file that day in order to meet the deadline and told him “Next time, please let us know sooner. Your paranoia has discourteously cost another translator two days.” This is one of the most upstanding agencies I know. They bill themselves as being a socially conscious agency. The fact that he doesn’t trust the agency shows me he doesn’t know them very well at all.
I understand that some translators have heard the horror stories about agencies that don’t pay, but, folks, they truly are very rare. For every Ursula Bull or Language Promotion, there are tons of reputable agencies like CETRA, Syntes Language Group, Partnertrans, Geotext, Schofield & Partner, etc. Caution is good, but trust is better. It is so important to build a good working relationship with your clients. By establishing a relationship with your clients you get to know each other and they come to rely on you – and most importantly come back time and again.
I have all kinds of clients with all kinds of different business practices. Some make me sign a contract before working with them. Some send me a P.O. for every job. And some send me an e-mail in which they tell me I have the job and when I need to deliver the file(s). In my eyes, an e-mail telling me I have the go-ahead to do the job is just as valid (and in most cases legally binding) as signing a contract. Because I know the people I am working with and have established a good working relationship.
I’m not saying you should implicitly trust everyone who contacts you, but try getting to know or learn about your contact and his/her agency before automatically painting them with the “Big Bad Agency” brush. Caution is a good attribute to have, but by being paranoid you may unnecessarily alienate a potential long-term client.
Translating phone numbers July 22, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Translation.7 comments
Whenever you encounter a phone number in a translation, ask yourself if the reader can actually call the numbers as they are written. The client who provided the source text, in most cases, doesn’t have any idea how international calling works.
First of all, the international access code, such as 011 for the U.S., is different for each country. You need to know the target audience of the text. If the text is intended for the U.S. you can localize the number for the U.S. However, it is pointless to indicate how to dial long distance from the U.S. to a reader living in Germany or Japan. According to the standards of the Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T), you should begin with a “+” (plus sign).
The country code for the country you are calling comes after the plus sign. You can find all the numbers you need on the Web. Canada and the United States are the exceptions. They are both “1.”
The area code is usually enclosed in parentheses, which indicates that it is optional. The European equivalent of the area code is the city code, which is preceded by a “0.” The zero is analogous to U.S. or Canadian callers dialing a “1″ before the area code. The zero in European city codes is sometimes enclosed in parentheses, which means that it is optional when dialing within the country. You should remove the “0″ (and, if necessary, the parentheses) when translating the number.
The use of hyphens, slashes and periods is frowned upon by ITU-T. A number in Bonn might be 0228 345678 or 0228/345678 but would read +49 228 34 56 78 for international dialing. Finally, a U.S. number such as (216) 234-5678 would be translated as +1 216 234 5678 for foreign readers.
Toll-free 800 numbers are of no use in Europe or Asia (as are the German 0180 numbers in the United States). Encourage your clients to omit 800 numbers if the documents are to be published outside the country.
Who knows how long this will all be relevant now that Skype and VOiP calling is gaining ground.
TGIF: The Trouble with Voice Recognition July 16, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Fun stuff, TGIF.2 comments
Fabio at Fidus interpres just posted this video on his blog today. I normally hate to repeat what other translators post, but this is just too hilarious not to post. Plus, I wanted readers who don’t read his blog to see it (and if you aren’t reading his blog, why not??). The trouble with voice recognition software is that it has problems with accents – in this case Scottish. I love a good Scottish accent. I would marry a Scot in a second just for the accent (yes, it is true about Americans being suckers for accents). I have joked with my friends that I would pay a Scot to read the phone book for me. I just love how they sound. This video is hilarious, so I hope you enjoy it.
A word on dictionaries for German translators (and perhaps other languages) July 13, 2010
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Tools, Translation.9 comments
The basic library for getting started as a German-English translator consists of:
- 1 good general bilingual dictionary (Muret-Sanders is a probably the most complete and reliable bilingual dictionary. I also like Pons or Harper-Collins)
- 1 good monolingual German dictionary (Wahrig Deutsches Wörterbuch)
- 1 good monolingual English dictionary (preferably unabridged – I have a massive Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language on a stand)
- 1 good commercial-legal dictionary (Hamblock/Wessels Großwörterbuch Wirtschaftsenglisch or Dietl/Lorenz Dictionary of Legal, Commercial and Political Terms)
- 1 good technical dictionary (Langenscheidts Fachwörterbuch Technik und angewandte Wissenschaft (by Peter Schmitt) or Ernst Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik)
Once you become more established you will want to buy more dictionaries as you need them. I try to buy at least one dictionary a year (usually at the ATA conference). Here is some advice on dictionaries from a handout from Dr. Sue Ellen Wright, Kent State University, October 1994. Dr. Wright is a Professor of German and a member of the Kent State University Institute for Applied Linguistics, where she teaches terminology, computer applications for translators and German to English technical translation. She is one of the world’s leading experts on terminology and terminology management and is active on in the national and international standards community as well as standards for translation quality management.
1. General bilingual dictionaries
- Langenscheidt – Condensed Muret-Sanders
Probably the most complete and reliable bilingual dictionary in any language pair for a reasonable price. [If you don't think the price is reasonable, check out the price for the Encyclopedic Dictionary!] If you can scrape the $$ together don’t waste your money on anything else – go straight for the German-English, but bear in mind that you may want the English-German for stylistics. - Langenscheidt – Muret-Sanders Encyclopedic Dictionary
The greatest bilingual dictionary ever written. Period. In any language pair. It’s so great people who don’t do German ought to read it. If you ever have the money, buy it. Not only does it document general language, it also contains much general scientific vocabulary and a surprisingly rich selection of medical and biological terms.
2 Bildwörterbuch
The German-English Oxford-Duden is the great-granddaddy of the pictorial dictionary. It’s a super reference for translators and language students because lots of times we don’t know what word to look up in the first place, but we know how a thing looks or operates. Don’t let misinformed Americans convince you that the word “Duden” is a synonym for a pictorial dictionary! Duden is the German equivalent of Webster’s and Larousse and publishes a wide range of dictionary products. It’s nice that they also invented the pictorial dictionary, but that shouldn’t be an invitation to misuse their name.
3 General monolingual German dictionaries
Brockhaus, Duden and Wahrig all have their proponents. I personally think it is a good idea to have all three, but then I have had the time and money to invest in more dictionaries than most students do. Brockhaus in einem Band is also a terrific resource. The important thing is to purchase at least one general language dictionary first.
4 Duden – Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache
If the Muret-Sanders encyclopedic is the ideal bilingual, this is the best quasi-affordable German resource. This six-volume set is what Duden is really famous for, and why I don’t like to see the name misused. So when you get rich instead of just good-lookin’, this is a terrific investment.
5 Grammar and Style
The Duden in 11 Bänder and the Duden-Taschenbücher are great additions to any dictionary collection. [My note: I'm summarizing here. The most important Duden Bänder are Stilistik (the original collocation dictionary), Grammatik, Rechtschreibung, and Gutes Deutsch (another mainstay for stylistics). The Duden Taschenbücher Sue Ellen recommends are Die Regeln der deutschen Rechtschreibung, Wie schreibt man gutes Deutsch, Wie sagt der Arzt?, Wörterbuch der Abkürzungen, Wie schreibt man im Büro (business correspondence), Wie formuliert man im Büro (business composition)]
6 Business German (small stuff)
[Note: If you were to ask Robin Bonthrone he would tell you that none of the business and financial dictionaries are worth the paper they are printed on. If you must, Schäfer Financial Dictionary and Zahn Glossary of Financial and Economic Terms are two decent choices.]
7 Commercial German (serious dictionaries)
Wilhelm Schäfer’s Wirtschaftswörterbuch: Band I: Englisch-Deutsch and Band II: Deutsch-Englisch is a good choice. Dietl/Lorenz Dictionary of Legal, Commercial and Political Terms and Romain Dictionary of Legal and Commercial Terms are also good. If you do a lot of legal Romain is a highly recommended dictionary. I also like Hamblock/Wessels Großwörterbuch Wirtschaftsenglisch.
8 Technical Dictionaries
Peter Schmitts Langenscheidts Fachwörterbuch Technik und angewandte Wissenschaft is supposed to be one of the best technical dictionaries out there. Ernst Wörterbuch der Industriellen Technik (although not perfect) is a good general technical dictionary too – just don’t get the notion that you will find everything here, nor that what you find will always be right for your context. Sue Ellen “disrecommends” buying DeVries & Hermann. She equated its use would be equivalent with the old use for the old Sears and Roebuck catalogues.
9 Specialized Dictionaries
[She did not recommend any in particular because you have to seek out the items you need for any given topic. I'll write about the medical dictionaries I use another day.]
A Final Word on English Dictionaries:
The American Heritage Dictionary is good, but Random House and Webster’s New World are also reliable. I particularly like the Concise Oxford when I’m called upon to produce good “mid-Atlantic” English. Once you have a good modern “college-size” dictionary scrounge the flea markets and used book stores for the 2nd or 3rd edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary of the English Language published by Merriam Webster. The 2nd is the last great truly encyclopedic unabridged dictionary, and the 3rd represents a milestone shift to non-prescriptive lexicography. You’ll never regret the effort it took to find either of these classic dictionaries. (My copy of the 2nd was a $3 flea market find. I purchased a min-condition salesman’s sample of the 3rd a few years ago for $65. A realistic price for either probably lies somewhere between those two extremes.) [Note: I got my Webster's Unabridged as a close-out at Border's for $20]
Amazon, InTrans Book Service, Adler’s Foreign Books and Kater Verlag are all good sources for dictionaries.
Any German translators care to chime in as well with their favorites?
