Musings from an overworked translator
featuring musings about my life and the translation industry
Welcome! Willkommen! Zdravstvuyte!
I am a full-time German to English translator. This blog is my creative outlet to share my knowledge and random musings. Despite the title of my blog, I am generally available for translation work - even if there might be a delay of a few days. You can contact me at gertoeng AT jill-sommer.com.Tweet Tweet!
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Musings from an overworked translator 
I’ll start… I rewrite texts.
Well, others do it for me… (badly explain my profession). You’d be amazed how many Austrlains think that a TRANSLATOR (which is what I am, and say I am) is an INTERPRETER (e.g. they straight away ask me do I get to travel to international conferences).
I get that in the US too.
I speak many languages and look up words in dictionaries, every day. Or, a good example of what you’re asking is this interview I just read. I disagree with ALL the tips this guy is giving, worst translator interview ever: https://www.memsource.com/blog/2017/09/08/translation-making-the-most-of-an-unexpected-opportunity/
Wow! I agree. I bet his quality is great with an output of 1200 words an hour!
I agree entirely. I think we need some sort of an industry standard or convention on how we count the words we translate. I do not believe that anybody can translate 1,200 net (i.e., new) words an hour, not even for extremely trivial texts. And far less for anything remotely approaching specialized translation.
I’m sure that many of us can sometimes manage 1,200 gross words an hour if what we’re translating is largely 95-99% very high quality matches.
But I’m pretty sick of hearing that translators can translate more than a thousand words an hour, or tens of thousands of words a day, when of course they’re NOT translating those words: They’re largely taking over what’s already in the TM or even the MT input. To me, claims like that are verging on the fraudulent. They’re certainly massively misleading and give clients entirely the wrong impression of what genuinely professional translators can achieve.
Consider the source – Memsource advertising. I agree, Robin. It does verge on fraud to claim that. I’ve had days where I’ve output a lot of words, but those days are few and far between!!
Sometimes, I take badly written texts in one language and improve them in another. And then my client disimproves them again.
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