At last year’s American Translators Association conference in San Francisco, I overheard a few conversations about how the translation industry would be affected if translators started billing by the hour rather than by the word. In some cases and for some jobs, translators do bill by the hour, but the tried-and-true per-word charge is still the norm. Here are a few thoughts on charging by the word versus by the hour.
Pricing translation by the word has some advantages: Especially if you charge by the source word, everyone knows up front how much the translation will cost, down to the cent. No surprise overruns to deal with and no estimating how many hours a project will take. Per-word pricing encourages translators to maintain their skills and technology, since efficient translators effectively earn more per hour. In some sense, per-word pricing may also drive translation technology innovations, since translators may be more likely to purchase a tool that allows them to work faster. Also, skilled and efficient translators can probably earn more by charging by the word than clients would be likely to pay by the hour. Say that you’re translating 600 words an hour at 14 cents a word, not out of the question for many translators, but I’ll venture a guess that those same clients might balk at paying $84 an hour for translation. Per-word pricing also allows translation buyers to compare apples to apples when it comes to costs, rather than weighing a higher per-hour quote from a translator who claims to work faster versus a lower per-hour quote from someone who works more slowly.
But then again…:Pricing by the word has an obvious disadvantage from the translator’s side, which is that you are agreeing to work for a flat and fixed rate. So, when you get to those three pages of barely legible handwriting, or the document that’s been scanned, faxed and photocopied eight times before arriving in your inbox, you have to decide whether you need to negotiate a higher per-word rate. This can be a particular problem when it comes to editing, which is why I personally decline to be paid by the word for editing.
So then maybe pricing by the hour is better?: Well…yes…no…maybe! The main advantage of pricing by the hour is that there is no risk of loss on the translator’s part; if you charge $50 an hour and you work ten hours, you make $500. If you charge 20 cents a word and think you can translate 600 words an hour but the nature of the document is such that you really translate 250 words an hour, you’ve just taken a big hit. However, my main reasons for continuing to believe in pricing by the word are: a) the client knows up front how much the translation will cost and b) I think that most experienced and efficient translators can earn more by the word than what most clients will pay by the hour. Just don’t forget to agree in advance on whether the billable word count is source or target!
Kudoz, Corinne
. Very insightful analysis. I feel that I have something to add here, but I’m too tired to focus right now. I’ll come back later if I think of something, but I just couldn’t resist thanking you for the lovely post.
Bonjour Corinne,
Très pertinent comme analyse. J’ai moi aussi traité de la question dans Circuit, la revue de l’OTTIAQ, et j’en arrive à des conclusions similaires :
http://pages.infinit.net/flaval/L_auteur/Circuit/TarificationHeure.html .
Votre dernier argument est le plus pertinent pour moi, même s’il est celui qu’il est le plus difficile d’apporter dans un débat public. En fait, je crois même que ces pour cette raison que certains gros fournisseurs d’ouvrage militent pour le tarif à l’heure : ils savent qu’ils paieront ainsi moins cher, car le marché est bizarrement ainsi fait.
J’ajouterais un autre argument corollaire : avec le tarif au mot, le traducteur a naturellement une « augmentation salariale » à mesure qu’il acquiert de l’expérience (car il acquiert de la vitesse). S’il facture à l’heure, il est obligé d’augmenter son tarif régulièrement pour avoir une augmentation de revenu en rapport avec l’amélioration de sa compétence qui lui vient avec l’expérience. C’est une contrainte dont on se passera volontiers!
Great post, Corinne. I have always believed that there is nothing more unfair than treating everybody equally. Knowledge and experience should be rewarded, and it would not be fair to pay a translator less just because it took him or her less time to translate something thanks to the speed that is gained with being exposed to the same thing over and over again.
I once heard a story of a woman who asked a famous painter to draw a painting for her. He said he would charge her $3,000 and she agreed. In 15 minutes he had drawn a beautiful painting for her, and she turned around and said “I cannot believe you will charge me $3,000 for only 15 minutes of your time”. And he responded: “What you are paying for is the many years that it took so that I can accomplish this in only 15 minutes”.
This post actually overlooks a big problem that a lot of translators have: translators need to price their per-word rate and their per-hour rate such that the same job will result in the same fee, regardless of which billing method is used.
Similarly, a translator’s source-word rate and target-word rate should be adjusted so that the same document results in (roughly) the same fee, regardless of which billing method is used.
If I dare say, translators who consider themselves professionals AND businesspeople really need to devote time to analyzing their own metrics so that they can price accordingly. If you as a translator are making *less* money when billing hourly than you are when billing per word, then you need to increase your hourly rate to match.
One important thing for translators to realize as well in terms of pricing is that you must be prepared to say no to a client that does not want to pay your minimum rates. It may be hard (at first), but actually clients respect translators more whose minimum rates stay firm–it speaks to your self-confidence as a translator and as a business person. It also stops you from being in the terrible situation of having said yes to a job at a very low rate and then being too busy to accept the next offer of a job at a very high rate.
So, again: adjust your pricing so that no matter the billing mechanism so that your rate is covering your salary and your overhead (health insurance, software upgrades, etc.), and never say yes to jobs priced below that pricing. (Unless you’re donating your time to charity or something.)
To Simac: That’s easier said than done for many people. Once you said no to a client because they won’t pay your fair hourly rate and they go somewhere else, who’s better off? And if you know very well that the same client would have agreed to the same rate, expressed in cents per word, why bother? As Corinne said, it’s a weird thing, but it’s reality: the same client will agree to a certain rate, but not to the equivalent hourly rate in many cases (when the translator is experienced, well equipped, etc.). You can’t change the market all by yourself, you have to play by the rules as they are, as odd as they may seem.
Yes, I agree both with Simac’s comment about sticking with your base rate, and with François about the strange industry phenomenon on per word/per hour pricing. For whatever reason, the translation industry seems willing to support per-word rates (or we could call it flat-rate pricing) that are significantly higher than the per-hour rate that the same translator charges. And I actually think that this is true at both ends of the market; I would venture a guess that translators who charge 8 cents a word are not charging $40 an hour, and that translators who charge 30 cents a word are not charging $150 an hour.
However, I do agree that it’s important to, as Simac pointed out, set your rates using objective data and include your overhead and then stick to them, which may mean finding new clients when you raise your rates.
[...] of this goes back to my previous post on being paid by the word versus by the hour, or maybe this just relates to rates in general. In [...]
(The following is an except from an article entitled “Everything’s Comin’ Up Roses” which appears in the March/April issue of the “Gotham Translator”, the bi-monthly newsletter of the New York Circle of Translators (NYCT). The entire article may be downloaded from the NYCT’s website.)
“We are a little people, and like little people
we think like little people”
(Prince Faisal of Arabia, as portrayed by Alec
Guinness in “Lawrence of Arabia”)
The per-word unit has for at least one hundred years been the basis for determining a translator’s fee. Although there have been suggestions and even isolated attempts to change this basis, it has remained the dominant form in translation services invoicing.
The natural efficiencies of the computer allowed for the corresponding increases in translator productivity, and that increased productivity kept the per-word unit firmly in its position as the dominant basis for determining translation fees. Since the time that the computer became the principal production tool, no one has questioned the practice of charging for repetitive words or phrases or entire passages that were very similar but not precisely identical. The concept and the predominant thinking was that a translator’s time had to be compensated even though the translator was not actually translating words, but merely blocking, copying, pasting and comparing and/or verifying.
But the advent of the computer-assisted translation (“CAT”) tool and its widespread implementation has dramatically changed the economic playing field, and translators, particularly those who are relatively new to the industry, have readily accepted the notion that they should be paid solely and exclusively for words translated only once, and that their time and knowledge applied to moving words and re-positioning phrases or components of phrases, i.e., data movement, to provide complete and accurate communication has absolutely no remunerative value. Like those who marched in willing resignation and without protest to the “showers” and the gas chambers, the translators of the 21st century are seemingly doing likewise.
To this correspondent, it is not a question of what brought about this change in thinking that translators should be compensated only for so-called “new words” or that bastard sibling called “fuzzy matches”, but rather who has promoted this concept and who is benefiting most by its application.
In the freelance community, the “villains” are clearly the translation agencies, now predominantly in the hands of language-blind, profit-focused and marketing-focused businesspeople. The few translation agency owners who are willing to speak about this issue, say that it is the translation clients who are forcing this change upon the translation agencies in an effort to lower translation costs, and therefore the agencies have no choice but to pressure freelance translators into accepting compensation solely for “new words” translated…at prices that would have looked attractive in 1978!
Added to the mix are the attitudes of translator organizations, which have become more and more fascinated by machines and attendant technology than with the resulting economic impact. Worse, some of them have jumped into bed with the manufacturers of CAT and other translation-assisted tools, blindly but gleefully accepting handsome advertising revenues. In addition, translation organizations have encouraged their members to use this technology on the sole grounds that it provides for increased efficiency and productivity, although no studies have been sponsored or undertaken to determine what if any efficiencies are actually achieved, save for the efficiency of increasing profits at one end and lowering compensation at the other. Indeed, if CAT and other so-called translation-assisted tools are providing such increased productivity, then why is it that so many translators are complaining about longer hours of work and less compensation? Something don’t smell right here.
The United States is now moving into a major economic recession, but a recession that is coupled with rising inflation. Every single one of us is now feeling the effects of this inflation, as prices for basic goods and services are increasing dramatically across the board. Yet, translation prices have dropped and translator income has remained relatively stagnant. And if we place any credence in the complaint that translators worked longer hours to earn in 2007 what they earned in 2006 or 2005 or 2004, then in effect what we have is a reduction in income.
If there is any veracity in the translation industry’s current economic indicators, then perhaps the time has come for all to ask themselves whether translation is an endeavor in which a person can earn a supplemental income at best, and whether it is an industry that constitutes a welcoming harbor and nurturing environment solely for “housewives” (desperate or proverbial), and one in which most of the practitioners are quite willing to march to their own economic gas chambers.
[...] McKay added some great insights to this debate in a post a few months back, her conclusion being that good translators make out better overall when pricing by the word and [...]
[...] Until a few weeks ago, the most popular post on this blog was one that I wrote a long time ago on charging by the word versus charging by the hour (it’s since been eclipsed by a recent post on using a sample translation as a sales pitch). [...]
Charging a flat rate per word just doesn’t seem fair. Some texts are a breeze to translate and others can be confusing and extremely time-consuming. Although both texts may be equal in the number of words they contain, the less complex text will be able to be translated much faster and the more complex text will take much longer.
Is there some way to charge according to type of text? For example, technical translations are very time-consuming and therefore, should require a higher rate per word than a simple email or web page translation. Say 20 cents per word for technical writing and 15 cents per word for non-technical writing.
My scale isn’t right but I hope you get the idea. Another way may be to grade the level of texts. I have seen this done with web sites. For example, you submit your web site to a grader and it will tell you the level of text from elementary, high school, college, graduate level, etc.
[...] Paid by the word or paid by the hour? March 2008 11 comments 4 [...]
[...] 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 [...]
Got a document translated the other day to English from Chinese, paid 75 cents for that, it was a 200 word document…
I think I overpaid for that thing!