I notified the project manager and asked what to do. Since it was a rush job, he told me to copy the online version and charge half. Not sure if those savings were passed on to the client, but I assume they were.

Case 2: I agree — that’s a new translation. I’d charge them.

Case 3: If they gave me a fresh un-OCRable PDF for the new translation, I’d have no qualms at all about charging them again. If they’re sufficiently organized to have machine-readable and therefore TMable documents, I’d charge only for new words.

Case 4: I’d ask them.

Actually, I guess all that is a wordy way of agreeing with everything you said…

I always report the find to the client right away. It usually means I don’t do that particular job, but it does lead to repeat work for “that trustworthy translator.” (And yes, I imagine it pays off in the form of impressing clients with your research aptitude, too.)

I translated a book that contained lengthy passages that had been copied from a Japanese translation of an old English book. In the process of E-J-J-E everything was changed around enough that the client (a publisher unrelated to the authors of any of these things) didn’t care when I mentioned it, but the basic arrangement of the sentences and paragraphs was all there for me to see. Very helpful.

You’re right, tricky situation. Sometimes, honesty endears you more to a client, other times not.

I had a strange situation a few years ago where I assigned three similar contract to 3 translators. When they returned them, Translator A sent back the translation corresponding to Translator B. But Translator B also did Contract B. I thought I was going crazy; whenever I use multiple translators, I triple check that everyone gets what they’re supposed to.

Turns out Translator A had done the “B” document for another agency at an earlier time and sent it to me by mistake. I called and he did, in fact, do the “A” document, too, for me, which he sent right away. Now this wasn’t a situation where he recycled an older translation (who knows, maybe he did “A” in the past too?), which I suppose he has a right to do, but I warned him to be more careful with his organizational skills.

However, I once found an extensive quality assurance manual online that I aligned and fed into my TM. I had to change the company name, but otherwise it was pretty good quality. In this case, I chose to say nothing to the client because I had reviewed each word and sentence to ensure they were correct and correctly interpreted.

I guess it all depends on how much work is involved. After all, charging by the word is simply a unit we use to be reimbursed for our work. It truly is a tightrope sometimes. I agree with you in just about all the cases you cited though.