Need help understanding your quotation for translation services?

需要帮助您了解翻译服务的报价吗?

2020-03-29 21:50 Star Transit NXT

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For those outside the industry, quotations for translation services can be a tricky business. I can well remember my first week on the job here at STAR. I went home mentally exhausted every night from the sheer scale of new things I needed to learn. One of which was the lingo. Fuzzy match, internal repetition, translation import: my head was spinning from the new information. Years later, these terms are now a part of my personal lexicon and it’s easy to forget that I didn’t always understand exactly what they meant. So, today’s blog will take an in-depth look at quotations for translation services so that you, a potential translation purchaser, can be sure that you know what you are buying, and most importantly, that you are getting what you asked for and what you needed. How are quotations priced? It’s not unheard of to receive a quotation for translation services that breaks its prices down per page, or even one that gives you a flat fee per project. However, the industry standard is to calculate prices on a per-word basis. Just to catch you out, these can be listed as a per-word price, such as 0.25GBP or as a price per thousand words, such as 250 GBP. Both mean exactly the same thing, and it largely comes down to personal preference on dealing with zeros or decimal delimiters. The quotation for translation services will work on the number of source words, i.e. the number of words in your document before it is translated. There’s a simple reason for this: transparency. A quotation for translation services bases its costs on the word price because this is the most transparent way of calculating the cost of a document. The translation services supplier can use the word count to estimate how much time the project will take to complete, and the customer is able to know the cost of the translation before it is started. It is for this reason that the translation supplier will ask you to provide an editable file. Although it is possible to estimate word counts, in PDF format for example, it can only ever be an estimate, not a fixed quotation. In this case, your supplier may suggest that your quotation for translation services be based on target words, i.e. the amount of words in your document after translation. Again, they will be able to provide an estimated cost for the project, but not the exact number. What are the different categories listed? Although every translation supplier will treat quotations and word breakdowns in different ways, there are four main categories of “word types” that you might see on a quotation for translation services. Before I go into the explanations of each category, I need to add that translation memory software analyses text in sense units, usually sentences. This means that each sentence will be categorised and the word count will be created based on how many words appear in the sentences in each category. New words: sentences that the supplier has never translated for you before. Fuzzy words: sentences that are similar to something the supplier has translated for you before. Internal repetitions: sentences that appear multiple times within the document for translation. (The first occurrence of these sentences is counted as either new or fuzzy). Pretranslated words: sentences that the supplier has already translated for you in a previous project. For a first translation request to a new supplier, you will not receive any fuzzy matches, because the supplier has no reference material to use for your quotation for translation services. Over time, particularly if you send similar material for each request, you should see your quotations for translation services rapidly decrease as the amount of translation memory leveraged increases. How long might it take to complete the translation? Again, every translation supplier will come up with a slightly different answer to this question, but broadly speaking, it is possible for a translation supplier to suggest an accurate turnaround time when they send you the quotation for translation services. Some companies will suggest a specific delivery date, some will suggest a turnaround time given in working days. At STAR, we fall into the latter camp. We know that your translation project might not be ready to start immediately, so by giving you an estimated turnaround in working days, you can be sure that this will still be valid in two days, two weeks, or even two months. We base our turnaround times on two factors. The time required to complete the project, and when our best translators can start working on the project. For every translation project, you want to be sure that the translator working on the project has experience with the subject matter and ideally, with the customer’s previous projects. It is not always possible for the supplier to start on your project straight away, and we factor this in to our quotation for translation services. For this reason, we might not always be the fastest, but we believe that if a job is worth doing, it should be done right. But what if you need it by a certain time? If you need your translations delivered by a certain time or on a certain day, please let the translation supplier know in advance. We can factor this into our quotation for translation services, and will plan accordingly. Equally, please tell us if the project is less urgent. (We love it when you say that). But seriously, we want the best people to work on your texts and sometimes a day or two extra makes all the difference. Why are different languages more expensive? There are a few factors that can influence your quotation for translation services. Language combination is one of them. Put simply, it comes down to supply and demand. Certain languages have greater numbers of speakers and there are greater numbers of translators (often there’s also a greater demand for translations into those languages). Translations between Western European languages, usually with English in the pair, are far cheaper than translations into Asian languages. Another factor to consider is the cost of living in the country where your supplier is. Translations into Scandinavian languages are usually more expensive because the cost of living there is so much higher than in the UK. Both of these things can affect the price listed on your quotation for translation services. Why are there extra charges? Extra charges and how to avoid them appearing on your quotation for translation services is definitely the topic of another blog post, as I’ve got lots to say on the matter. But for now, I’ll restrict myself to looking at what sort of charges might appear and why. The most likely charge to see on a quotation for translation services is for DTP (Desktop Publishing). In plain English, it’s work on the formatting and design of the document. If you are unable to provide an editable version of your file, the translation supplier might add an additional charge to recreate the formatting so that your translation exactly matches the original text. Additionally, if your document has a very complicated layout and the target language will take up a lot more space than the source language (expansion), you might see a charge on your quotation for translation services to work on the formatting after translation. For identity documents, certificates and in certain legal contexts, you might see additional charges for legalisation. We recently looked at legalisation following new advice from the ATC, essentially, it provides a sworn statement that the translation is a true and accurate version of the original and ensures that it will be accepted by official bodies around the world. The final additional charge to mention is the rush or express charge. These are admittedly pretty rare, but not unheard of. If you require a longer translation to be done by the next day or over the weekend, some translation suppliers will charge a rush fee (usually a percentage levy). A bit more clarity? Hopefully by the end of this blog on understanding your quotation for translation services, you feel a little bit like me at the end of a couple of weeks at STAR… Like the mists are clearing and that all this jargon is not quite so impossible after all. Hopefully… Maybe? If you’ve still got questions, you can always contact one of our team – they’re happy to help and can discuss your potential translation projects in greater depth.
对于那些行业以外的人来说,翻译服务的报价可能是一件棘手的事情。 我还记得我在 STAR 工作的第一个星期。我每天晚上都从我需要学习的新事物的巨大规模中精神疲惫地回家。其中一个就是那句老话。 模糊匹配,内部重复,翻译导入:我的头从新信息旋转。 几年后,这些术语现在是我个人词典的一部分,很容易忘记,我并不总是完全理解它们的意思。 因此,今天的博客将深入研究翻译服务的报价,这样你,一个潜在的翻译购买者,可以确保你知道你在购买什么,最重要的是,你得到了你所要求的和你需要的东西。 报价如何定价? 它并不是闻所未闻的接受翻译服务的报价,打破它的价格每页,甚至一个给你一个项目固定费用。然而,行业标准是以每字计算价格。 为了赶你出去,这些可以被列为一个单词的价格,如0.25GBP 或一个价格每千字,如250 GBP 。这两者都意味着完全相同的东西,而且很大程度上取决于处理零或十进制分隔符的个人偏好。 翻译服务的报价将涉及源词的数量,即翻译前文档中的字数。 这有一个简单的原因:透明度。 翻译服务的报价以价格为基础,因为这是计算文档成本的最透明的方式。 翻译服务供应商可以使用字数来估计项目完成需要多少时间,并且客户能够在开始翻译之前知道翻译成本。 正是由于这个原因,翻译供应商将要求您提供一个可编辑的文件。 虽然有可能估计字数,但以 PDF 格式为例,它只能是一个估计,而不是一个固定的报价。 在这种情况下,您的供应商可能建议您的翻译服务报价是基于目标词,即翻译后的文档字数。同样,他们将能够提供项目的估计费用,但不能提供确切的数字。 列出了哪些不同的类别? 尽管每个翻译供应商都会以不同的方式处理报价和词条分解,但在翻译服务的报价中,您可能会看到四个主要的类别“词类型”。 在解释每个类别之前,我需要添加翻译记忆软件分析文本的意义单位,通常是句子。这意味着将对每个句子进行分类,并根据每个类别中的句子中出现的单词数量创建单词计数。 新词:供应商以前从未为您翻译过的句子。 模糊词语:类似于供应商以前为您翻译过的句子。 内部重复:在文档中多次出现以供翻译的句子。(这些句子的第一次出现被计算为新的或模糊的)。 译文:供应商在以前的项目中已经为你翻译过的句子。 对于向新供应商提出的首次翻译请求,您将不会收到任何模糊匹配,因为供应商没有用于您的翻译服务报价的参考材料。 随着时间的推移,特别是如果您为每个请求发送类似的材料,您应该看到您的翻译服务报价随着翻译记忆量的增加而迅速减少。 完成翻译需要多长时间? 同样,每个翻译供应商都会对这个问题提出稍微不同的答案,但从广义上讲,翻译供应商在向您发送翻译服务报价时,有可能建议准确的周转时间。 一些公司将建议一个具体的交货日期,一些将建议周转时间给在工作日。 在 STAR ,我们落入后一个阵营。我们知道您的翻译项目可能还没有准备好立即开始,因此通过在工作日内给您一个估计的周转时间,您可以确定这仍然是有效的两天,两周,甚至两个月。 我们的周转时间基于两个因素。完成项目所需的时间,以及我们最好的翻译人员何时开始处理项目。 对于每个翻译项目,您希望确保从事该项目的翻译人员在主题方面有经验,最好是在客户以前的项目中有经验。供应商并不总是可以直接开始您的项目,我们将此因素纳入我们的翻译服务报价。 因此,我们可能不总是最快的,但我们认为,如果一项工作值得做,它应该做得正确。 但如果你在某一时刻需要它呢? 如果您需要在某一时间或某一天交付翻译,请提前通知翻译供应商。 我们可以将此因素纳入我们的翻译服务报价中,并相应地进行计划。同样,请告诉我们这个项目是否不那么紧迫。(我们喜欢你说的话)。但认真地说,我们希望最好的人能在你的文本上工作,有时一到两天的额外工作会使一切变得不同。 为什么不同的语言更贵? 有几个因素可以影响您的翻译服务报价。语言组合就是其中之一。 简单地说,这取决于供求。 某些语言有更多的发言者,而且有更多的翻译人员(通常对翻译成这些语言的要求也更高)。 西欧语言之间的翻译,通常是以英语为搭配的,比亚洲语言的翻译便宜得多。 另一个需要考虑的因素是你的供应商所在国家的生活成本。翻译成斯堪的纳维亚语通常更贵,因为那里的生活成本比英国高得多。 这两件事都会影响到你方翻译服务报价中列出的价格。 为什么还要额外收费? 额外的费用以及如何避免它们出现在你的翻译服务报价上绝对是另一篇博客文章的主题,我有很多话要说。但就目前而言,我将仅限于研究哪些指控可能出现以及为什么出现。 翻译服务报价中最有可能看到的费用是 DTP (桌面发布)。在普通英语中,它是关于文档的格式和设计的。 如果您无法提供文件的可编辑版本,翻译供应商可能会增加额外费用以重新创建格式,使您的翻译与原始文本完全匹配。 此外,如果您的文档具有非常复杂的布局,并且目标语言将占用比源语言(扩展)更多的空间,您可能会看到您的翻译服务在翻译后对格式进行处理的报价收取费用。 对于身份文件、证书以及在某些法律环境中,您可能会看到对合法化的额外收费。最近,我们在听取了 ATC 的新建议后,研究了合法化问题,实质上,它提供了一个宣誓声明,即翻译是原版的真实和准确版本,并确保它将被世界各地的官方机构接受。 最后要提到的额外费用是急费或快费.诚然,这是相当罕见的,但并不是闻所未闻。如果您需要在第二天或周末做更长的翻译,一些翻译供应商将收取费用(通常是百分比征税)。 更清晰一点? 希望在这篇博客的结尾了解你对翻译服务的引用,你在 STAR 的几周结束时感觉有点像我… 就像薄雾在清除,所有这些行话毕竟不是那么不可能。 希望…也许? 如果你仍然有问题,你可以随时联系我们的一个团队——他们很乐意帮助你,并且可以更深入地讨论你的潜在翻译项目。

以上中文文本为机器翻译,存在不同程度偏差和错误,请理解并参考英文原文阅读。

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