Charge per character or per word Thread poster: Josephine Cassar
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I do not know if this has been answered, have not found it & submitted a support request- hope I am not breaking any rules here, pardon if so, but thought it better to open topic here.
A recent job posting said the company is willing to pay xxx per character, and this would result in xxx to xxx amount in all as payment. What do you think pls? People already applied for the job
| | | | Russell Jones 
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:30
Italian to English
Hi Josephine
I noticed this job yesterday too.
The Poster is based in Italy and much of the translation business transacted in Italy is still based on the traditional "cartella" (normally defined as 1500 key strokes but more in some sectors).
The poster will not have been given the option to define a budget based on "cartelle" and has therefore taken the nearest option the site offers, namely characters.
So 30,000 characters is roughly 20 "cartelle" (ignoring space... See more Hi Josephine
I noticed this job yesterday too.
The Poster is based in Italy and much of the translation business transacted in Italy is still based on the traditional "cartella" (normally defined as 1500 key strokes but more in some sectors).
The poster will not have been given the option to define a budget based on "cartelle" and has therefore taken the nearest option the site offers, namely characters.
So 30,000 characters is roughly 20 "cartelle" (ignoring spaces).
I use the rule of thumb for Italian source texts that a "cartella" equals 207 words on average. I know that some people use slightly higher figures. ▲ Collapse
| | | | ATIL KAYHAN
Türkiye
Local time: 13:30
Member (2007)
Turkish to English
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| Word versus Character | Dec 2, 2012 |
I always prefer measurements based on words rather than characters. This is because the smallest MEANINGFUL unit of measure is word in a text. A character is a unit but does not have any meaning. A word has a meaning. Translators spend time and effort translating words, not characters. Therefore, a text should be measured by the number of words it contains. The length of a word does not have any significance at all.
| | | | Josephine Cassar
Malta
Local time: 12:30
Member (2012)
English to Maltese
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TOPIC STARTER | Word versus character | Dec 2, 2012 |
Thank you both, I am still in the process of learning the intricacies of pricing & do not want to waste my resources translating for peanuts- at least I want to be sure that what I spend time translating, gets paid, & no tricks or play with words- reduction if there are matches when you still need to consider context, etc. Also it does not make sense to me that quote is 0.05 eur and than to expect to gain a certain sum; confusing to say the least. I too prefer pricing based on words & no playing... See more Thank you both, I am still in the process of learning the intricacies of pricing & do not want to waste my resources translating for peanuts- at least I want to be sure that what I spend time translating, gets paid, & no tricks or play with words- reduction if there are matches when you still need to consider context, etc. Also it does not make sense to me that quote is 0.05 eur and than to expect to gain a certain sum; confusing to say the least. I too prefer pricing based on words & no playing about, tkx to both as both helped clarify. ▲ Collapse
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| What matters is the total amount | Dec 2, 2012 |
One thing that is unchangeable on the short or mid range is your language pair. I saw your language pairs, Josephine, and I think there is no chance that you'll suddenly start translating, say, from/into German.
Incidentally, one word in German may correspond to an unpredictable quantity of words is many other languages. So this emphasizes the issue on if the rate per word/char will apply to the source or target text.
Charging on the source count is generally safer, as ... See more One thing that is unchangeable on the short or mid range is your language pair. I saw your language pairs, Josephine, and I think there is no chance that you'll suddenly start translating, say, from/into German.
Incidentally, one word in German may correspond to an unpredictable quantity of words is many other languages. So this emphasizes the issue on if the rate per word/char will apply to the source or target text.
Charging on the source count is generally safer, as both parties will know beforehand how much money shall change hands at the end. Yet sometimes it's either impossible or unreliable, if the original was scanned from hard copy, and worse, if it's handwritten.
On top of the char/word counts, there are the Italian cartelline, the German normzeilen, the Brazilian laudas. While the first two are, AFAIK, standard, the [/i]lauda[/i] may vary a lot.
For sworn translations, regulated by law in Brazil since 1943, the lauda comprised 25 lines of unknown length, as they could be typed or handwritten. In view of the computer era, different BR state regulating agencies - who determine mandatory statewide rates - have ruled that a lauda is equivalent to 1,000 chars not including spaces in one state, 1,250 chars including spaces in another, and so on.
A rule of thumb says that English text, when translated into Portuguese, "swells" by 0%-20% in character count. No data on word count change, apparently the subject/type of text plays a role here.
So the major problem for a translation client to compare different offers is to be able to convert anything, effortlessly, into some pecuniary quantity. So, if their offers are:
a) 'A' words x $ 'B' per word = $ X
b) 'C' chars w/spaces x 'D' per char including spaces = $Y
c) 'E' chars w/o spaces x 'F' per char not including spaces = $Z
d) similar calculation for lines, normzeile, cartelline, laudas, or even "pages",
... they'll just compare X, Y, and Z. That's what really matters! ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Asian languages are measured by character | Dec 3, 2012 |
ATIL KAYHAN wrote:
I always prefer measurements based on words rather than characters. This is because the smallest MEANINGFUL unit of measure is word in a text. A character is a unit but does not have any meaning. A word has a meaning. Translators spend time and effort translating words, not characters. Therefore, a text should be measured by the number of words it contains. The length of a word does not have any significance at all.
You are generalizing, and forgetting Asian languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, etc. where the smallest meaningful unit is a character, and in turn, the concept of a "word" does not exist, or at least not as clear as in Western languages.
This is why the option to measure the text in characters is included on the job platform.
| | | | | Word and character in Chinese | Dec 3, 2012 |
In Microsoft Word Count the number of Chinese words is the same as the number of characters (with no spaces) including punctuation marks where the text does not contain any Arabic numerals.
In actual fact, there may be several strokes/characters in a formed Chinese word, and when broken down they can form other words with meanings. As a simple example, “天" meaning sky, heaven, and day, can be broken down to form these two words “二，人" meaning two and human being or these... See more In Microsoft Word Count the number of Chinese words is the same as the number of characters (with no spaces) including punctuation marks where the text does not contain any Arabic numerals.
In actual fact, there may be several strokes/characters in a formed Chinese word, and when broken down they can form other words with meanings. As a simple example, “天" meaning sky, heaven, and day, can be broken down to form these two words “二，人" meaning two and human being or these two words “一，大" meaning one and big. So it is less confusing if the “smallest isolable meaningful element” of the Chinese language is referred to as a “word” rather than a “character”, although they can, in general, be used interchangeably. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | We are talking about measuring the quantity of text for translation purposes | Dec 5, 2012 |
aliasonly wrote:
In Microsoft Word Count the number of Chinese words is the same as the number of characters (with no spaces) including punctuation marks where the text does not contain any Arabic numerals.
In actual fact, there may be several strokes/characters in a formed Chinese word, and when broken down they can form other words with meanings. As a simple example, “天" meaning sky, heaven, and day, can be broken down to form these two words “二，人" meaning two and human being or these two words “一，大" meaning one and big.
Yes, those are called radicals, I believe.
http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php
However, when you have a text already written, you do not break up the characters like that and translate them separately, do you? “天" will not be translated as "two men". It is like saying you can break up a letter "M" into an I a V and another I. We just don't do that, do we?
So it is less confusing if the “smallest isolable meaningful element” of the Chinese language is referred to as a “word” rather than a “character”, although they can, in general, be used interchangeably.
I respectfully disagree. The problem with using the concept of a "word" in Chinese or Japanese (that's the language I know) is that some words that are single words in a western language, let's say nouns naming objects, can often be more than one character in Japanese or Chinese. It goes the other way around, too, as kanji is very compact, sometimes a single kanji can have a meaning that could only be expressed with several words in other (especially western) languages.
We are talking about measuring the volume of the text presented for translation. The best solution is to use a measurement that produces a fixed price at the start of the project (so, it is based on the source text), and it is straightforward and does not leave room for interpretation. Using "word" as a measurement unit in kanji-languages is prone to problems, and is best to avoid, IMHO.
Katalin
[Módosítva: 2012-12-05 05:58 GMT]
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| Clarification | Dec 6, 2012 |
Katalin Horváth McClure wrote: aliasonly wrote:
In Microsoft Word Count the number of Chinese words is the same as the number of characters (with no spaces) including punctuation marks where the text does not contain any Arabic numerals.
In actual fact, there may be several strokes/characters in a formed Chinese word, and when broken down they can form other words with meanings. As a simple example, “天" meaning sky, heaven, and day, can be broken down to form these two words “二，人" meaning two and human being or these two words “一，大" meaning one and big. Yes, those are called radicals, I believe. http://www.yellowbridge.com/chinese/radicals.php However, when you have a text already written, you do not break up the characters like that and translate them separately, do you? “天" will not be translated as "two men". It is like saying you can break up a letter "M" into an I a V and another I. We just don't do that, do we?
Katalin Horváth McClure wrote:
I respectfully disagree. The problem with using the concept of a "word" in Chinese or Japanese (that's the language I know) is that some words that are single words in a western language, let's say nouns naming objects, can often be more than one character in Japanese or Chinese. It goes the other way around, too, as kanji is very compact, sometimes a single kanji can have a meaning that could only be expressed with several words in other (especially western) languages.
While appreciating comments from Katalin I must say that I have somehow been misunderstood. By saying that a formed Chinese word can be broken down into other words with meanings, I mean just that. Radicals normally have no meaning but some of them, such as “一", "二" and "大"... are actual words per se with meanings. That said, it would be crazy to break down the Chinese characters and translate them separately when doing the translation, I for one would not do that.
A Chinese word may have many meanings, but taking "word" as a measurement unit in Chinese has not created any problem because a Chinese word is counted as one in word count. In case of a Chinese equivalent having more than one word for an English word, such as "现在" for "now", the number of words in the source language is two, while "now" in this case is the target language and has no bearing on the word count. So there is no complication at all.
Having some trouble with HTML.
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| | | | | CAT-tool wordcounts? | Dec 7, 2012 |
If you run a Chinese file through a CAT tool for analysis, do you get the results back as number of words, or number of characters? For Japanese, it is always characters.
By the way, the only reason I posted my comment was to reply to this sweeping generalization by an earlier poster:
This is because the smallest MEANINGFUL unit of measure is word in a text. A character is a unit but does not have any meaning.
The point is that characters do have meaning, as soon as we look at Asian languages, such as Chinese or Japanese.
I guess we agree on that.
[Módosítva: 2012-12-07 05:19 GMT]
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 12:30
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| What matters is whether you can picture it | Dec 7, 2012 |
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
What matters is the total amount.
What matters is being able to describe the size of the job in terms of something that is instinctively known to you. I know that there is 1.6 km in one mile, but if you tell me something is 100 miles away, I won't be able to comprehend the distance until I've converted it in my head. If you tell me something is 150 km away, then I know instinctively what kind of a distance that is, without having to imagine it or calculate it. So if someone is used to doing translations by the page, then it doesn't matter whether per-word or per-character is more accurate, because unless that person can convert the word count or character count back to a page count, the numbers will be meaningless to him.
| | | | | Chinese and Japanese | Dec 8, 2012 |
Katalin Horváth McClure wrote:
The point is that characters do have meaning, as soon as we look at Asian languages, such as Chinese or Japanese.
I guess we agree on that.
Eye to eye I suppose, not too sure about other Asian languages though.
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