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How much would you charge to put back a translation into a PDF document?
Thread poster: Louise Dupont (X)
Louise Dupont (X)
Louise Dupont (X)  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 15:19
English to French
Dec 2, 2003

I translated a PDF document (20,000 words)into French. Now the client ask me to put the translation back into the PDF. As you know with a PDF you have to copy and paste line by line..... and he wants me to add text boxes in the images that contains english sentences.
I know that this process is time- consuming but how do I charge for this?
 
Mary Worby
Mary Worby  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:19
German to English
+ ...
By the hour ... Dec 2, 2003

If you need to produce the document exactly as it was in the original - with all the same formatting, etc. - then the only way would be to charge by the hour.

But it may be worth letting the customer have a rough idea of how much it is likely to cost and asking them to see if they can root out an original Word (or other format) document. It's surprising how quickly documents can come to light when there is money at stake... See more
If you need to produce the document exactly as it was in the original - with all the same formatting, etc. - then the only way would be to charge by the hour.

But it may be worth letting the customer have a rough idea of how much it is likely to cost and asking them to see if they can root out an original Word (or other format) document. It's surprising how quickly documents can come to light when there is money at stake

Regards

Mary ▲ Collapse
 
Jerzy Czopik
Jerzy Czopik  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 21:19
Member (2003)
Polish to German
+ ...
Sorry, I don´t understand your point Dec 2, 2003

Getting a document in PDF-format means simply printing it with a PDF-writer or Acrobat Distiller.
And when I print the document for the customer, I do not charge anything for it. This is simply service.
When the client ist asking you to reformat your Word document in order to get it like the PDF original format, then I would indeed charge by the hour. But this is tricky, as formating is not an easy job. If you are not familiar with using styles and all other formating options (even i... See more
Getting a document in PDF-format means simply printing it with a PDF-writer or Acrobat Distiller.
And when I print the document for the customer, I do not charge anything for it. This is simply service.
When the client ist asking you to reformat your Word document in order to get it like the PDF original format, then I would indeed charge by the hour. But this is tricky, as formating is not an easy job. If you are not familiar with using styles and all other formating options (even in Word there are a lot of them), I would eventually let it be and not accept the job.

Kind regards
Jerzy ▲ Collapse
 
Kevin Fulton
Kevin Fulton  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 15:19
German to English
The client wants desktop publishing Dec 2, 2003

Louise Dupont wrote:

I translated a PDF document (20,000 words)into French. Now the client ask me to put the translation back into the PDF. [snip]
I know that this process is time- consuming but how do I charge for this?


The client possibly doesn't understand how the document was created in the first place. Many highly-formatted documents started out as word processing documents, then were formatted with a program such as Pagemaker to provide columns, text boxes, etc. Then the document was transformed into a PDF doc using a utility such as PDF Writer. You could possibly do a layout using Word, then use PDF writer (assuming you have this utility, or have the full Acrobat package), but it will be *very* time consuming and probably won't resemble the original document as closely as the client might like.
Hope this helps, Kevin
 


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How much would you charge to put back a translation into a PDF document?







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