What is considered a source word? Thread poster: Yves Jacques
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Yves Jacques 
Canada
Local time: 16:53
English to French
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For an agency requesting a bid, what is considered a source word?
Is it every word in the document? Is it a 5 character segment? Or do they consider new words as a source word?
The reason for my asking is that I bid on a job at 0.10usd new words, 0.08usd fuzzy words and 0.02usd for 100% and repetitions. The agency came back stating that it is too expensive and are offering 0.09usd per source word.
Who's the winner in this game?
Thanks and regards,
... See more For an agency requesting a bid, what is considered a source word?
Is it every word in the document? Is it a 5 character segment? Or do they consider new words as a source word?
The reason for my asking is that I bid on a job at 0.10usd new words, 0.08usd fuzzy words and 0.02usd for 100% and repetitions. The agency came back stating that it is too expensive and are offering 0.09usd per source word.
Who's the winner in this game?
Thanks and regards,
Seadag ▲ Collapse
| | | | Fabio Descalzi
Uruguay
Local time: 17:53
Member (2004)
German to Spanish
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| Two different questions | Mar 24, 2010 |
Hi Yves
Maybe you should ask two different questions:
1) What is a source word? In my experience, for an agency, a source word is "whatever is counted by the Trados Analyse function". So this should be no serious doubt. And your way to quote, USD 0.10 "for new words", etc. seems conceptually correct.
2) Is your price of "USD 0.10 for new words" too high for that agency in particular, and for that language pair in particular? That is yet another very different ques... See more Hi Yves
Maybe you should ask two different questions:
1) What is a source word? In my experience, for an agency, a source word is "whatever is counted by the Trados Analyse function". So this should be no serious doubt. And your way to quote, USD 0.10 "for new words", etc. seems conceptually correct.
2) Is your price of "USD 0.10 for new words" too high for that agency in particular, and for that language pair in particular? That is yet another very different question. Personally, I don't think that to be "expensive" at all, on the contrary.
Regards,
Fabio
[Edited at 2010-03-24 12:55 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Every word in the source document is considered a source word. | Mar 24, 2010 |
Replying to your question, whether the words in the source text are new words, fuzzy matches, repetitions, etc. everything is considered as source words. They're making a distinction since there is a TM for the project which you placed a bid, but that doesn't mean that the number of source words in the original document would be decreased or halved. If there are 10,000 source words in the original document, then it's 10,000 source words to translate. However, if there is a TM, and if there are f... See more Replying to your question, whether the words in the source text are new words, fuzzy matches, repetitions, etc. everything is considered as source words. They're making a distinction since there is a TM for the project which you placed a bid, but that doesn't mean that the number of source words in the original document would be decreased or halved. If there are 10,000 source words in the original document, then it's 10,000 source words to translate. However, if there is a TM, and if there are fuzzy matches, repetitions, etc. this will reduce your time spent on translating these segments. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 22:53
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| Agree with Fabio | Mar 24, 2010 |
Fabio Descalzi wrote:
In my experience, for an agency, a source word is "whatever is counted by the Trados Analyse function".
Yes, that is what I wanted to say as well. A word is the unit that the agency's word counting software counts as a word. For languages with spaces between words, this is usually anything with a space or a punctuation mark on either side, regardless of word length.
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| Source vs. target word | Mar 24, 2010 |
I think the point is that the agency is specifying "source word" to make sure you understand they are basing the pricing on the volume of the source files (and not the "target", the translated files). This is an important point to agree on, as the number of words may change (increase or decrease) when going from one language to another.
You probably meant "per source word" in your quote, too, but did not specify it explicitly - the agency did to prevent misunderstanding.
I thi... See more I think the point is that the agency is specifying "source word" to make sure you understand they are basing the pricing on the volume of the source files (and not the "target", the translated files). This is an important point to agree on, as the number of words may change (increase or decrease) when going from one language to another.
You probably meant "per source word" in your quote, too, but did not specify it explicitly - the agency did to prevent misunderstanding.
I think the rate they suggested to you was probably the "base" or "full" rate (for new words). So, they say 0.09 as opposed to your 0.10. If they did not say anything about the fuzzies and reps, that means they either:
A) don't use such discounts (that would be a good thing), or
B) they accept your rate for those, or
C) they want proportionally discounted rates based on the 0.09 full rate, or
D) they want completely different discounts but they are not telling you that.
In other words, you need to ask more questions from them, and clarify these issues.
By the way, did they ask you up front for TM discounts?
Have you seen the TM, do you know what quality is that?
If your answer for any of these questions is NO, then you may be in the process of shooting yourself in the foot.
Katalin ▲ Collapse
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