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Rates for PEMT - large project
Thread poster: Gabriella Alberti
Gabriella Alberti
Gabriella Alberti  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 15:55
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
True Nov 7, 2017

Mirko Mainardi wrote:

AFAIK, some agencies and end clients actually use PEMT in conjunction with the "split the wordcount into bazillions translators" approach...


That's absolutely true, however I - as a former PM - and the guy who interviewed me, with whom I worked for another big UK agency - as an Account Manager, have experience of a catastrofic project, which took us ages and was basically like in the scenario provided: huge wordcount, little turnaround time. We had to split the text into many single files to be shared with translators, who could fast work on them, and then have them proofread by some proofers (not even 1 single proofreader for consistency... the word count/turnaround time combo was too tight). Not surprisingly, the commissioner was not happy and impressed about our translations at all.

I think I'm going to highlight how badly that went and propose a realistic turnaround for such a word count


 
Katrin Braams
Katrin Braams  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 15:55
Member (2018)
English to German
+ ...
I would stay away from this job Nov 7, 2017

If it is what I think, I would stay away from this job.

I did about 10.000 words for this project and the quality of the MT was no way near acceptable. The product descriptions varied widely in quality and in topic. They went from metal fittings to nose piercings to car jacks to bed linings to toy cars etc etc. Most of these products required in-depth research, because I did not know how some tiny end piece of a nose piercing, a certain type screw/sequin/fabric was called in German
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If it is what I think, I would stay away from this job.

I did about 10.000 words for this project and the quality of the MT was no way near acceptable. The product descriptions varied widely in quality and in topic. They went from metal fittings to nose piercings to car jacks to bed linings to toy cars etc etc. Most of these products required in-depth research, because I did not know how some tiny end piece of a nose piercing, a certain type screw/sequin/fabric was called in German. Therefore, I never got into a certain flow, and was slow, slow, slow.

The MT was not nearly adequate, it was a mess as was most of the source, which had obviously been written by non-native speakers. There were no images provided, only a list which had to be checked for a product ID which then had to be entered on the client website. With some luck the ID would lead to the respective product website and an image. But 50% of the time this did not happen and I had to search for the product via google search, which sometimes was successful and sometimes not. After I had found the English source on the internet I had to look for a similar product on their German website to figure out the correct terminology. It was a painstakingly slow process and the pay was a joke when compared to time and effort.

I was absolutely fed up and, when approached again, declined the next batch. In the meantime this project seems to get handed around from agency to agency, because I regularly receive respective offers from varying agencies.

I can't recommend anybody to commit her/himself to this project.

[Edited at 2017-11-08 09:29 GMT]

[Edited at 2017-11-08 09:30 GMT]
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Michael Wetzel
Michael Wetzel  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 15:55
German to English
PETM Nov 8, 2017

That's not a typo. If I were a PM, my first question for this client would be what kind of reference materials they have for me. If they have huge satisfactory TMs (or at least very comprehensive glossaries) or could provide me with satisfactory existing translations that could be used to construct an effective TM, then the project might not be unrealistic. I'd have to also figure out how to get a genuine feel for how repetitive the texts really are.

Other than that, I agree with mo
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That's not a typo. If I were a PM, my first question for this client would be what kind of reference materials they have for me. If they have huge satisfactory TMs (or at least very comprehensive glossaries) or could provide me with satisfactory existing translations that could be used to construct an effective TM, then the project might not be unrealistic. I'd have to also figure out how to get a genuine feel for how repetitive the texts really are.

Other than that, I agree with most of my colleagues: I don't think MT could work any kind of miracles here and turning over what probably should be (at least in part) highly repetitive/consistent texts to a very large number of translators seems like a bad idea. The only role PEMT might play is if they are locked into a launch date and are willing to invest a significant amount of money in having a not very good translation online in two months while the "real" translation is gradually inserted during a realistic timeframe after that.
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Gabriella Alberti
Gabriella Alberti  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 15:55
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Existing suppliers Nov 8, 2017

Michael Wetzel wrote:

That's not a typo. If I were a PM, my first question for this client would be what kind of reference materials they have for me. If they have huge satisfactory TMs (or at least very comprehensive glossaries) or could provide me with satisfactory existing translations that could be used to construct an effective TM, then the project might not be unrealistic. I'd have to also figure out how to get a genuine feel for how repetitive the texts really are.


The scenario reads: "We are one of XX's existing suppliers, the account management team have been working on expanding business with them and landed this opportunity".

This means that the agency I am preparing this for should have TMs and approved glossaries.

But from what I've understood from the various entries, even in this case it wouldn't be ideal to use PEMT.


 
Gabriella Alberti
Gabriella Alberti  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 15:55
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
It's a possible scenario in a recruitement interview Nov 8, 2017

GermanLaw1 wrote:

If it is what I think, I would stay away from this job.

I did about 10.000 words for this project and the quality of the MT was no way near acceptable. The product descriptions varied widely in quality and in topic. They went from metal fittings to nose piercings to car jacks to bed linings to toy cars etc etc. Most of these products required in-depth research, because I did not know how some tiny end piece of a nose piercing, a certain type screw/sequin/fabric was called in German. Therefore, I never got into a certain flow, and was slow, slow, slow.

The MT was not nearly adequate, it was a mess as was most of the source, which had obviously been written by non-native speakers. There were no images provided, only a list which had to be checked for a product ID which then had to be entered on the client website. With some luck the ID would lead to the respective product website and an image. But 50% of the time this did not happen and I had to search for the product via google search, which sometimes was successful and sometimes not. After I had found the English source on the internet I had to look for a similar product on their German website to figure out the correct terminology. It was a painstakingly slow process and the pay was a joke when compared to time and effort.

I was absolutely fed up and, when approached again, declined the next batch. In the meantime this project seems to get handed around from agency to agency, because I regularly receive respective offers from varying agencies.

I can't recommend anybody to commit her/himself to this project.

[Edited at 2017-11-08 09:29 GMT]

[Edited at 2017-11-08 09:30 GMT]


This is not a true project, I was asked to prepare a presentation on this possible scenario by an agency as part of their recruiting process for the role of Program Manager, but thank you for sharing your experience, and I totally see why you don't want to take any more work like this!


 
Michael Wetzel
Michael Wetzel  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 15:55
German to English
bad pun Nov 9, 2017

Sorry for not being clear: PETM (post-edited translation memory) was a bad pun and not a typo. As I wrote later in my entry, the only role I can see here MT or PEMT is as a stopgap solution to deal with an otherwise impossible deadline. I do think that they are sometimes used in combination with more effective translation techniques to deal with impossible deadlines or quantities of material. The temporary translations are then gradually replaced according to priority.

If the hypoth
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Sorry for not being clear: PETM (post-edited translation memory) was a bad pun and not a typo. As I wrote later in my entry, the only role I can see here MT or PEMT is as a stopgap solution to deal with an otherwise impossible deadline. I do think that they are sometimes used in combination with more effective translation techniques to deal with impossible deadlines or quantities of material. The temporary translations are then gradually replaced according to priority.

If the hypothetical project involves existing TMs and alignable existing translations, then I think your presentation should focus (or should have focused) on figuring out how much those are going to help to make what sounds like an impossible project realistic. Are there any new languages? Are the products and descriptions heavily based on or identical with some of the existing examples? Are the descriptions genuine advertising text or more or less formulaic basic descriptions? ...
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Hans Lenting
Hans Lenting
Netherlands
Member (2006)
German to Dutch
Another example Nov 10, 2017

Hans Lenting wrote:

Yesterday I received this request:



Another request for PEMT just came in:

Client Budget Range: Intermediate ($0.09/word - $0.15/word)
We require a capacity between 2,500 and 18,000 words per week.

(Most likely these are individual project descriptions!)


 
Mirko Mainardi
Mirko Mainardi  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 15:55
Member
English to Italian
Rates Nov 10, 2017

Hans Lenting wrote:

Another request for PEMT just came in:

Client Budget Range: Intermediate ($0.09/word - $0.15/word)
We require a capacity between 2,500 and 18,000 words per week.

(Most likely these are individual project descriptions!)


Not sure about your pairs, but at those rates I could even subject myself to the extreme boredom of (and often extensive searches required by) this type of work...

And the wordcount sounds relatively feasible too (at any rate much better than the one mentioned in your previous example).


 
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