Results of translation and interpreting market survey by Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters

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Corbett AM
Corbett AM  Identity Verified
Ireland
Local time: 19:43
French to English
+ ...
McAfee Web Security warning for that site Nov 16, 2018

I don't know if you realise this but there seems to be something up with that website belonging to the Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters. That is what I encountered anyway. After clicking on that link to get to the page (and also clicking on a link from another site a few minutes ago) I got a web security warning saying it was 'very risky' (so I didn't 'accept the risk'). It's good to know the average rate in Belgium though (from the headlines I saw elsewhere).

Update
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I don't know if you realise this but there seems to be something up with that website belonging to the Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters. That is what I encountered anyway. After clicking on that link to get to the page (and also clicking on a link from another site a few minutes ago) I got a web security warning saying it was 'very risky' (so I didn't 'accept the risk'). It's good to know the average rate in Belgium though (from the headlines I saw elsewhere).

Update: I keep getting this warning page regardless of how I try to access the site (i.e. links from different pages) so it's not just the link in this article. Most of the time, the home page does come up for a couple of seconds but is followed by this warning page.

If anyone knows how I can access it without this issue, I'd appreciate it (the only good thing about it is that it's nice to know my anti-virus software works!)

[Edited at 2018-11-16 11:35 GMT]
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Gareth Callagy
INAN ONER
Natalia Olatz Prio Platz
 
Kaspars Melkis
Kaspars Melkis  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 19:43
English to Latvian
+ ...
Some thoughts Nov 16, 2018

I suspect that translators in medical field more often working with agencies is because drug or medical device companies in the EU do centralized marketing in all EU language at once. It is complicated to manage 25 languages at once and they have no experience in this but they have more experience in outsourcing research. It only makes sense to outsource translations as well.

Another thing is that I assume that it is not that specialized translators don't charge more for their speci
... See more
I suspect that translators in medical field more often working with agencies is because drug or medical device companies in the EU do centralized marketing in all EU language at once. It is complicated to manage 25 languages at once and they have no experience in this but they have more experience in outsourcing research. It only makes sense to outsource translations as well.

Another thing is that I assume that it is not that specialized translators don't charge more for their speciality but rather they don't charge less for non-specialized texts. Would be interesting to test this assumption.

What surprized me is that although direct clients pay more it is not much more. Considering that the rates normally charged by agencies are much higher, translators working with direct clients should not be afraid to charge more too.

I believe there is a mistake on page 52 – The average rates for agencies are €0.9995/word. The tables above quotes it rather like €0.09995.
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Natalia Olatz Prio Platz
 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 19:43
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
My two cents Nov 17, 2018

Having lived and worked as a translator in Belgium for 30 years, I’m not surprised at all by the apparently low rate charged to direct clients. Just to give an example the Brussels region is home to 180 nationalities, with 108 different languages spoken, and more than 55% of residents were not born Belgian. International organizations, from the European Commission and NATO to the European Space Agency, are responsible for over 120,000 jobs or 17% of all employment in the Brussels region. All t... See more
Having lived and worked as a translator in Belgium for 30 years, I’m not surprised at all by the apparently low rate charged to direct clients. Just to give an example the Brussels region is home to 180 nationalities, with 108 different languages spoken, and more than 55% of residents were not born Belgian. International organizations, from the European Commission and NATO to the European Space Agency, are responsible for over 120,000 jobs or 17% of all employment in the Brussels region. All these professionals and their dependents need to translate their papers and this forms the bulk of work of many translators in Belgium. As you would expect this type of work is charged at a lower rate than the work done usually for direct clients (law firms, medical/pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, embassies, banks and the like…) and this might explain why the difference is so small…Collapse


Kaspars Melkis
Gareth Callagy
 
Rafal Kwiatkowski
Rafal Kwiatkowski
United States
Member (2013)
English to Polish
+ ...
Brussels is not comparable to other European markets Apr 9, 2019

With all of us chasing each other to the bottom (at least among Polish translators - I have seen someone offer 1 eurocent per word), it is interesting to see what happens in a market where there is a high demand for our services. But then again, why did a Belgian agency offer me less than half of the Belgian average?

[Edited at 2019-04-09 06:33 GMT]


Tibor Pataki
 


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Results of translation and interpreting market survey by Belgian Chamber of Translators and Interpreters







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