"Unique" words
Thread poster: anastasiawhite
anastasiawhite
anastasiawhite  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 14:48
English to Russian
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Sep 25, 2018

I just received a 5,000 word project and they said that 2,000 of those words are unique. What does that mean? Should I only charge for the 2,000 unique words?

 
Jack Doughty
Jack Doughty  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:48
Russian to English
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In memoriam
CAT tools Sep 25, 2018

Some agencies expect you to use CAT tools and pay a certain rate for "full matches", a lower rate for "fuzzy matches" and nothing for "full matches". Personally I do not use CAT tools, they are not often much help for the sort of translations I do, so I refuse all offers of this sort. I don't think I lose much as a result.

Rachel Fell
mariealpilles
Robert Forstag
Wioleta Kwiatkowska
Tom in London
Giray Türkmen
Slobodan Kozarčić
 
Jack Doughty
Jack Doughty  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:48
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam
CAT tools Sep 26, 2018

Too late now to edit previous post, but it should read "...nothing for 'no matches'".

 
Thomas Pfann
Thomas Pfann  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 21:48
Member (2006)
English to German
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2,000 words to translate, rest repetitions Sep 26, 2018

As Jack already pointed out, it means that 2,000 words are 'new'. The rest should be repetitions (or the client could mean TM matches - 100% or fuzzy - in which case you'd need to clarify if those need to be ignored or reviewed).

However, if that's all the client told you it's a bit vague and you need to do your analysis (which you should actually always do anyway). Before doing any work, make sure to confirm the amount you will invoice for the job.

[Edited at 2018-09-26 08:
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As Jack already pointed out, it means that 2,000 words are 'new'. The rest should be repetitions (or the client could mean TM matches - 100% or fuzzy - in which case you'd need to clarify if those need to be ignored or reviewed).

However, if that's all the client told you it's a bit vague and you need to do your analysis (which you should actually always do anyway). Before doing any work, make sure to confirm the amount you will invoice for the job.

[Edited at 2018-09-26 08:01 GMT]
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Nikki Scott-Despaigne
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 22:48
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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@Anastasia Sep 26, 2018

anastasiawhite wrote:
I just received a 5,000 word project and they said that 2,000 of those words are unique. What does that mean? Should I only charge for the 2,000 unique words?


What it means depends on whether the client took into account TM matching and internal fuzzy matching when calculating the "unique" words. But regardless of whether he has or hasn't, the "unique" words is a word count that attempts to reflect what is the word count of segments that contain non-repeating text.

In other words, in the text "The cat sat on the mat. The dog sat on the mat. The cat sat on the mat.", there are 18 words in total, but 12 "unique" words. The words in the third sentence is "non-unique" because it is a repetition of the first sentence, and all the words in the first and second sentence are counted as "unique" because those are the first or only occurrence of those sentences.

If we take internal fuzzy matching into account (i.e. if we take into account that the second sentence is very similar to the first sentence), then the "unique" word count would be even lower (as low as 7 or 8, in fact).


Whether to charge for all words or only "unique" words is up to you. You should charge a rate that reflects how long it will take you to do the job. You should try to get a hold of the source files and do your own word count on it. If you use special tools that help improve your translation speed, then you should take that into account as well.

If a client gives you a "unique" word count, he probably assumes that you will be using a CAT tool that will enable you to translate repeating or semi-repeating segments faster than non-repeating segments, and he is probably hoping that you will charge him less for repeating and semi-repeating segments. However, you should only charge less if you will in fact spend less time on those segments. If you're not using a tool that allows you to do that, or if the subject matter or language combination makes this unreasonable, you should not offer discounted rates for such segments unless you really want to.


 
Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 00:48
English to Russian
It means they gonna rob you Sep 26, 2018

nothing for "full matches" is ok. This is exactly the way it works. No matches are full paid.

anastasiawhite, ask them to highlight their unique 2000 words among all 5000 and translate only those words.


Slobodan Kozarčić
Philippe Etienne
neilmac
Olaf Schutze (X)
 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 22:48
Member (2003)
Danish to English
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It may depend on your language pair Sep 26, 2018

I work with two languages that have very few inflections, one being English, so a 100% match probably IS a 100% match. Even then, it is necessary to check that the text is correct and unambiguous as a whole, so I set the basic rate high if the rate for 100% matches is 0% …

I suspect that with some pairs, when translating out of English, you have to take things like gender into account in the target language, so a 100% match might actually require considerable editing, not just ch
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I work with two languages that have very few inflections, one being English, so a 100% match probably IS a 100% match. Even then, it is necessary to check that the text is correct and unambiguous as a whole, so I set the basic rate high if the rate for 100% matches is 0% …

I suspect that with some pairs, when translating out of English, you have to take things like gender into account in the target language, so a 100% match might actually require considerable editing, not just checking. There will be other differences, depending on the languages you work in.

You need to see the text and assess how much work is involved.
I use my CAT all the time, unless it is really technically impossible, but I can appreciate that with different scripts and unrelated languages, a CAT may not be worth the effort of setting up the 'project'.

If you can 'cut and paste' large sections of text as repetitions, so you can proofread them first and then re-use them as they are, then it is fair enough to give a reduction for them, even without a CAT.
OTOH if there are mostly 'fuzzy matches', then it may still be a lot of work to translate them correctly into the target language. Checking an 85% match and correcting it CAN take longer than just translating it from scratch! (Even in my language pair...)
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Stepan Konev
Stepan Konev  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 00:48
English to Russian
RE: 100% match might actually require considerable editing Sep 26, 2018

Christine Andersen wrote:
so a 100% match might actually require considerable editing

Totally agree. My phrase "nothing for "full matches" is ok." was about Jack Doughty's statement. He first put it right, then "edited" to the contrary.


neilmac
 


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