Odd new trend
Thread poster: Adieu
Adieu
Adieu  Identity Verified
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
May 19, 2021

Anybody else seeing an odd trend:
Cheap and very dirty deep discounted MTPE followed by full-price Revision (paying out WAY more than the MTPE role for the same job)

????


Tomasz Sienicki
Dalia Nour
 
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei  Identity Verified
Ghana
Local time: 16:05
Japanese to English
Interesting May 19, 2021

Never seen it, but wouldn't it be faster to retranslate if it's that bad and that highly paid?

 
Adieu
Adieu  Identity Verified
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Well... May 19, 2021

Pretty much.

Deep match discounts & cheap MTPE >> crap results >> pay somebody full price to "revise" it

I wonder if they are dodging contractual obligations to do multiple revision stages or something by going this odd route


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 18:05
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Adieu May 19, 2021

Adieu wrote:
Cheap and very dirty deep discounted MTPE followed by full-price Revision (paying out WAY more than the MTPE role for the same job).


I haven't seen it, but I imagine it could be a possible business model. Whether this results in a good translation would depend on how much effort the reviewer puts in, and on whether the MTPE is adequate. I don't see a problem with this way of working. There are translators out there who can do quick-and-dirty MTPE much quicker than they can do standard quality MTPE, although I'm not such a person.


 
IrinaN
IrinaN
United States
Local time: 11:05
English to Russian
+ ...
The math is simple May 19, 2021

Say, they pay 0.05 for 10000 MT words (could be 0.04 or 0.03!!! How about 0.02?!?!?!?) = 500 bucks tops.

A good US translator will cost at least 1200. Plus the cost of proof by the agency proofreader.

If they set the number of hours allocated for revising, then it should be about 6 hours, which is ridiculous for MTPE - it's a good pace for a good quality human translation proof but they attempt to set it for MTPE anyway. OK, give it 10.

Say, the editor char
... See more
Say, they pay 0.05 for 10000 MT words (could be 0.04 or 0.03!!! How about 0.02?!?!?!?) = 500 bucks tops.

A good US translator will cost at least 1200. Plus the cost of proof by the agency proofreader.

If they set the number of hours allocated for revising, then it should be about 6 hours, which is ridiculous for MTPE - it's a good pace for a good quality human translation proof but they attempt to set it for MTPE anyway. OK, give it 10.

Say, the editor charges 50/hour. There is a good chance that a good editor working for this kind of rate and higher simply won't accept this cr** and the editors would be cheaper as well - 35-40. Another 500 tops or even 200-300. 500 + 500 = 1000 total max for the job that should cost at least 1500. Add the agency margin paid by the client... 60-70% profit minimum for as long as they can find the vendors... Unfortunately, they can

Food for thought for future editors lured in by "real" prices.

Even if the editor will manage to insist on the actual number of hours spent on rewriting, h/s will lose compared to a decent translation rate from scratch. He'd need to bill 30 hours to catch up at $40/hour.

BTW, what are those real prices currently in trend?
Collapse


 
IrinaN
IrinaN
United States
Local time: 11:05
English to Russian
+ ...
And another thing May 19, 2021

Who says they pay anything at all for translation when some half-trained agency clerk can push the button to run MT for the same salary? ))

AnnaSCHTR
Robert Rietvelt
Tretyak
 
AnnaSCHTR
AnnaSCHTR  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 11:05
English to Czech
+ ...
Exactly May 19, 2021

IrinaN wrote:

Who says they pay anything at all for translation when some half-trained agency clerk can push the button to run MT for the same salary? ))


Yes, exactly. I don't know what's worse - a completely unusable garbage that needs to be completely re-written, or those dangerous bits that look "right" but contain easy-to-overlook errors. And slapping the label "neural" on it is not helping either.


Peter Shortall
Daryo
Anna Sarah Krämer
Nena Perovic
Gabriel Csaba
 
Yakov Katsman
Yakov Katsman  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 12:05
Member (2016)
English to Russian
Possible twist May 24, 2021

Also, i am getting requests for quick review of texts - possibly MT or lightly edited MT.
I need to tell if it is OK with reasonable additional editing or complete garbage and need full editing/retranslation.
Possible only really bad MT going to retranslation.
Other texts going to client with or without additional editing.


Adieu
 
Adieu
Adieu  Identity Verified
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
I just got offered a $17,000 / hour revision job May 24, 2021

With purchase order and everything.


...such a pity it was a typo on their part.


 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 18:05
French to English
. May 24, 2021

Adieu wrote:

Anybody else seeing an odd trend:
Cheap and very dirty deep discounted MTPE followed by full-price Revision (paying out WAY more than the MTPE role for the same job)

????

Yes. A while back I did a translation test and the client asked me if I would be willing to work on their premises two or three days a week. It had to be on site because of the software to be used.
Turned out that the company had outsourced all translations to an agency that did MT + PE, but the work was not up to scratch, so they ended up needing someone in-house to check everything. So I would be revising work that had undergone translation plus editing already.
I ended up declining the offer because it wasn't translation. I was also pretty peeved that I was expected to take my laptop to their "fully equipped premises", and the tech guy did something to my laptop that I can't undo, tying my Google account to something, meaning that Google now knows far more about me than I really want.
Oh, and their special in-house proof reading software sucked big time, but I'm sure you had already guessed that!

[Edited at 2021-05-24 14:59 GMT]


Adieu
P.L.F. Persio
 


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