Re: Translation question: words numbers in different languages?

Subject: Re: Translation question: words numbers in different languages?
From: "Simon North" <Simon -dot- North -at- quintiq -dot- com>
To: "Susan Hogarth" <hogarth -at- gmail -dot- com>, "Techwr-l" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:18:12 +0200

Susan,

I have been a freelance translator (German/French/Dutch to English)
since 1976 and I have never heard
of anyone charging according to the target language. If for no other
reason, it would make price
estimation damn near impossible and time planning more like guesswork.
I can estimate fairly
accurately according to the source language, subject matter, input and
output media, and tool
requirements how long a particular job will take me. You cannot
sensibly make even a rough estimate
based on the target language, there are just too many variable
involved.

However, based on a volume count, French text is approximately 30%
longer than an equivalent
English text (semi-technical, formal article level); or at least this
was the rough guide we used
when I worked at the European Space Agency. The volume increase does
not necessarily reflect
an analogous increase in the word count. Your counts could be waaaaay
off. The only useful
suggestion I could make would be to try and take a representative text
sample and push it
through an online/machine translator (Prompt, Babylon, Pragma or
similar). The result will
be pretty awful, but the word count will be closer than guessing.

Good luck!

Simon.


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References:
Translation question: words numbers in different languages?: From: Susan Hogarth

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