Proofreading Rates

[Daniel Beecham]

Hello Everyone,
 
I'm a proofreader currently looking for additional clients, and
I was wondering about the average rate per word in yen for
proofreaders of Japanese to English translations.
 
Currently most of my work comes from a Japanese to English
translation company based in Australia, which pays me 2.5
cents Australian per word. At the current exchange rate that
would equal about 2 yen per word. Would this be around the
average for this sort of job? Too high or low?
 
Also, is it worthwhile looking for work rewriting poorly
translated Japanese to English? I've heard such jobs tend to
be extremely difficult, but does the typical pay for these jobs
make it worth the trouble?
 
Finally, if anyone is looking for a proofreader, I'd be happy
to hear from them, on-list or off.
 
 
 
Daniel Beecham
 

[Jeremy Angel]

On 5 March 2010 20:46, Daniel Beecham <dgb...@gmail.com> wrote:

Currently most of my work comes from a Japanese to English
translation company based in Australia, which pays me 2.5
cents Australian per word. At the current exchange rate that
would equal about 2 yen per word. Would this be around the
average for this sort of job? Too high or low?

If you could check 5,000 words an hour, then OK maybe, but that's a tall order.

Personally, ever since coming to grief charging by the word for a couple of jobs in my early days, I have charged by the hour for such work.

The client just has to trust me to be honest.  

 
Also, is it worthwhile looking for work rewriting poorly
translated Japanese to English? I've heard such jobs tend to
be extremely difficult, but does the typical pay for these jobs
make it worth the trouble?

If you charge by the hour, quality is not an issue, except that with a very poor translation, it is often cheaper for the client to order a retranslation paid per character or word that an extensive rewrite paid for by the hour. I can usually tell when this is the case, and advise the client accordingly, and a sensible client will choose to re-translate. A fresh quality translation is invariably a better product than a quality rewrite of a poor translation. Putting a poor translation to rights is also my idea of hell.

BTW, when you say you're a proofreader, does that mean you don't translate?

I presume that you must be able to read Japanese fairly well, or you wouldn't be able to check anything but the most professional work.

HTHAL

Jeremy Angel

[Chris Moore]

I have seen jobs at the rate mentioned by the OP. That rate is
reasonable if you make sure you check the quality before accepting the
work to ensure that the translation was done up to a reasonable
standard in the first place, which is not necessarily a given.
Regarding the followup post, I personally know a few people who only
check, whose Japanese is not at a level where they can translate, but
they do have qualifications for editing English. Those people
generally work in a long term relationship with a single client
organization directly so that they themselves know the subject matter
and can talk directly to the author/translator when a completely
incomprehensible translation does make it to them (in these cases
however the quality of translation is generally fairly high in the
first place and the editing fits more into the traditional
non-translation editing sense).

Another point or two on the graph.

Chris Moore

[Daniel Beecham]

OP here. Thanks for the replies so far, I appreciate it.

Jeremy Angel wrote:
> BTW, when you say you're a proofreader, does that mean you don't translate?
> I presume that you must be able to read Japanese fairly well, or you
> wouldn't be able to check anything but the most professional work.

I'm afraid I'm not a translator, although I do know some Japanese. I
can read
hiragana and katakana, but my Japanese vocab is lacking and my kanji
knowledge would be best described as 'abysmal'. Most of my experience
has
been with high quality translations from clients I could directly talk
to to if
necessary.

> Personally, ever since coming to grief charging by the word for a couple of
> jobs in my early days, I have charged by the hour for such work.
> The client just has to trust me to be honest.

I've found that my output per hour can vary quite a bit depending on
all sorts
of factors, so charging per word seemed fairer all round. What sort of
trouble
did charging by the word cause for you?

Chris Moore wrote:
>Those people generally work in a long term relationship with a single client
>organization directly so that they themselves know the subject matter
>and can talk directly to the author/translator when a completely

>incomprehensible translation does make it to them.

That pretty much describes the sort of work I'm accustomed to. The
client
I've worked for the longest is a translator who finds it more
efficient to send
his translations to me for a final proofread rather than doing it
himself. The
translations are already quite readable, but still have a few errors
in them.

Daniel Beecham

[Jeremy Angel]

On 7 March 2010 16:38, Daniel Beecham <dgb...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've found that my output per hour can vary quite a bit depending on
all sorts
of factors, so charging per word seemed fairer all round. What sort of
trouble
did charging by the word cause for you?

You're right that output can be affected by factors other than quality, but quality of the translation I'm checking is by far the dominant factor, in my experience.

I also religiously use a timer (a Google sidebar gadget), turning it off when the phone rings, etc., and in other ways ensuring that I earn an honest, even if expensive buck:-)

  

What sort of trouble? A translation that, as I mentioned in my first post, is so bad that it really needs retranslation, rather than editing. Believe me, they exist.

Say I get such a translation to put to rights. It's 800 words. If I get paid 3 yen a word, I get paid 2,400 yen for something that takes me at least an hour to look even slightly passable.

That's the kind of situation that I and probably most in the profession would want to avoid.

As I said, I did it once or twice when first starting out, but I soon realized it was a bad idea.

As for fairness, well, it's up to the client to decide if I deserve what I charge.

I've had people ask me to check other translations, and never get back to me when I tell them that I charge by the hour for such work, but I've had more clients who understand my reasoning, or who assumed right from the start that such work should be paid for by the hour. Anyway, it's not an issue I'm willing to compromise on. And I've never had a client complain afterwards about the amount I've charged.

Cheers,

 
Jeremy Angel
Nagano, Japan