Freelance Translators Survey
Thread poster: icymicy
icymicy
icymicy
Germany
Dec 19, 2014

Dear Community,

I need 2 minutes of your time please to answer my very short survey with 8 questions.
I am analyzing the work of freelance translators for my Master thesis.
Your feedback is very important. Please find the link below.
Thank you very much !!!

https://de.surveymonkey.com/s/M8NQ77J

[Edited at 2014-12-22 09:35 GMT]


 
Tony M
Tony M
France
Local time: 09:34
Member
French to English
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
Have completed your survey, but there are some flaws in it. Dec 19, 2014

I do think you ought to reorganize some of your questions.

The 2 at the end (8 & 9?) presuppose one uses Translation Management software — they ought to be made conditional upon having checked that particular option in the preceding questions.

The question "which software overall..." seems as if it ought to have the possiiblity to give multiple answers, but you can't. I wonder if there is a problem with the question wording: is the 'overall' in fact meant to be 'more
... See more
I do think you ought to reorganize some of your questions.

The 2 at the end (8 & 9?) presuppose one uses Translation Management software — they ought to be made conditional upon having checked that particular option in the preceding questions.

The question "which software overall..." seems as if it ought to have the possiiblity to give multiple answers, but you can't. I wonder if there is a problem with the question wording: is the 'overall' in fact meant to be 'more than the others' — in which case, a single-choice answer would make sense.

I fear your survey as it stands will produce distorted results.
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Jean Lachaud
Jean Lachaud  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:34
English to French
+ ...
insufficient design Dec 19, 2014

I agree with Tony. Several questions should provide for multiple answers, and the question which asks how much one pays monthly is very poorly designed, since it bundles everything (translation tools, internet access, telephone, etc.), which obviously are above the maximum choice of $/€30.

 
Josephine Cassar
Josephine Cassar  Identity Verified
Malta
Local time: 09:34
Member (2012)
English to Maltese
+ ...
3 & 4 Dec 19, 2014

Besides the ones mentioned by Tony and JL01, you should have allowed us to choose multiple answers as some agencies require their invoicing tools on their sites, while those that do not require this, can be served by e.g. Proz. invoices. The same goes for no. 4 so I could not complete the survey I'm afraid, though I would have liked to have helped you.

 
icymicy
icymicy
Germany
TOPIC STARTER
Thanks Dec 19, 2014

Thank you for the responses. I am sorry for the quality of my survey, as it was the first time I created one online.

I updated the questions and now multiple answers are possible as well.

Thank you for your support.

Please find here the link to the (new) survey:

https://de.surveymonkey.com/s/M8NQ77J


Cheers.


 
Josephine Cassar
Josephine Cassar  Identity Verified
Malta
Local time: 09:34
Member (2012)
English to Maltese
+ ...
Done now Dec 19, 2014

It is much better now. Thank you for listening to our wishes and adjusting. No. 7 is still debatable. Good luck, hope others fill it now.

 
Jennifer Levey
Jennifer Levey  Identity Verified
Chile
Local time: 05:34
Spanish to English
+ ...
Feedback? Dec 20, 2014

OK - done that!

Students often come here asking us to respond to surveys for this, that or t'other reason.

Many of them tell us they'll post a summary of the results here in the forum when they've completed their analysis of the replies.

Most of them (mentioning no names!) never respect that commitment.

You have not said you will - but I hope you will be one of the minority who does.


 
Marcela Vargas Idrobo
Marcela Vargas Idrobo  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 01:34
English to Spanish
+ ...
Greetings Dec 21, 2014

Hello

I completed the survey. I wish you look with your studies and keep on going!

cheers!


 
icymicy
icymicy
Germany
TOPIC STARTER
Feedback Dec 22, 2014

I will post the summary of my results in the beginning of January 2015.

Keep answering the survey you're a great help.

Cheers


 
icymicy
icymicy
Germany
TOPIC STARTER
Results Feb 5, 2015

Dear translators,

First of all thank you for filling out the survey.

As I promised, here are the results of the survey:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6f1hfolh51n4us9/Results%20of%20Freelance%20Translators%20Survey.pptx?dl=0

Cheers


 
icymicy
icymicy
Germany
TOPIC STARTER
New Survey Feb 5, 2015

Dear community,

after analysing your results of the previous survey I have noticed, that it would make more sense to let you write down your answers instead of giving you preselected options.

So I created a new survey, which consists of 11 short questions. This time, the survey focusses more on the main problems translators have to deal with in their day-to-day work.

I believe that this time your answers would be way more helpful, also in order to find solu
... See more
Dear community,

after analysing your results of the previous survey I have noticed, that it would make more sense to let you write down your answers instead of giving you preselected options.

So I created a new survey, which consists of 11 short questions. This time, the survey focusses more on the main problems translators have to deal with in their day-to-day work.

I believe that this time your answers would be way more helpful, also in order to find solutions that will support you in your work as a translator.

I hope that I can collect a few answers here on Proz to be more have more in-depth data for my master's thesis.

Also, I will publish the results again here on Proz.

The link to the new survey is:

https://de.surveymonkey.com/s/VDTLV9N

I appreciate your help. Thank you.

Cheers,
Ryan

[Edited at 2015-02-05 15:00 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-02-05 17:09 GMT]
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Jean Lachaud
Jean Lachaud  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:34
English to French
+ ...
wrong calculations Feb 5, 2015

Doesn't it bother you that the sum of percentages (in the link received this morning) is ALWAYS higher than 100% ???

And that the questions as listed in the PPT file are only summaries of the original questions.


 
Jean Lachaud
Jean Lachaud  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:34
English to French
+ ...
No access permitted Feb 5, 2015

when clicking on the link.



 
icymicy
icymicy
Germany
TOPIC STARTER
@JL01 Feb 5, 2015

For some questions the sum of percentages are not 100%, because you had the opportunity to give multiple answers to one questions.

Try this link please, it should work:

https://de.surveymonkey.com/s/VDTLV9N

[Edited at 2015-02-06 10:26 GMT]


 
Rolf Keller
Rolf Keller
Germany
Local time: 09:34
English to German
Statistics ... Feb 6, 2015

icymicy wrote:

For some questions the sum of percentages are not 100%, because you had the opportunity to give multiple answers to one questions.


The sum of the shares of a pie chart is ALWAYS 100%. Otherwise the chart is pure nonsense.

Your very first question in the old questionaire: "How do you receive/accept job offers?"
Translator A gets 5 jobs per year via phone and 100 jobs per year via email.
Translator B gets 100 jobs per year via phone and 5 jobs per year via email.
But both translators tick the same 2 checkboxes. So, the only finding from the answers is, that some translators get jobs via email and phone – do you really need a survey for that?

And what about the obvious possibility that x percent of the answerers are like translator A while 100-x percent are like translator B? Normally x is not 50 ...

Your old questionaire didn't take into account such differences at all, so the results are useless.
The same is true for the new questionaire. If answerers are not forced to enter numbers instead of arbitrary text snippets ("e. g. "Most jobs I get per phone but from China I get more emails"), it is absolutely impossible to get meaningful figures. So you'll have to do without pretty pie charts made by a friendly but stupid software.


 


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