Trend from line count to word count in Germany
Thread poster: Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
+ ...
May 8, 2020

Hi everyone,
German agencies seem to be moving from line counts (55 characters) to word counts, but failing to take into account the difference in the number of words per line of about 20-25% compared to English (or French etc.). This is resulting in very low rates and in translators of German to other languages getting a poor deal, maybe because not enough translators are aware of the discrepancy and nobody is opposing the trend so the agencies are getting away with short-changing transla
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Hi everyone,
German agencies seem to be moving from line counts (55 characters) to word counts, but failing to take into account the difference in the number of words per line of about 20-25% compared to English (or French etc.). This is resulting in very low rates and in translators of German to other languages getting a poor deal, maybe because not enough translators are aware of the discrepancy and nobody is opposing the trend so the agencies are getting away with short-changing translators. Have other translators noticed this and are there still agencies in Germany paying by the line?
Any thoughts welcome.
Jonathan
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Daniel Williams
Daniel Williams  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 17:58
Member (2018)
German to English
+ ...
Definitely a trend May 8, 2020

Thank you for highlighting this, Jonathan. Now you mention it, I think there is definitely a trend towards charging per word, but I must admit I hadn't really considered the associated drop in efffective rates, probably because most UK agencies have always paid by the word. From memory I think only one of my current clients charges by the line, although I notice that quite a few agencies in Germany and Austria still ask for a per-line rate as part of their application/registration processes.

 
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
German vs. French word count May 8, 2020

Daniel Williams wrote:

Thank you for highlighting this, Jonathan. Now you mention it, I think there is definitely a trend towards charging per word, but I must admit I hadn't really considered the associated drop in efffective rates, probably because most UK agencies have always paid by the word. From memory I think only one of my current clients charges by the line, although I notice that quite a few agencies in Germany and Austria still ask for a per-line rate as part of their application/registration processes.


Hi Daniel, good to hear there are still agencies in Germany and Austria using line counts, it is the only sensible way of charging for German. I've never worked for UK agencies, though I was aware they calculate by the word. Do they make any allowance for the fact that German has longer words than French? (From samples of text I've compared it seems that a German line of 55 characters including spaces has about 7 words compared to about 9 in French or English.)


 
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Target language count May 8, 2020

Jonathan Holland wrote:

Hi Daniel, good to hear there are still agencies in Germany and Austria using line counts, it is the only sensible way of charging for German. I've never worked for UK agencies, though I was aware they calculate by the word. Do they make any allowance for the fact that German has longer words than French? (From samples of text I've compared it seems that a German line of 55 characters including spaces has about 7 words compared to about 9 in French or English.)


Mind you, from memory I think maybe agencies in the UK use target word count, so the source language is not relevant and there is no problem. But Germany tends to be source word count, hence the problem there.


 
Michele Fauble
Michele Fauble  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 10:58
Member (2006)
Norwegian to English
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Word count differences German/French>English May 8, 2020

A source text in a Germanic language has about 15-20% fewer words than its translation into English, and a source text in a Romance language has about 15-20% more, so it seems reasonable to charge 30-40% more per source word from German to English than for French to English.



[Edited at 2020-05-08 17:14 GMT]


 
Christel Zipfel
Christel Zipfel  Identity Verified
Local time: 18:58
Member (2004)
Italian to German
+ ...
I still charge most of my customers in German speaking countries per line May 8, 2020

and I get still mostly inquiries for quotes per line although I'm aware that things are changing.
Besides the considerations regarding the difference of numbers of words in a given language, which is obvious, one must not forget that we have here two opposite counting systems as well. Per word is source based and per line is volume based and refers to target text. I too have always thought that the latter is much fairer for the translator. Keep always in mind this difference when quoting!


 
Cristina Pereira
Cristina Pereira  Identity Verified
Local time: 17:58
Member (2005)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
One man's loss is another man's gain... May 8, 2020

I understand your problem, but on my side, I would love to see this trend becoming a reality with my German clients. I always have to do a lot of calculations to see what would be the rate for word (which is what I charge). Fortunately, there are no big differences in rates after I receive the source file and do my calculations. And all my clients except the German also take into account the source text, not the target text.

I don't speak German, but I undertand this is an issue for
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I understand your problem, but on my side, I would love to see this trend becoming a reality with my German clients. I always have to do a lot of calculations to see what would be the rate for word (which is what I charge). Fortunately, there are no big differences in rates after I receive the source file and do my calculations. And all my clients except the German also take into account the source text, not the target text.

I don't speak German, but I undertand this is an issue for you. I wish you luck in your efforts to point this issue out to the German agencies!

Regards,

Cristina
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Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
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TOPIC STARTER
Good point May 9, 2020

Michele Fauble wrote:

A source text in a Germanic language has about 15-20% fewer words than its translation into English, and a source text in a Romance language has about 15-20% more, so it seems reasonable to charge 30-40% more per source word from German to English than for French to English.



[Edited at 2020-05-08 17:14 GMT]


Hi Michele,
I only found French to have about 5% more words per line than English, though you could be right as I only based this estimate on cutting and pasting a couple of pages from French newspapers into a Word file and then doing a word count. Maybe you've done a wider analysis. What you say really highlights the point though, if German is going to be charged by the word then the rates need to be quite a bit higher than for other languages.


 
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
A uniform system would be good May 9, 2020

CristinaPereira wrote:

I understand your problem, but on my side, I would love to see this trend becoming a reality with my German clients. I always have to do a lot of calculations to see what would be the rate for word (which is what I charge). Fortunately, there are no big differences in rates after I receive the source file and do my calculations. And all my clients except the German also take into account the source text, not the target text.

I don't speak German, but I undertand this is an issue for you. I wish you luck in your efforts to point this issue out to the German agencies!

Regards,

Cristina


Hi Cristina,
I can understand your wish for there to be a uniform system and I assume many others feel the same way, that is why this trend has developed. But it is hurting translators of German, sadly.


 
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Glad to hear counting by the line is still the norm in Germany May 9, 2020

Christel Zipfel wrote:

and I get still mostly inquiries for quotes per line although I'm aware that things are changing.
Besides the considerations regarding the difference of numbers of words in a given language, which is obvious, one must not forget that we have here two opposite counting systems as well. Per word is source based and per line is volume based and refers to target text. I too have always thought that the latter is much fairer for the translator. Keep always in mind this difference when quoting!


Hi Christel,
Good to hear the line is still the most common method in Germany. I've been out of the agency market for quite a few years, that's why I am out of touch with it.

The difference in the number of words per line is obvious to you and to me, sure, but not to a great number of people, especially in some big international agencies dealing with hundreds of language pairs who have applied word counting to German to try to standardise their method throughout all their language pairs. This is what I'm finding, they are senior people and they just don't get it, and they are driving prices for German down.

In my experience line counting does not always apply to target text as you say. When I started out in the mid-90s it was always target text because you couldn't count the source words on a faxed document very easily (everything came in on faxes and you had to type out the translation from scratch), so we all used target text line count. These days many of my clients apply line count to source text because they want to know the exact price in advance. But I agree with you that target text count is fairer, though mostly not acceptable nowadays due to the client wanting an exact quote.

I suppose the best solution for German-English translators would be to insist either on line count or on word count based on the target language.


 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 17:58
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
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@Jonathan May 10, 2020

I don’t translate from German (mainly French, English and Spanish into Portuguese) but when I started translating (a long while ago) all translations were calculated either line by line or page by page (we had no computers). Only a few years later on (can’t remember exactly when) we moved from line counting to word counting and we had to adapt and our rates changed accordingly…

 
Christel Zipfel
Christel Zipfel  Identity Verified
Local time: 18:58
Member (2004)
Italian to German
+ ...
Not only agencies May 10, 2020

Jonathan Holland wrote:

The difference in the number of words per line is obvious to you and to me, sure, but not to a great number of people, especially in some big international agencies dealing with hundreds of language pairs who have applied word counting to German to try to standardise their method throughout all their language pairs. This is what I'm finding, they are senior people and they just don't get it, and they are driving prices for German down.


or "senior preople", like you call them. Of ourse they know, but they pretend not to...

But if you have time, look at some profiles here and you will find much to your astonishment that most translators that state their rates, if not all, give the same word rate for two or more languages which have a different number of words!!! So they are not any better at it! They still didn't realise that they can readily earn at least 20% less, depending only from the language! (Italian/French for example have around 30% more words than German, i.e. 10 German lines have 69 words, while French and Italian have 82 words.) I don't really get it!

[Typo: It should read above "20% more French and Italian words" instead of 30%, which is obvious reading the numbers. Sorry! ]

For other languages, I recommend the useful FeeWizard of our fellow translator Alessandra Muzzi: http://www.amtrad.it/feewizardol.php


In my experience line counting does not always apply to target text as you say.


That's odd! I've never heard that and it never happened to me in 30+ years!


I suppose the best solution for German-English translators would be to insist either on line count or on word count based on the target language.


Relating to what I said before, you can also agree on word count in target language, but of course insisting on different rates!







[Bearbeitet am 2020-05-10 20:21 GMT]


Michele Fauble
 
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Great resource May 10, 2020

[quote]Christel Zipfel wrote:

>>>or "senior preople", like you call them. Of ourse they know, but they pretend not to...

Yes you are surely right!

>>>But if you have time, look at some profiles here and you will find much to your astonishment that most translators that state their rates, if not all, give the same word rate for two or more languages which have a different number of words!!! So they are not any better at it! They still didn't realise that they can readily earn at least 20% less, depending only from the language! (Italian/French for example have around 30% more words than German, i.e. 10 German lines have 69 words, while French and Italian have 82 words.) I don't really get it!

Agreed, they're selling themselves cheap, especially where German is involved.

>>>For other languages, I recommend the useful FeeWizard of our fellow translator Alessandra Muzzi: http://www.amtrad.it/feewizardol.php

This is a great resource, thanks! (More people should use it!)


 
Jonathan Holland
Jonathan Holland  Identity Verified
France
German to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Interesting May 10, 2020

Teresa Borges wrote:

I don’t translate from German (mainly French, English and Spanish into Portuguese) but when I started translating (a long while ago) all translations were calculated either line by line or page by page (we had no computers). Only a few years later on (can’t remember exactly when) we moved from line counting to word counting and we had to adapt and our rates changed accordingly…


Hi Teresa,
It's interesting to hear that the line (or page) method was the only one in the early days. It could easily have continued when computers appeared, as word-processing programs have a character count as well as a word count, as we all know. I don't suppose the change bothered you especially though as the difference between your languages isn't that great in terms of words per line.


 


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Trend from line count to word count in Germany







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