Agency tries to impose SDL calculation method to calculate project fee.

Sheila Wilson wrote:


So they're expecting you to use a CAT tool and benefit from the time-saving you'd get from repetitions and 100% matches and the possible savings from fuzzy matches. In that case, the per-word rate may indeed be very low. I don't let my clients determine the rate but I do offer some clients a discount based on these CAT tool grids. If they send one file, and then another that's basically mainly identical but customised for a different readership, I end up charging a very low per-word rate for the second file because it takes only a tiny fraction of the time.

You seem to be worried about changing your method of calculating the rate. You shouldn't be. The only rate that really matters is the hourly rate. You could theoretically charge for every "e" in the text, or for every definite article, or whatever. Just calculate how much you'd need to charge for each to give you a decent hourly rate.

What you shouldn't do is let an agency reap all the benefits of using a CAT tool. You can afford to lower your rate for the job somewhat, for the reasons described above. But you needed to buy and learn to use those CAT tools.