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Ethical question about MT
Thread poster: Serena Marangoni
Serena Marangoni
Serena Marangoni  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 06:49
English to Italian
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Dec 18, 2020

I use Cafetran for my translations, because I like the machine translation feature, even when I'm writing something different I save time typing words it got right, and sometimes it gets a whole segment right.

I do big discounts for clients based on fuzzy matches with TMs from previous projects and repetitions, but I don't usually consider this MT help to be worthy of discounts.

Yesterday I happened on a project in which the MT translation was really good, almost as if
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I use Cafetran for my translations, because I like the machine translation feature, even when I'm writing something different I save time typing words it got right, and sometimes it gets a whole segment right.

I do big discounts for clients based on fuzzy matches with TMs from previous projects and repetitions, but I don't usually consider this MT help to be worthy of discounts.

Yesterday I happened on a project in which the MT translation was really good, almost as if it came from a translation memory of the same project.

I will let the client know, but how should I charge it? Because it wasn't my translation I spent a lot of time reviewing it, and because this translation was easy, having the text didn't save me that much time, even if I ended up using it.

I'm also worried about the copyright of these TMs but maybe this is a question for the Cafetran forum.

This took only marginally less than a normal translation, and more than a revision. Should I give a discount? If so how much? (consider this was a small,
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Thayenga
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Germany
Local time: 06:49
Member (2009)
English to German
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Discounts Dec 18, 2020

Each translator sets his or her own rates and discounts. So of course you can grant an even greater discount, and of course, provided you can afford working for hardly any income, perhaps none in the future.

But please bear in mind that this will ruin the prices for your colleagues in the long run.

[Edited at 2020-12-19 06:25 GMT]


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Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
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Swedish to English
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I wouldn’t Dec 18, 2020

I wouldn’t dream of giving them a discount.

Why should they benefit rather than you?


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Matthias Brombach
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Germany
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Dutch to German
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Question has been answered... Dec 18, 2020

Serena Marangoni wrote:
I spent a lot of time reviewing it

...by yourself already, I'm afraid.


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Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei  Identity Verified
Ghana
Local time: 05:49
Japanese to English
Check your contract with your client first Dec 18, 2020

Serena Marangoni wrote:
I will let the client know, but how should I charge it? Because it wasn't my translation I spent a lot of time reviewing it, and because this translation was easy, having the text didn't save me that much time, even if I ended up using it.

I'm also worried about the copyright of these TMs but maybe this is a question for the Cafetran forum.

This took only marginally less than a normal translation, and more than a revision. Should I give a discount? If so how much? (consider this was a small,


I wouldn't give any discounts since, in your own words, you spend a lot of time reviewing it and it took "marginally less time than a normal translation."

However be sure to check your contract with the client first as some clients do not want machine translation involved at any stage of the project. But as long as there's no problem with MTL, charge whatever you want. I wouldn't pay my hairdresser any less because she bought a new high-speed hair dryer, for example.

[Edited at 2020-12-18 08:59 GMT]

[Edited at 2020-12-18 09:00 GMT]


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Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 06:49
French to English
. Dec 18, 2020

Do you think you should be paid for the number of words you actually contributed to the translation, or the amount of time you spent working on it?
For me, it's the amount of time.
When you review a human translation, you can get an idea of how much the translator knows of the subject and when they obviously know their stuff, you no longer bother to check every single term. With machine translation, you have no way of knowing the quality of the translators whose text has been unear
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Do you think you should be paid for the number of words you actually contributed to the translation, or the amount of time you spent working on it?
For me, it's the amount of time.
When you review a human translation, you can get an idea of how much the translator knows of the subject and when they obviously know their stuff, you no longer bother to check every single term. With machine translation, you have no way of knowing the quality of the translators whose text has been unearthed by the machine, so you have to check absolutely everything. You might end up only changing three words in 30 pages, but still you spent several hours if not days ploughing through those pages. That's time you could have spent earning money on other translations, or enjoying leisure activities such as reading the corona quarantine and frivolous threads.
If you spent nearly as much time as if you had translated from scratch, the machine translation can't have been all that good. I would bill nearly as much as if I had translated from scratch.

Of course if the machine translation had been excellent, and it's a field you know inside out and don't need to research anything for, you could have romped through the review and just charged a minimal amount to reflect the rapidity of your romp.
But you could alternatively consider that if you were able to romp through, it's because you've spent years acquiring the necessary experience and knowledge, and it's only natural that you should be paid a lot for it because of that accumulated experience and knowledge.
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Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
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Member (2008)
Italian to English
How Dec 18, 2020

Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei wrote:

.....some clients do not want machine translation involved at any stage of the project.


How could they possibly tell? Even good MT always involves a certain amount of checking and correcting; at which point it is no longer MT but proper translation.


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Philippe Etienne
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Spain
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English to French
The gold standard is your time Dec 18, 2020

That's what you sell (your time is expertise, skills, service and etcetera).
If time savings are negligible, any discount is unjustified. If you spent more time and thought than usual polishing the text, the customer will get a better translation for the same price. That's already a bonus.

You give CAT discounts only because fuzzies/repeats save you time. Discount rates should match the time actually saved.

Philippe


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Christine Andersen
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Denmark
Local time: 06:49
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Danish to English
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You win some, you lose some Dec 18, 2020

That is the idea behind a fixed word rate.

You will run into dozens of cases where you spend more time than you expect on checking, looking for the correct term and sorting out unexpected problems. Many of these are really the client's fault, or the fault of the person who wrote an ambiguous text or actually made mistakes.

You can't always charge extra for those! Clients are not interested in all these details. They simply want a good text, adapted to their purpose, and
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That is the idea behind a fixed word rate.

You will run into dozens of cases where you spend more time than you expect on checking, looking for the correct term and sorting out unexpected problems. Many of these are really the client's fault, or the fault of the person who wrote an ambiguous text or actually made mistakes.

You can't always charge extra for those! Clients are not interested in all these details. They simply want a good text, adapted to their purpose, and your job is to give it to them at a rate you can live on.

Smile when MT and your CAT help you - that is why you use them. And save that positive energy for the day when none of your technical aids has anything to offer, and you end up struggling half the night to meet your deadline!
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Serena Marangoni
Serena Marangoni  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 06:49
English to Italian
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TOPIC STARTER
Time saved Dec 18, 2020

Well time was saved, for sure. But given that this was already a project that would have taken about 2.5hrs, I might have saved 30 mins.

If it was a bigger project saving 20% of the time would have impacted this greatly, but it's hard indeed to consider giving a discount for this on a small scale project.

OT: To those who said giving a discount equals working for nothing, when I use matches and repetitions, I know that those will save me time, so even if I give a disc
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Well time was saved, for sure. But given that this was already a project that would have taken about 2.5hrs, I might have saved 30 mins.

If it was a bigger project saving 20% of the time would have impacted this greatly, but it's hard indeed to consider giving a discount for this on a small scale project.

OT: To those who said giving a discount equals working for nothing, when I use matches and repetitions, I know that those will save me time, so even if I give a discount, I'm still working at my usual hourly rate. Because translation is just one of the things I do, the time I save can be used for other projects.

In fact, I personally tend to give discounts when clients give me extra time to translate because it means I can work on more projects, thus making more money in the long run. If I kept my full rate but only worked as a translator I'd have to drop other projects that give me a more regular income.

I think we all find a good balance between what we value our translations and what we're willing to accept in order not to be without jobs to do.

For instance, this year, because of Covid I haven't received many translation projects so I had to do more teaching and I started working part time for a company. My translations then take more days than those of a full time translator, as I can only work 4-5 hours. If another translator could complete that in 4 days working full time, but need 8, I know I have to give a discount to make it viable for the client.
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jyuan_us
jyuan_us  Identity Verified
United States
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English to Chinese
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Did they ask for a discount? Dec 18, 2020

If not, where was this discount idea from?

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Christopher Schröder
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I think you’re being too generous... Dec 18, 2020

Serena Marangoni wrote:
If another translator could complete that in 4 days working full time, but need 8, I know I have to give a discount to make it viable for the client.

I don’t see how a discount helps here.

If the client needs it in four days, they’ll have to find someone else.

If they don’t need it for eight days, there’s no inconvenience to them and so no reason not to pay you at your full rate.

Don’t forget most full-time translators will also deliver after eight days, because they already have other translations for the next four days...

Again, I wouldn’t dream of offering a discount in this situation!


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Peter Shortall
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United Kingdom
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What's ethical for the profession? Dec 18, 2020

I think it's worth analysing your question: what do you mean by ethics?

I suppose we all have our own, slightly different, ideas about that, but my idea of ethics would be "doing what's best/fairest by everyone". And when I say everyone, I mean not just you and your client, who are the direct parties to this transaction, but also the translation profession as a whole. What you do has an impact (albeit a small one) on other translators too. Does charging less and less do any good to
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I think it's worth analysing your question: what do you mean by ethics?

I suppose we all have our own, slightly different, ideas about that, but my idea of ethics would be "doing what's best/fairest by everyone". And when I say everyone, I mean not just you and your client, who are the direct parties to this transaction, but also the translation profession as a whole. What you do has an impact (albeit a small one) on other translators too. Does charging less and less do any good to the profession, given that the cost of living generally goes up over time? Have you thought about what will happen to translators if they end up charging so little for their work that they won't be able to make ends meet any more? There is also the future to think about: pensions. Will you be able to set aside enough for the future if you start charging less now? Not forgetting that the cost of living could go up yet further in the future, so allowance has to be made for that too.

For me, doing things in an ethical way means doing them in a way that's sustainable and causes no harm to anyone. If business transactions like this one become so advantageous for clients that it becomes difficult for translators to cover all of their present and future living costs, and your fellow translators find it hard to survive because they are losing too much work to you due to your lower fees, then I don't see that as ethical because it harms other people's livelihoods and pushes the profession towards the brink of collapse.

In a free market, of course you are free to grant whatever discounts you like and to charge as little as you like, but there does come a point when translators' fees become so low that they damage the profession by making it hard for professionals to stay in it, and then clients lose the benefit of their skills and experience, so there is a downside for clients too. Sadly, that point isn't easy to identify. Deciding what rate is "fair" or "ethical" is extremely difficult in a market full of variables and unknowns, but I feel that the profession as a whole and its survival must also be factored into the equation of ethics. The question of how much time MT might or might not save you - which will of course vary from text to text, so is impossible to generalise about and predict in any case - is, in my view, a comparatively trivial matter and pales into insignificance when weighed against the broader ethical question of whether the profession as a whole, and the people in it, can keep going.

One last thought. Is it ethical for machines to be used as a reason to decrease, or even take away completely, people's earnings? If we can all find alternative sources of income in other professions, fine, but where are all the alternative jobs going to come from, particularly now at a time when so many businesses are cutting jobs and being squeezed by trading restrictions?

[Edited at 2020-12-18 16:15 GMT]
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Tom in London
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Italian to English
I fear Dec 18, 2020

Peter Shortall wrote:

..... there does come a point when translators' fees become so low that they damage the profession by making it hard for professionals to stay in it, and then clients lose the benefit of their skills and experience, so there is a downside for clients too. Sadly, that point isn't easy to identify.


Speaking from personal experience I fear we passed that point some time ago. At least two long-standing agency clients of mine have all but abandoned me because they were able to find others who charge less (even though I had not increased my rate to either of those agencies in ten years).

There is nothing ethical in the dog-eat-dog profession in which we find ourselves, and it would be foolish to trouble oneself as to the propriety of one's own behaviour. Take whatever advantage you can, whenever the opportunity presents itself. Nobody will admire you for doing otherwise.

On second thoughts, there is one ethical thing a good professional translator can do: produce an excellent translation, on time. But there's nothing else.



[Edited at 2020-12-18 16:50 GMT]


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Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
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Ghana
Local time: 05:49
Japanese to English
Good point! Dec 18, 2020

Christine Andersen wrote:

That is the idea behind a fixed word rate.

You will run into dozens of cases where you spend more time than you expect on checking, looking for the correct term and sorting out unexpected problems. Many of these are really the client's fault, or the fault of the person who wrote an ambiguous text or actually made mistakes.

Very good point. Would you charge the client extra if the work had taken longer than you had expected? No? Then charge what was agreed upon and enjoy your free time.


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