We know that how many words you can translate per day depends on what sort of text you’re working on. Some texts are so difficult a translator counts him- or herself lucky if 500 words get translated in one day. Other texts are a breeze.
I’ve heard from a number of people that 5000 words are about the maximum any translator can do in a day. Beyond that, our brains just get tired. But then I have a friend who claims to whizz through 1200 words per hour.
What do you find your average daily counts are? What’s a good day of translating for you?
Finds for Writers
1 day ago
8 comments:
On a good day I can translate up to 4000-5000 words, but I don't have to look anything up. Today I translated about 1000 words of a very frustrating text. Yes, it does depend on the text.
I agree with bonjill: it does depend on the text:
I can translate up to 5,000 words of a technical, repetitive text (with a CAT) while listening to music and communicating on social networks.
And I can translate 500 words of a scientific study (without a CAT) and feel exhausted after 2 hours.
I normally reckon on about 2000 words per day, for the marketing texts that are my staple, in order to get the style and all the little details like punctuation spot on. That said, I did manage to draft 6000 yesterday, although it was fairly repetitive.
It really depends upon what you are translating, doesn't it? I must say though, by any standard, anybody who can do more than 5000 words per day is a better man/woman than I!
It depends so much on what it is. A poem can take me several days, for short stories I can often get up to 3000 woe sin a day. I'm working on a graphic novel currently and cank manage about 12 pages in a day...
Thanks for all your comments! It sounds like we're all around the same speed (whereas students tell me they are much slower, which makes sense).
Personally, I like working on different types of texts, because they take different amounts of time and use different knowledge and skills.
Best wishes,
BJ
With less than a quarter of experience, the maximum I can render is around 1500, I don't accelerate the process at this stage as it may lead to disasters. Sometimes I spend a day-long on not more than 500 words, normally of legal nature that requires much consultation from whatever available before me.
http://www.egytranscript.net/translation_service.aspx
I find 2000 words a day to be a normal pace. I usually don't use a CAT tool though and when I do it's mainly for consistency, as I don't work on very repetitive texts.
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