The 2008 BDÜ rate survey

Last year's rate survey published by the German translators association BDÜ caused a bit of a stir; it was the first time that such information had been collected and published, and some looked at the published rates as being unrealistically high, while others considered them laughably low. In other words, the rate debates it inspired were no different than any others I've heard or read elsewhere.

This year's publication format is much nicer than the last one. The numbwits involved in last year's booklet were so afraid the data might be copied that they printed it on red paper. This made it very hard to read, and I was quite annoyed at the strain my eyes experienced when trying to read some of the interesting information at the back. This year, good sense prevailed, and the booklet was printed black on white with occasional bits of grey shading, the purpose of which escapes me (maybe it's explained somewhere - I haven't read everything yet).

What interested me was whether the reported rates were significantly different from last year. On the whole I would say that they are not. The number of respondents is slightly lower in most categories than last year (for my DE>EN pair at least), some rates are a bit higher, some a bit lower. No dramatic change in any direction, and I doubt that the changes found are statistically significant. So it would seem that, for German to English at least, the number of panicked translators slashing rates in anticipation of the End of the World (aka "the crisis") is balanced by those of us partying our way to Armageddon by raising rates (something it would seem daft not to do given the huge increases in utility costs and food in the past year).

This year's data included not only the averages but also the median values to give a better picture of the distributions. Personally I would like to see the raw data or at least some standard deviations. Then I can aim to become a "six sigma translator" :-)

Here are some of the current rates reported for the DE<>EN combinations:

For those who want these data as word rates, go query Ms. Muzzi's Fee Wizard or do some word counts on a few of your own documents and figure it out. There are word rate data published by the BDÜ as well, but the number of respondents was much lower (5 for court work), so the data are less indicative I think. It's important to remember that these are average data from an ordinary range of presumably qualified translators. Although the BDÜ does require various types of translation credentials for membership, there are plenty of credentialed translators who would make much better gardeners and pastry chefs or something else. Anything but language service providers.

Averages and median values for hourly rates published for German to English range from 40 to a bit over 60 euros for all the categories. English to German is a bit less, probably due to the competition in Germany.

What's the situation for other language combinations? There is data for language pairs that do not include German, such as FR<>EN. The number of respondents for those combinations is low, but the numbers they report would probably cause some translators in the US and UK to respond with disbelief. On the whole, however, the data reported by the BDÜ is plausible and fits what I have see in recent years. There is a huge range of rates in the real world, and it's as much a matter of marketing and customer service as it is linguistic skill.

Once again, the full booklet with all rate tables and other useful information can be ordered from the association at www.bdue.de. It should be noted that the booklet is in German; the tables above are my translations of an excerpt of the information.

Translation tool interoperability: Achieving more without the war

A Call to Armistice

Those involved for years with the language services industry have become accustomed to arguments about the best translation environment tools or related programs. To someone familiar with the IT scene for over three decades, these discussions have a very recognizable tone, one often found in the pitched battles between acolytes of IBM, DEC, Sun, Apple and a long list of software and hardware providers too numerous to list in a hefty telephone book. A bit of quiet reflection and a bit more well-grounded understanding then and now, however, lead to the same conclusion: there is no ideal, universal solution to be found anywhere. Some solutions are better on the average for most situations than others, but even the worst tools on offer probably have some scenario which they handle better than any others. Aside from human stubbornness and greed, a good reason why there are so many solutions available for computer-aided translation technology and other IT technologies is that nothing does everything well.

The IT departments of companies came to this realization long ago, not only for practical reasons, but also due to budget constraints. After IT had matured somewhat as a discipline, it was no longer cool to buy the whole package from Big Blue or another source if the mix-and-match approach could produce a better solution for less money. This led to the situation we have today of alliances between vendors co-promoting each others' products and ensuring reasonable degrees of compatibility and interfacing.

Providers of tools to the language services industry have by necessity worked with some common standards, albeit imperfectly in many cases, and have provided compatible or at least semi-compatible solutions for working with file formats from competitors. However, a true commitment to interoperability has not been apparent up to now; such work has typically been presented as a necessary evil if a client expects deliverables in a format out of the ordinary for the translator's preferred tool. There are, however, situations in which parts of a project simply work better with a certain tool and other parts are better done with other software. Sometimes these processing advantages for certain operations are great enough to justify the purchase of software licenses which one does not intend to use to the full extent. What these advantages are in specific situations will be described in later articles, and the judgment of whether they justify learning new software and possibly spending money is left to the reader, who is presumably a competent adult able to make independent decisions and accept responsibility for errors. Each project has its own unique set of criteria, and I make no claim that the techniques discussed will lead to an acceptable solution in every case. The information will be presented as food for thought, which may be of benefit in the some circumstances, and discussion and amendment is encouraged.

I think the time is long overdue to call an end to CAT fights and encourage courtesy and cooperation between solution providers. I would go as far as to call for common interface standards for server communication to allow translators to do client projects on remote servers using the TenT client of their choice. Unrealistic? I don't think so. Solutions like that are not uncommon in mature areas of IT. We need more than browser interfaces. I think that even with the discipline of common communication and exchange interfaces for TEnT data, there is a lot of value to be added by the individual providers such as Atril, Kilgray, SDL and a host of others as they optimize ergonomics and improve data management features.

MemoQ Fest 2010

Earlier this year, Kilgray held the first MemoQ Fest in Budapest after a year of rapid development and progress with the company's flagship application that brought it from the status of an interesting but somewhat impractical newcomer to the TEnT scene to a serious contender for a championship title. Before attending the event last April, I had tested MemoQ off and on for about a year, but I had not been satisfied that it would work for me. Then along came version 3.5 shortly before the conference, and an introduction to it as well as success stories from corporate, agency and freelance users finally pushed me to use the latest version for serious work, not just tests. And for the last seven months I have done just that.

On the whole I am very satisfied with MemoQ as readers of this blog have probably noted. There are some behaviors of the editor module which drive me nuts, and I am not very happy with the program's performance tuning when I use large databases, and I miss certain basic features that I have taken for granted with Déjà Vu X, but MemoQ has brought many unique capabilities to my business which were lacking in the tools I used otherwise (mostly DVX, Trados and Star Transit). The filters for various formats often proved better than SDL Trados or DVX, the ability to import unsegmented content from TTX files (or even do a TTX without segmentation), reasonably stable bilingual Trados exports (though perhaps in need of a few rules, like blocking or converting hard returns within segments), seriously cool server capabilities, relatively fast, trouble-free data import and export, TM-driven segmentation and more. Oh yes, and my favorite, if trivial feature: the ability to customize and save keyboard configurations, so the ergonomics of my MemoQ installation are much like my DVX. No disorientation like I used to experience all the time when switching between DVX and Trados.

MemoQ Fest 2009 opened up more than just technical possibilities for me. It gave me several days of opportunity for private discussions with ordinary users, who shared personal stories of the excellent support they had received from the Kilgray team long before I ever heard of those guys. And of course we all had a lot of fun. Hard not to in a city as beautiful as Budapest when you get to spend the days around nice people with good attitudes and ideas.

So when I got the e-mail from Sandor Papp of Kilgray announcing the call for papers and registration for MemoQ Fest 2010, the decision to attend was pretty much a no-brainer. Especially given the impending release of MemoQ version 4. A rather awful personal schedule in the last few weeks has prevented me from attending the various overview webinars so far, but I know enough about the plans for version 4 to know that it will only improve my opinion of this software and the team behind it. The development and release schedule has in fact slipped a bit compared to announcements earlier this year. But not by much, really, and not without significant advance notice and good justifications. (At the same time various competitors have either released crap on schedule that should have been kept in development for another 6 months or passed a promised release deadline and said nothing at all.)

I'm looking forward to a few fun days with the Kilgray team and its fan base... uh, I mean customers... and the opportunity to learn a lot more about how to get the most out of my personal software investment as well as how clients of mine might benefit from developments in MemoQ Server technology. Since it's a particular interest of mine, I'm also considering a brief talk on tool interoperability for those who must in one way or another integrate MemoQ with other tools such as Trados, Star Transit or DVX in a project. With that in mind, I'll probably publish snippets of relevant information here or on my Facebook page (depending on which format proves more practical for organizing) as preparation. Stuff like the old instruction sets I wrote for editing Trados bilingual files with DVX, etc. If there are any particular things on your wish lists in this regard, let me know.

Juggling snakes

For those involved with translation in the German-speaking markets, the Zahlungspraxis list is a useful source of information on payment practices, and there is no charge to make use of it. One agency which is featured frequently and prominently on that list is the infamous Language Promotion GmbH in Austria and Switzerland. Even the more mathematically gifted among us would probably have difficulty counting all the translators who have reported being ripped off by Mr. Dominic de Neuville and his company.

Information on the company's payment practices can be found on the ProZ Blue Board (http://www.proz.com/blueboard/1167), although the company has been banned from posting jobs there for quite a while.There are over 60 entries (in German) on this company in Zahlungspraxis. The latest information on the company from the Swiss Moneyhouse site is as follows:

Language Promotion GmbH in Liquidation. Mit Verfügung vom 19.11.2009 hat der Konkursrichter des Bezirksgerichts Zürich über die Gesellschaft mit Wirkung ab dem 19.11.2009, 10.00 Uhr, den Konkurs eröffnet; demnach ist die Gesellschaft aufgelöst.

For those of you who don't read German, this means that the company is in bankruptcy proceedings. I seem to recall having heard of this shell game a few times in the past. My partner and other friends in the business have had truly awful experiences with this company (in earlier incarnations) and its owner in the past. Yet somehow like many other skilled confidence men, Dominic always manages to find new suckers.

How could anyone be careless or dumb enough to work for a client like this? I can't answer that one. But I think Language Promotion could be a textbook case in the need for due diligence and the principle that if you juggle rattlesnakes, you shouldn't be surprised if one manages to bite you.

A recent Zahlungspraxis entry shared the experience of a translator who did her research and found that the Snake was trying to tempt her. No, her name isn't Eve, but like Eve she was clever and thought she could play the Snake's game on her own terms. Payment in advance. Easy, right? It worked great for a while. Until one day she failed to notice that the execution date on the wire transfer wasn't immediate but a few days later. And the money never arrived. Since then she has been chasing payment, but I suspect she'll have to pursue it to some lower circle of Hell.

So what lesson can be learned from this? Many lessons probably, depending on the reader's own situation and experience. For me it's a reminder that it is simply a bad idea to deal with those who have a record of bad practices. A thief will always be looking for a way to steal from you, and the effort of keeping one's guard up in every transaction when dealing with such people simply is not worth it.

Language Promotion was never a typical agency in the 8 or 9 years I've known that company. There are many good agency partners out there for good translators, and I find it unfortunate that people like the owner of LP create a negative impression of agencies in some people's minds. Oh, please note also that this has been happening in Austria and Switzerland, not one of the "usual suspect countries". (The victim translators are all over the world, however.) Swiss agency customers are some of the best I've known over the years, but obviously one must be careful with generalizations of every kind, always practice due diligence and avoid human snakes under all circumstances.

Update: In today's digest for Zahlungspraxis there was further information regarding the insolvency proceedings as well as this note:

... heute hat Herr de Neuville auf meine E-Mail von Freitag bzgl. meines offenen Posten mir einen Zahlungsbeleg als PDF-Datei mit Ausführungsdatum 09.12.09 geschickt. Darin kann ich erkennen, dass die Abbuchung aus seinem Privatkonto erfolgen soll.
Darüber hinaus hat er mir eine weitere E-Mail geschickt, in der er mich bittet, alle Rechnungen nur per E-Mail zu schicken und die Firma "Language Promotion GmbH" durch "Übersetzungsbüro Dominic de Neuville " zu ersetzen. Dazu noch einen neuen Auftrag......

Wow. The nerve of some people. Having cheated translators of who-knows-how-many-thousands and filed bankruptcy for the Nth time, the old trickster is "back in business" under a new name already. So if "Übersetzungsbüro Dominic de Neuville" tempts you with a project, remember the words of Nancy Reagan and just say no!

Cleaning up more source file messes with Dave Turner

I don't know if the rumors are true that the beatification process has begun in the Vatican by grateful translators there whose prayers for an efficient way to deal with superfluous format tags were answered with Mr. Turner's Code Zapper macro. If not, surely his latest contribution will send him further along the path to Translation Sainthood: the Format Fixer macro, which in his own words

• deletes leading spaces and tabs inserted typewriter style to indent text, and sets the equivalent indent,
• deletes excess spaces between words,
• deletes excess paragraph marks and sets the equivalent vertical spacing, 
• attempts to correct frequent punctuation errors (space before comma or inside a parenthesis for example),
• tries to fix PDF converted files (removes hard and soft returns to make text wrap properly),
• adds a space between a number and a letter as in 20ohm, 10daN -> 20 ohm, 10 daN

It's available free on the Yahoogroups dejavu-l forum (path: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/dejavu-l/files/FormatFixer/), but obviously it's useful to anyone who works with text in MS Word or RTF files regardless of CAT religion.

Pure productivity: 50,000 words translated with Déjà Vu during a toilet break!

This has been a week for ludicrous but probably true claims. SDL, a company noted for sleazy advertising on its path to World Domination, started off with an e-mail advert claiming that past ATA president Marian Greenfield translated 34,501 words in 10 hours using the new Trados Studio 2009. Soon after, translator Wolfgang Jörissen revealed that he had processed over 50,000 words using Atril's Déjà Vu during a toilet break. I'm still waiting for the corresponding revelation regarding MemoQ. It's sure to be a good one.

What has all this got to do with translation in the real world? Not much. SDL, it seems, was boasting about features not available in its previous software versions but functionally available for years with the competition. No news there. But the outrageousness of the claim ignited heated discussion on ProZ, Jill Sommer's blog and elsewhere. Admittedly, some of the discussion is Greek to me, but I think many people are just fed up with the failure of SDL to promote the features and advantages of the company's software without distortion, deception and hyperbole. And unfortunately this means that sometimes their good support people (there are some) and others end up as collateral damage. What's wrong with a little sobriety and balance in marketing? In an ideal world, I'd like to see SDL, Atril, Kilgray and others collaborating on interfaces so we can all use whatever tools we prefer and connect to whatever server solutions some of our clients might prefer. Dream on, I know....

Zetsche's Tool Kit newsletter still rules

Today I got an e-mail notice telling me that my premium subscription to Jost Zetsche's Tool Kit newsletter had run out and reverted to the standard (free) subscription. My how time flies. A year ago tomorrow I wrote a review of the newsletter after receiving a few issues with premium content. After six months I added a comment that I was still satisfied, and after a full year I can honestly state that it has been quite worthwhile. So of course I renewed. For a mere $15 per year this gives me access to valuable insights from one of the best, objective translation technology gurus I know. He is very thorough in his research, and his recommendations are carefully considered, with solid context. If you don't know the newsletter, click the icon above and sign up for the free version, and if keeping up to date with the most important developments in technology for our profession is worth at least $1.25 per month to you, then treat yourself to a premium subscription. It's worth it. Apparently as an owner of a previous version (7.0) of his e-book The Translator's Toolbox I also get an upgrade to the new version 8.0 for the newsletter renewal. I would have gladly paid at least $15 for that anyway, because I found it to be a useful reference work. Thank you, Jost.

A good book revisited

The flu is not one of my favorite experiences. Whether the illness that felled me last week, screwed up the quality of my work and kept me in bed unable to do any work for a few days was the swine flu I cannot say, but it left me feeling like an old, roasted pig. Being on my back for a while did have one good side, however: I could finally get around to reading the hardcopy version of a very interesting book for international freelance translators.

A year ago I published a short review on this blog of Oleg Rudavin's Internet Freelancing: Practical Guide for Translators. The original review was based on two incomplete preview chapters from the Translator's Training site. Now that I've read the whole thing in preparation for writing a review I promised to do for the BDÜ, I can repeat my earlier recommendation without qualification. Sure, the English is quirky in places and makes me smile, but big deal - I would be a dishonest fool to ignore the fact that this is a clearly expressed overview of a huge number - dare I say most? - of the issues that face freelance translators on the international markets today. Best of all, it's written by a fellow faced with brutal competition in a language pair often noted for its cut-throat pricing. Mr. Rudavin does well I think, but he doesn't live in the German-English Land of Milk and Honey, so he survives and thrives by his wits and learning from experience.

As I mentioned in my last review, I love the first-person narrative of this book. Examples given are based on real experience, and some of that experience is pretty damned embarrassing. This gives the book as a whole a lot more credibility. A wide range of issues, including all-important matters of rates and reality as well as the complications of international banking are discussed. For those outside the US and Western Europe, this may be thought of as a critical business survival guide for Internet freelancing. For those like me inside the walls of Western Europe, it's a real eye-opener to see what a colleague in another country sometimes has to put up with just to accept a payment. Useful to know if I plan international cooperations or activity as a new agency.

Reading this book, I have the feeling that Oleg spent the week as my personal advisor, helping me to review my business and find ways of restructuring it in a more effective way. (And coincidentally, that's what I'm doing.) The advice in this book - the lessons to be gained from "listening" to his narrative - is worth a lot more than the cover price. If I stated the multiple I believe applies, I'm sure I'd just start a useless argument, but I'd laugh my way to a better business while arguing. Let's just say it's a fun and worthwhile reference book that has something of value for most freelancers, from rank beginners without a clue to old hands. You won't find every answer there, but you'll surely find more than you expect.