Hey, I'm back.
Never been away, really, but I haven't posted in years.
Now, this is about my translations business.
I got an email from a person asking how much I'd charge for a certain job. I answered that normally I charge by the page (with a specific definition of "page" - that is, 2,000 characters spaces included) on the final result. So I could give her an idea, knowing the exact length of the text, but not a final quote.
She sent me the exact character count, and I gave her a ballpark quote - keeping in mind that normally a translated Italian text is longer than its English original simply because Italian, on average, uses longer words. It came just over 50GBP. She didn't seem convinced.
I offered to make it 50GBP, whatever the exact length: I imagined it'd come to about 52 or 53 anyway. Still "too much".
She proposed, then, to translate it herself with Google Translate and have me only proofread it. Now: Google Translate can be OK to get a general idea about a text, but this needed to be something commercial. I have already done this [the story will be coming soon, it's hilarious] and it didn't work. And I explained her this.
I offered to do it for 45GBP - and found out that she didn't want to spend more than 15EUR. Which is... no. Very much no.
I hope nobody accepts the job for that sum...
Never been away, really, but I haven't posted in years.
Now, this is about my translations business.
I got an email from a person asking how much I'd charge for a certain job. I answered that normally I charge by the page (with a specific definition of "page" - that is, 2,000 characters spaces included) on the final result. So I could give her an idea, knowing the exact length of the text, but not a final quote.
She sent me the exact character count, and I gave her a ballpark quote - keeping in mind that normally a translated Italian text is longer than its English original simply because Italian, on average, uses longer words. It came just over 50GBP. She didn't seem convinced.
I offered to make it 50GBP, whatever the exact length: I imagined it'd come to about 52 or 53 anyway. Still "too much".
She proposed, then, to translate it herself with Google Translate and have me only proofread it. Now: Google Translate can be OK to get a general idea about a text, but this needed to be something commercial. I have already done this [the story will be coming soon, it's hilarious] and it didn't work. And I explained her this.
I offered to do it for 45GBP - and found out that she didn't want to spend more than 15EUR. Which is... no. Very much no.
I hope nobody accepts the job for that sum...
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