Forum: Money matters
Topic: “Per Page” Rate Recommendations for Beginner Japanese > English Translator ?
Poster: Katalin Horvath McClure
Post title: Not “global standard” at all
Hi Yasutomo,
[quote]Yasutomo Kanazawa wrote:
Since it’s difficult to count the Japanese characters which are totally different from English words[/quote]
I am sorry, but I have to disagree.
Why would it be any more difficult counting the characters in a Japanese source text than counting the words in an English source? You can use the exact same methods (in Word, use the wordcount function the same way, and any CAT tool would count the characters as well).
[quote]
Why don’t you ask you client about this, and tell them that the global standard is directing towards per Target word for Jap-Eng pair? [/quote]
I have to disagree again. It is simply not true. The “global standard” - if there is such a thing at all - is to quote/bill based on source count, simply because the exact price is known at the beginning (helps with budgeting), and there is no incentive for the translator to be overly wordy (helps with editing).
All of my clients ask for quotes and bills based on source count.
Katalin
