| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: Would you accept a discount for 50-74% matches? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Would you accept a discount for 50-74% matches?".
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| | | | | I don't use CAT tools | Jun 1, 2022 |
For most of my translations style is more important than accuracy and consistency (I stopped doing technical translations long ago) and a repetition in the source text might not always mean a repetition in the target text, depending on the context. That being said, I have been offering discounts to two of my clients who have been giving me very repetitive work for over 20 years.
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From more than 20 years of CAT tool use, I find there is no time saving whatsoever trying to adapt a 50-74% concordance match in my language combination. And next to no time saving either with a 75-84% match.
No time saving means full rate, like a "new" sentence.
Philippe
| | | | | Matches at that level probably do not save time | Jun 1, 2022 |
By the time you have checked which 50% is a match and which 50% is different, you can very often spend more time than simply translating the segment from scratch.
It may save looking up terminology, but on the whole I like to skim a text and find the terminology before I start, as that is the easiest way to get it consistent! And it gives time to carry out wider searches, to check with the client, or post KudoZ questions if necessary.
So no, on principle I do not give discount... See more By the time you have checked which 50% is a match and which 50% is different, you can very often spend more time than simply translating the segment from scratch.
It may save looking up terminology, but on the whole I like to skim a text and find the terminology before I start, as that is the easiest way to get it consistent! And it gives time to carry out wider searches, to check with the client, or post KudoZ questions if necessary.
So no, on principle I do not give discounts for very fuzzy matches. I give very little discount for anything less than 85 - 90%.
I do not quibble, however, if the total rate for the job is reasonable, and one of my clients takes a discount for a couple of segments with 50-74% matches. The final figure is most important, not how they calculate it!
How it converts in to a rate per hour is what really matters. ▲ Collapse
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Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 20:10
French to English
Yup at best, it saves you checking for termino in the term base, which doesn't count for much. But the time spent parsing what is salvageable and what needs to go or be modified, could have been spent looking in the term base (or previous translations, if you're not using a CAT tool).
Although the stuff the CAT tool thinks is similar is sometimes good for a laugh. Stuff like "the cat is out of the bag" as a 60% match for "the cat is on the mat".
| | | | Alex Lichanow
Germany
Local time: 20:10
Member (2020)
English to German
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| Definitely not | Jun 1, 2022 |
75-84% and even higher matches tend to be borderline useless often enough, so I do not see why I would accept a discount for matches where I can salvage even less.
| | | | | Keep It Simple | Jun 1, 2022 |
I've got no problem applying a discount based on repetitions, but all this fuzzy match stuff is just too ... fuzzy.
MateCat gives you a "billable words" figure, which keeps it simple.
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 20:10
Spanish to English
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As I see it, that kind of fuzzy/matches nonsense is nothing but flim-flam that agencies use to exploit the translators unlucky enough to have to depend on them for work. Thankfully, I don't need to rely on agencies for income nowadays, as all my clients are direct. And I decide if I give them a discount or not.
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1-99.9% = 100% of my rate.
100% = 50% of my rate.
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
| | | | Michael Newton
United States
Local time: 14:10
Japanese to English
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| discount for matches? | Jun 2, 2022 |
No, as I am not brain dead.
| | | | | Discount madness | Jun 2, 2022 |
neilmac wrote:
As I see it, that kind of fuzzy/matches nonsense is nothing but flim-flam that agencies use to exploit the translators unlucky enough to have to depend on them for work.
Having never been part of the fuzzycat movement, I find it hard to understand how anybody would ever agree to this kind of thing.
Can you imagine a carpenter, or metalworker, saying something like: "Hey, I just bought myself a new lathe, and now I can complete some jobs in half the time. So I'm going to drop my rates by 50%."?
No, me neither. Any tools I may use to enhance my working process are my business, not the client's.
I remember somebody telling me, way back when I was involved in developing software for English teaching, to "beware fuzzy matches". Even exact matches, as others have pointed out, don't necessarily mean that the target word or phrase will be the same in every case. Context is everything. The translator must think about things like that, and it's that thought process that produces a high quality translation.
I suppose that if you're just translating lists of machine parts, a discount for exact matches can be justified, but even then fuzzies need to be checked, and that checking needs to be paid for.
Yet this idea of a discount table based on different degrees of matching seems to have somehow become an accepted norm - to some people, anyway.
| | | | | Fuzzy threshold, shocking! | Jun 6, 2022 |
This makes no sense to the translator. In most cases, if you use the “factory settings” of your CAT tool your fuzzy threshold will be 75 or 70. This means that most translators will never see the fuzzy matches they are giving a discount for. So, companies doing that are basically asking their translators to discount the wind.
Maybe some translators have lowered that factory threshold out of personal preference, but how many of us honestly find benefit in seeing 50% matches?
I thi... See more This makes no sense to the translator. In most cases, if you use the “factory settings” of your CAT tool your fuzzy threshold will be 75 or 70. This means that most translators will never see the fuzzy matches they are giving a discount for. So, companies doing that are basically asking their translators to discount the wind.
Maybe some translators have lowered that factory threshold out of personal preference, but how many of us honestly find benefit in seeing 50% matches?
I think it would make sense to tell them that for quality and efficiency’s sake, the translator is not ready to alter the fuzzy threshold of the CAT, hence the discount can’t be applied. Since they came up with that technical snare, that’ll be interesting to see what they reply. 😉 ▲ Collapse
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| Where do you draw the line? | Jun 7, 2022 |
Philip Lees wrote:
I suppose that if you're just translating lists of machine parts, a discount for exact matches can be justified, but even then fuzzies need to be checked, and that checking needs to be paid for.
Yet this idea of a discount table based on different degrees of matching seems to have somehow become an accepted norm - to some people, anyway.
I often translate sets of accounts where the words are the same from quarter to quarter and only the numbers and dates change.
Would you then charge the full 5,000 words even if it only takes you 2 hours? Presumably some of your MT jobs present the same ethical dilemma.
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Ice Scream wrote:
I often translate sets of accounts where the words are the same from quarter to quarter and only the numbers and dates change.
Would you then charge the full 5,000 words even if it only takes you 2 hours? Presumably some of your MT jobs present the same ethical dilemma.
You're talking about a very special case, Chris. Your scenario is more like editing a revision than a new translation. I do that kind of work sometimes, and of course I don't charge the full translation rate. I wonder why the clients in the situation you describe would bother to send the new accounts to a translator at all, if all they have to do is insert numbers and dates into a standard template. I suspect you're just playing devil's advocate here.
In any case, I don't see what this has to do with MT - at least, not for the kinds of text I normally deal with. I do translate quite a lot of abstracts from medical congresses, where the structure is fairly standard, but the content is quite different from one job to the next.
As I've said in other threads, I use MT now as a typing aid, making rough corrections as I go. Most of the work I contribute as an experienced translator comes after that phase.
| | | | | Tools and rates | Jun 8, 2022 |
Philip Lees wrote:
Can you imagine a carpenter, or metalworker, saying something like: "Hey, I just bought myself a new lathe, and now I can complete some jobs in half the time. So I'm going to drop my rates by 50%."?
No, me neither. Any tools I may use to enhance my working process are my business, not the client's.
True, except in this case it's usually the agencies providing the translator with the TM to use, which is where the fuzzy matches come from. So in your example it would be more like me purchasing tools and providing them to the carpenter to use on a project in my house that I want done a certain way and that can only be done using those tools. And then it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect a little bit of a discount for providing the tool.
However, it if turns out that the carpenter can't use the tool because it's only good for a little part of the process and it would be easier and faster to just do the thing with their own tools, then requesting a discount would not be reasonable.
So if it's my TM that I built up, then no discount for the client for the reason you said. But if it's an agency giving me a high-quality TM that saves me time in the translation, I think giving a discount is fine.
Not for 50-74% matches, though. There's usually little worth salvaging there, and as others have said, it's more work to sort through them than to start from scratch.
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