| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: How many words do you typically produce per day (text ready to go)? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "How many words do you typically produce per day (text ready to go)?".
View the poll results »
| | | | Muriel Vasconcellos (X) 
United States
Local time: 07:10
Spanish to English
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That's an average. Yesterday I did 3800 (without proofreading). It depends on how many hours I decide to work.
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 16:10
Spanish to English
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"Officially", roughly 2000 words a day is supposed to be about average, and it's the figure I quote to clients as being "normal" output. I can probably do 2500-3000 word a day of most (translation) texts in my fields without breaking sweat. However, on a busy day I might be turning out similar volumes for more than one client, for example 2500 words for one and 3000 for another (in unrelated fields) in addition to any admin and similar tasks that also need attention.
| | | | Michael Harris
Germany
Local time: 16:10
Member (2006)
German to English
Lots when I work lots and few when not. All depends on if it is full moon or if the planets are aligned or not.
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| How long is a piece of string? | Feb 21, 2017 |
I never promise to produce more than 2000 - 2500 in a day, or 10 000 in a week. That means source words, 20% more in the target language. If we introduce fuzzy matches, the only way to know precisely what we are talking about is to point at a specific text.
However, just as the average person does not exist, neither does an average day when I translate around 2000 words. Type of text, amount of research needed, whether my CAT produced a lot of usable text from the memory, straight t... See more I never promise to produce more than 2000 - 2500 in a day, or 10 000 in a week. That means source words, 20% more in the target language. If we introduce fuzzy matches, the only way to know precisely what we are talking about is to point at a specific text.
However, just as the average person does not exist, neither does an average day when I translate around 2000 words. Type of text, amount of research needed, whether my CAT produced a lot of usable text from the memory, straight text or fiddly Power Point and formatting...
Are the day's jobs small texts for proofreading and one-page press releases, or is there a longer report that flows? How much background administration is involved, and how many mails do I have to exchange with the client?
Various distractions crop up in the course of the day... I am a freelancer. I do each job individually, and not as a process on an assembly line.
Some days it is really hard work to get through a thousand words. Other days I can manage four or five thousand if I do nothing else, especially if half of the words are already in Trados, but that rarely happens. I usually have to unwind or sleep these bursts off the next day, which brings me back to average.
I know it is a useful rule of thumb, so you don't take on more work than you can manage, but this question always strikes me as meaningless. A thousand words in one language is not necessarily a thousand words when translated into another. There are so many other things involved. How many kilos did you have for breakfast today? Kilos of what?
OK, rant over. Have a good, satisfying day, everyone, whether you just manage to translate 1500 words or more than 5000...
[Edited at 2017-02-21 13:19 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Little or no research required to fully understand the source text? 5,000-6,000 | Feb 21, 2017 |
It all depends on the research required.
General content requiring little or no research to understand the concepts transmitted: 5,000-6,000 / day.
Research required? 3,000 - 4,000.
Lots of research? Less (seldom cost-effective)
In my experience, clients are not willing to pay double for a hard translation that takes twice as long as an easy one.
But, that´s just my two cents.
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Only about 10,000. But then I knock off at lunchtime.
| | | | Ricki Farn
Germany
Local time: 16:10
English to German
I don't produce words. I procure them as cheap raw materials, and then assemble them.
Next up: self-organization strategies for compulsive word hoarders.
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Chié_JP
Japan
Local time: 00:10
Member (2013)
English to Japanese
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| "Produce" means new things you write other than work? | Feb 21, 2017 |
I do not know. It depends. I do it on weekends and counted by character by my native language anyway.
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It depends! I consider 3,000 words per day quite feasible and a comfortable task, revision included, and now and then I’ve done much more than that: last December I translated over 80,000 words in 14 days but there was a lot of copy and paste involved...
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Depends on lots of factors - complexity and familiarity with content, and similarity and number of repetitions in the actual document.
Over 4,000 sounds like a breeze. IMHO
@ Chie. I
Most companies I work for consider that about 400字 roughly works out to 200 words in English. ご参考まで
Remove short sentence
[Edited at 2017-02-22 04:39 GMT]
| | | | KHALDUN ALQAYSI
United Arab Emirates
Local time: 19:10
English to Arabic
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| Not everyday work available | Feb 21, 2017 |
I do not have translation everyday.
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it obviously depends on the text and the number of repetitions therein.
| | | | | Spare us the (puzzling) sarcasm? | Feb 22, 2017 |
Why is it that every time someone asks about words translated per day (a pretty relevant and logical forum topic) there are, inevitably, a group of people who for some reason feel offended by the question, and chime in with sarcastic, derisive answers, ridiculing the respondents, as if they were above such banal matters? Give ME a break.
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Chris S wrote:
Only about 10,000. But then I knock off at lunchtime.
Clearly not possible. What is your point?
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