Profitability
Guide for Translators
In
addition to the article «Rentabilitätsberechnung
im Dolmetscherberuf» ((Profitability guide for interpreters))
published in FORUM 1/2000, the article at hand tries
to present existing material as well as its utilisation
in a way that allows translators, who have no experience
in business management, to use this helpful material
as a rule of thumb for preparing professional decisions.
The market analysis presented here, is from the
perspective of freelancers working in the Federal
Republic of Germany.
The
countless responses we received indicated that no
reliable price lists for linguistic services have
been created to date. I tried to catalogue all translation
services in order to come up with the figures, procedures
and conclusions described below. Responses will
show, whether the figures used are realistic or
will need some modification.
All
considerations that simplify the process of decision-making
in Germany are based on the following alternative:
The translator sells a service under a) a dienstvertrag
or b) a werkvertrag. According to German
law, the werkvertrag serves as a binding
contract for the translator (service provider) to
deliver an agreed upon contractual object, while
the customer is contractually obliged to pay the
agreed amount (BGB [German Civil Code] Art. 631).
It is important to note that with a werkvertrag
the service provider promises certain success; how
he manages to provide said, is up to him/her.
A practical example:
Shovelling snow in front of a house can be part
of a werkvertrag and the success is a pavement
free of snow. Thus according to the werkvertrag,
the service provider might be obliged to shovel
snow 24 hours a day in order to be successful. In
contrast, if the service provider is bound by a
dienstvertrag (BGB [German Civil Code] Art. 611),
he/she is contractually obliged to perform services
for a definite or indefinite amount of time/calculation
unit for the agreed price.
Shovelling snow under a dienstvertrag would
mean that the service provider would be obliged
to shovel snow for up to 8 hours a day. The service
provider is neither responsible for managing the
removal of all the snow within this period of time,
nor is it his problem if more snow falls, once his/her
contractually defined obligation is fulfilled.
Should
more information on this topic be of interest, I
can provide a one-day seminar for a fee at any time.
Prerequisites
Qualifications
Usually
graduates of university or with similar higher education
(often multiple degrees).
Hours
of productive time
In
order to come up with figures that can be compared
with other professions, it is necessary to convert
usual rates per word/line/page into rates per hour.
You will have to take into consideration however,
that the calculated rate per hour is a virtual one.
No professional translator will ever be able to
exclusively charge by the hour.
A
collective agreement for technical translators does
not exist. Employees are grouped into the agreements
used by the company in question or, if applicable,
integrated into the specialised levels of the company’s
collective agreements (usually into the rate of
pay for commercial employees).
These
guidelines are problematic, since such figures -
be they published or confidential - are useful only,
if they contain all surcharges and if they are based
on a set number of working hours.
A
translator employed in Germany earns between 1,534.00
Euro (K1 = salaries, junior level) and 7,670.00
(AT = salaries, senior level) Euro, calculating
into an hourly rate of approximately 10.23 Euro
to 51.13 Euro at 150 hours per month. Having been
employed in a company for six years, a translator
should be rated as AT (= salaries, senior level).
I
have had about 100 responses from freelance colleagues,
who work in the specialised fields like medical/
pharmaceutical and chemical translation. The survey
was undertaken between April 1999 and March 2000.
The average resulting annual salary amounted to
101,236.00 Euro. With respect to working hours,
the average was 44.4 hours per week (or 1,953.60
hours per year). The average hourly wage amounted
to 51.82 Euro. This corresponds to a productive
hourly rate of approximately 101.24 Euro.
A
translator can produce in average of approx. 5 to
16 pages of text per 8-hour working day. In contrast,
a proof reader corrects approx. 20 to 60 pages per
day.
Please
see for yourselves if you or your company can profit
from these figures.
Annual
income and number of hours
For
those colleagues, who haven’t read my first article
or just haven’t got it handy, I will repeat the
same observations here that I made for interpreters:
The annual income of an employee ranges from 27,610
to 61,356 Euro when s/he works 1,650 to 1,900
hours per year. A translator should not place him-/herself
below that. Thus the minimum figure would be 51,130
Euro per year (a freelance translator has to pay
social security etc. from his/her own pocket, therefore
needs more money) excluding project-related extra
costs and general costs (c.f. Peter Oehmig: «Was
darf es denn kosten?» ((What should it cost?)) in:
technische kommunikation 3/00, ISSN 1436-1809, pages
15-18).
After
an initial start-up phase, a freelancer should not
work more than 2,000 hours, because otherwise his/her
family and health will suffer.
A
gross working time of 2,00 hours per year includes
time for project canvassing, professional training,
organisation and maintaining one’s work place. According
to P. Oehmig (op. cit.), a freelancer should divide
this time as follows:
|
Percentage |
Duty |
Hours |
|
50% |
Production |
1.000 |
|
25% |
Canvassing |
500 |
|
15% |
Organisation
and maintaining work place |
300 |
|
10% |
Professional
training |
200 |
51,130
Euro divided by 1,000 hours of production make 51.13
Euro per productive hour.
Calculation
Units
In
1975 we were happy with the fact that private sector
customers allowed for charging full line price for
incomplete lines. That was the happy time before
the use of word processors. From 1985, private sector
customers rejected our proposal to charge by character
or by character divided by a given factor.
A rate per words was more willingly accepted. Today
the most common units to charge by are: word, line
and page, if we don’t take charging by the sheet
of paper (DIN format A0) into consideration.
In order to be able to bring these units into an
approximate relation to one another, I would like
to define the following key factors: 1 standard
page contains approx. 30 lines with approx. 55 characters
or approx. 30 lines with approx. 7 words. This results
in the following concordance for my system:
1
standard page corresponds to |
|
approx.
1,650 characters with spaces
(30
lines x 55 characters = 1,650) |
approx.
30 standard lines |
approx.
210 words
(30
x 7 = 210) |
However,
in 1994 the EU-page standard was defined to be slightly
less, namely 1,500 characters or 30 lines with 50
characters.
Examples
of calculation:
Price
per word of 0.05 Euro à price per page of approx. 10.50 Euro.
Price
per word of 0.10 Euro à price per page of approx. 21.00 Euro.
Price
per word of 0.38 Euro à price per page of approx. 79.80 Euro.
Price
per word of 0.46 Euro à price per page of approx. 96.60 Euro
etc.
(0.38
Euro and 0.46 Euro correspond to 0.50 US$ and 0.60
US$ respectively, taken from http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/,
calculated according to exchange rate dated March
1, 2005 provided by BMF [German Federal Ministry
of Finance]).
Price
per page of 30.90 Euro à price per word of approx. 0.15 Euro.
Price
per page of 46.20 Euro à price per word of approx. 0.22 Euro,
etc.
Further
details on this topic can be covered in a one-day
seminar for a fee at any time.
Amount
of annual production to be sold
According
to these suppositions, the budgetary levels for
the translator calculate as follows:
Model
of annual income depending on daily production |
5
pages/day on 125 days/year |
Annual
income |
| At
30.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.03
Euro per line) |
19,312.50 Euro |
| At
46.20 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.54
Euro per line) |
28,875.00 Euro |
| At
61.50 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.05 Euro per line) |
38,437.50 Euro |
| At
81.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.73 Euro per line)
On
average very hard to achieve |
51,187.50 Euro |
8
pages/ day on 125 days/year |
Annual
income |
| At
30.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.03
Euro per line) |
30,900.00 Euro |
| At
46.20 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.54
Euro per line) |
46,200.00 Euro |
|
At
61.50 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.05 Euro per line)
On
average only achievable for highly specialised
material |
61,500.00 Euro |
| At
81.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.73 Euro per line)
On
average very hard to achieve |
81,900.00 Euro |
10
pages/day on 125 days/year |
Annual
income |
| At
30.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.03
Euro per line) |
38,625.00 Euro |
|
At
46.20 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.54
Euro per line)
On
average achievable |
57,750.00 Euro |
|
At
61.50 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.05 Euro per line)
On
average only achievable for highly specialised
material |
76,875.00 Euro |
| At
81.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.73 Euro per line)
On
average very hard to achieve |
102,375.00 Euro |
16
pages/day on 125 days/year |
Annual
income |
|
At
30.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.03
Euro per line)
On
average achievable |
61,800.00 Euro |
|
At
46.20 Euro per page (corresponding to 1.54 Euro per line)
On
average achievable |
92.4000.00 Euro |
|
At
61.50 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.05 Euro per line)
On
average only achievable for highly specialised
material |
123,000.00 Euro |
| At
81.90 Euro per page (corresponding to 2.73 Euro per line)
On
average very hard to achieve |
163,800.00 Euro |
The
most common figures are represented in green. Using
this model, every reader can easily calculate further
figures.
Every
colleague will have to decide for him-/herself in
how far s/he is willing to grant any discounts.
It should, however, be taken into consideration
that repeated words, fuzzy matches etc. lead to
the fact that every article can only be charged
once. This might sometimes seem perverse since the
customer asking for discounts usually does not provide
the translator with the necessary software. Although
the possibilities for a market-specific product
design are rather limited, and the resulting distribution
channels are not transparent - neither for the supplier
nor the customer - the translator is able to realize
significant improvements and cost reductions through
technological developments. This added value
belongs to the translator exclusively or has
anyone heard of a surgeon or dentist offering his/her
services for less because s/he has acquired new
equipment, which allows for an increased output
and quality under the same conditions? Our colleague
Wolfgang H. complains “… that there are some wild-goose
chasers who first spend their money on software,
and then offer their translations for even less.”
In
addition to the price per page, extra costs and
VAT are charged. The translator easily reaches the
given minimum with rates between 30.90 and 61.50
Euro per page. The service thus costs at least 1.03
to 2.05 Euro per line.
Further
details on this topic can be covered in a one-day
seminar for a fee at any time.
Catalogue
of translation services
It
is only fair to act according to the motto: ‘Pay
for what you get!’ Here is a statistical evaluation
of responses from approx. 100 freelancing colleagues
between April 1999 and March 2000:
Services |
| 1.
Translation plus extra costs
per word
per standard line
per standard page |
starting at 0.18 Euro
starting at 1.43 Euro
starting at 42.95 Euro |
|
2. Translation full price (1 printed copy sent by mail):
per word
per standard line
per standard page |
starting at 0.22 Euro
starting at 1.69 Euro
starting at 51.13 Euro |
| 3.
Proof-reading
per hour |
starting at 69.02 Euro |
extra
costs |
| 1. transcribing/formatting costs per standard page
(running text) |
starting at 2.94 Euro |
| 2.
Copies (BW) per A4 page (210 x 297 mm) |
starting at 0.15 Euro |
| 3.
CD ROM/sending via e-mail in file format |
starting at 11.25 Euro |
| 4.
Burning a CD per CD |
starting at 29.66 Euro |
| 5.
Fax page |
according to time involved and tariffs |
| 6.
Telephone costs per unit |
starting at 0.14 Euro |
| 7.
travel expenses per km |
starting at 0.59 Euro |
| 8.
Travel time per hour |
starting at 69.02 Euro |
| 9.
Express order, surcharge due to level of difficulty,
or
weekend/holiday/overnight work |
50.00% each |
| 10.
Travel expenses |
according to prices for 1st class |
| 11.
Dispatch costs |
starting at 3.58 Euro |
|
Other expenses will be charged where necessary
All prices plus VAT |
Prices
for services not directly connected with translation
(these are more often than not imposed on translators,
if they let themselves be taken to the cleaners)
like scanning, graphics, logos, post-production,
text production, printing, copying, exposure, graphic
production (2D, 3D, perspective, isometric etc.)
have not been taken into consideration for this
article but can be provided at any time if necessary.
As a technical writer, I experience on a daily basis,
how willingly all extra costs (like those for writing
and copying) are accepted by the customer and, on
the other hand, how difficult it is for the translator
to make the customer pay for them.
Once
more I would like to remind the reader how difficult
it is to demand higher prices from a customer, once
the first project has been completed. This means
that the translator will have to work longer hours
and canvass more work, thus endangering his/her
family life and personal health.
There
is a definite need for an evaluation system, which
encompasses all economic, technical, organisational
and personal aspects in order to be able to conclusively
argue with sales representatives of prospective
clients about the efficiency and profitability of
translation services. This article was not intended
as a conclusive discussion of such a system. Within
the structure of a larger project for TEKOM, a criteria
catalogue for translation quality assurance is being
prepared, which will offer some answers to these
questions. It will be published in 2005.
The
extensive collection of data by some agencies knows
no bounds, and leaves a nasty taste in some translators’
mouths.
Further
details on this topic can be covered in a one-day
seminar for a fee at any time.
With
regards to agency prices, I hasten to mention that
there are also fair partners among agencies. Some
examples:
«Force
majeure will entitle both the translator and [Agency
XX] or the client or agency to withdraw from the
project, but in any event, [Agency XX] on one of
its own projects, and the client or agency on theirs
shall undertake to pay the translator for work already
completed.»
«We
never ask translator to work for less than their
stated rate in the database.»
«[Agency
XY] offers the translator what is stated by the
[XXX] in the database as the rate per word for 1,000
words of general commercial text. Where translation
work is obviously more technical, we get a quote
from the translator.»
Further
details on this topic can be covered in a one-day
seminar for a fee at any time.
In
conclusion, I would like to point out that translation
costs as a rule do not amount to more than 1 to
5% in relation to the product. A relative increase
in costs may be expected with translation into multiple
languages; however, a translation-friendly text
format reduces these costs. When it comes to translation,
customers usually try to realise savings in the
wrong place. This results in higher customer service
efforts, more questions from end customers, a damage
to the company’s image, loss of market shares, recourse
claims due to product liability and last but not
least: even human lives!
.-L.
R. Cerna-.
