Over the past couple of months, we have been pursuing an opportunity to provide clinical trial support for a top-10 pharmaceutical company. The process has been dragging on, in part, because of the client's difficulty in comparing prices from the different suppliers they're talking to. Some of the translation companies are quoting per word, others per page. Frustrated by several rounds of quoting, the client finally sent a number of sample files to the suppliers and asked all of them for the proposal amount to complete this work.
That got me thinking: It really is difficult to collect translation pricing from multiple vendors. Even something as simple as a "word" isn't that simple when you take into account
- net words vs. gross words
- source words vs. target words
- words requiring translation vs. those that don't (e.g., large tables of numbers that won't change)
- the impact that existing or yet-to-be-developed translation memories will have
We all know that the tool that was used to count the words can have a huge impact on the results. We have lost some bids because our word counts were 40% higher than those from our competitors. We all looked at the same files, so how could our word counts have been so much higher?
And it's easy to say "price isn't everything - you need to take quality into account". Yes, of course, but because quality is even less easily defined and compared, it does usually come down to price. Plus, companies that buy large amounts of anything need to understand the pricing methodology that underlies the quotes that they're receiving. Worse than paying too much is being surprised by ever-changing prices.
In the absence of a standardized approach for pricing translations, it seems that the current situation kind of works. Well, it doesn't work for clients but it does work for efficient, innovative, streamlined translation suppliers who can figure out how to reduce the number of words being quoted.
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Whilst CAT tools may have a number matching function and do the conversion automatically, this function cannot always be relied upon. Thus, a translator may end up converting decimal points and commas in a large table of numbers - a nuisance task, really - while the client may wonder why the translator is charging him for "translating" numbers.
This applies even more so for the "translation" of dates; e.g. 1/22/2009 in American English would be 22.01.2009 or even 2009.01.22 in German (and a few other languages).
I'm not sure clients are always aware of this fact. They may even suspect that the translator is trying to rip them off. Agencies should point this out to their clients.
It appears companies are more interested in a cheap job than a quality one and that agencies are looking for ways to increase their percentage. I translate many original medical scientific articles for publication and charge per source word (I am not a machine so I cannot say how many target words there will be). Usually I give an estimate of the cost and the delivery date which is duly accepted. My clients know that this is an estimate and will have a margin of error.
My CAT tools are mine (I paid for them) and the memory generated is mine too. It appears, also, that, although CAT tools are sold to translators as a great way to make working easier and faster, the benefits are taken away by the agencies and companies who not only want discounts but also want the translation memory, FREE.
What is a word? It's a few cents give or take a penny.