CHAPTER NINE
IMPORTANT NOTICE
IMPORTANT NOTICE
THIS CONTRACT FORM OR GUIDE IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND IS NOT INTENDED TO PRESCRIBE THE USE OF ANY TERMS AND CONDITIONS HEREIN. THE ISSUANCE OF THIS FORM DOES NOT RESTRICT IN ANY RESPECT ANY MEMBER OR NON-MEMBER FROM CONTRACTING FOR SERVICE ON TERMS AND CONDITIONS DIFFERENT FROM THOSE SET FORTH HEREIN. THE USE OF ANY PORTION OF THIS FORM OF AGREEMENT IS STRICTLY VOLUNTARY, AND IS THE SOLE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CONTRACTING PARTIES.
NEITHER THE AMERICAN TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATION NOR ITS MEMBERS ASSUME ANY RESPONSIBILITY OR LIABILITY, WHETHER BASED ON WARRANTY, CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, PRODUCT LIABILITY OR OTHERWISE, WITH RESPECT TO THE USE OF THIS CONTRACT FORM. THE AMERICAN TRANSLATORS ASSOCIATION AND ITS MEMBERS MAKE NO WARRANTY, EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, WITH REGARD TO THE LEGALITY OR ENFORCEABILITY OF THIS FORM OF AGREEMENT.
Note: This sample contract has been included by courtesy of the American Translators Association.
It is subject to amendments and changes without prior notice and is only a suggested model contract. For any updated version and/or other information about ATA, please visit their website under http://www. atanet.org.
Some contracts that you will conclude with your clients need not be of the same complexity. While oral contracts are also legal and binding as long as they include a consideration (payment of money for translation services rendered), it is always wise to have a written contract or at least written confirmation from your client that includes all the vital elements of a contract (in accordance with the law of contract).
In case of a dispute you will have that contract or agreement to fall back on. In case of any complex contracts or legal issues, you should always consult a legal advisor.
Warning!
The above information is solely intended for the purpose of pointing you in the right direction. It does not constitute legal advice and you will need to inform yourself thoroughly, before drawing up or signing any contract.
If you wish to have a standard contract drawn up that suits most of your needs and that will stand up in a court of law, ask your solicitor to draw it up on your behalf.
Note that a disclaimer appended to the end of a translation may discourage litigation. It does not absolve you from exercising proper duty of care owed to your clients. Do not misrepresent your level of skill and do not be negligent in your work. A translator delivering good work can count on repeat business!
b) Sample Cost Estimate, Charges Calculation and Securing the Job
Most clients will want to know, how much they are likely to be charged for the contracted translation. Some clients, of course, will simply shop around and will not give you an immediate go ahead to proceed with a translation, although you have supplied them with a cost estimate and timeline. A simple method of arriving at a cost estimate of a given translation is as follows:
Let us assume, for the sake of simplicity, that a translation consists of ten typed pages of text, with standard line spacing. A standard typed page will generally contain approximately 300+ words per page. However, this may depend on the font type, the paragraph spacing at the top and bottom, as well as left and right page margins.
Your first step therefore consists of counting the words on each of the first three lines of the text, adding them together and dividing the total by three. E.g. the first line contains 16 words, the second line 14 words and the third line 18 words. These add up to 48 words in total, divided by three = 16. Thus, for the purpose of estimating costs we simply assume that there are an average of 16 words on every line of all ten pages.
We will therefore count the total number of lines on the first page and find that they add up to 20 lines. 20 lines x 16 words
= 320 words per page. If all 10 pages have the same page layout and the same number of lines (you note this by quickly glancing at each of them), you will arrive at a total word count of 3200 words.
Now, if we assume that your charges amount to $20 per hundred words, then you simply multiply the word count by 20 and divide by 100. Thus, you can advise your client that the cost estimate for the translation is approximately $640.
To this, your client may reply: “thank you, I will get back to you!” You may take this to mean that the client is going to shop around and will probably never get back to you. If, on the other hand the answer is: “this sounds reasonable”, you may take this to mean that you are most likely going to get the job. Therefore, you simply reply: “I have some spare time, right now, so would you like me to go ahead with the job?” This puts your client on the spot and the client can only answer with yes, or no. Make sure you write down your client’s contact details and agree upon a deadline for the delivery of the completed translation.
At this point you also need to discuss payment. The job you have quoted for is for a self-employed translator working from home, a reasonably big and well-paid job. Therefore, you cannot simply put it in the mail and hope to be paid for it. Unless you know your client well, the chances are that you may never be paid for it. Too many translators lament the fact that they were too trusting. Therefore, ask for cash in advance or have the completed translation collected against payment in full or mail it off upon receipt of a bank cheque or money order in the mail or after an electronic fund transfer to your bank account. If this seems rather rigid to you, please consider that a translation has no resale value and cannot be sold to anyone else, even at a discount price. If you do not receive payment it is your precious time that was wasted and, after all, time is money!
How then, do you assess the final cost of the completed translation? You may have agreed with your client to base your charges on a target language count, (easily obtainable from your word document); you will enter that amount on your invoice and then proceed as shown on the sample invoice in the appendix. This means that you will add on any supplementary charges, such as urgency surcharges, charges for registered mail, swearing of an affidavit, production of multiple copies, etc.
Good luck, you are on your own from here on!
c) Sample Invoice (fictitious)
To James C. Chitterbuck
Space Age Tools Pty. Ltd. Translator
6 Hugenot Avenue Mayflower Court
Benningsfield Overflow
WA 9710 NSW 2734
Tel.: (02) 9999999 Fax: (02) 9999995 ABN 0000000000
I N V O I C E /0/
Date: -0-0
Ref: Your ref. 122096/Px/kf of 26-02-11 refers.
Translation text received by e-mail / fax on 26-02-11 at 14.05.
Completed translation returned to you by email on 27-02-11 at 16:11 To translation of
1 patent specification. Total number of words 300 at 20/100 $ 60.00
Supplying of translation on CD/ROM disk $
Allowance for fax/e-mail transmission $
Urgency surcharge of 50% applies $ 30.00
Swearing of affidavit at $ 25.-- $
Second opinion on other translator’s translation $
Subtotal: $ 90.00
GST if applicable $ 9.00
Total Amount of Invoice: $ 99.00
Waiver: Whilst great care has been taken to render and accurate, faithful and complete translation of the text supplied by you, such translation is undertaken on the explicit understanding that the translator will not accept responsibility nor be held liable under either contract or tort for any alleged translation errors and/or accidental omissions in regard to the translation invoiced above or for any commercial decisions you may base upon such translation. In case of doubt, the original text must be consulted.
d) Glossary of Acronyms and Other Terms*
ABN Australian Business Number
ADSL Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line
AUSIT Australian Society for Interpreters and Translators
CAT Computer Aided Translation
CHM Change Mode
CSV Common Services Verbs (interface)
DOC Microsoft Word Document Format
DOS Disk Operating System
GLOBALISATION Linguistic, cultural, technical adaptation of products, services and marketing strategies to fit local markets worldwide
HLP .help (file name extension)
HTMA Hypertext Markup Architecture
HTML Hypertext Markup Language
INTERNATIONALISATION Adaption of a product (software) for worldwide use
ISP Internet Service Provider
LISA Localisation Industrial Standards Association
LOCALISATION Linguistic and cultural adaptation of a product to local markets
LOTE Language(s) Other Than English
MALWARE harmful accidentally downloaded computer code which is designed to harm your computer
MAHT Machine Assisted Human Translation
MIF Management Information Format
MS Microsoft
MT Machine Translation
NAATI National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters Ltd.
ODP Open Distributed Processing
ODS Open Data Services
ODT Open Data Transfer
PC Personal Computer
PDF Portable Document File (format)
PPS Point to Point Service
PPT Point to Point
RTF Rich Text Format
SBS Special Broadcasting Service or Small Business Server SDC Super Density Cluster or Source Data Cluster
SDD Super Density Document or Subscriber Data Document
SDXL Structured Data Exchange Language
SGML Structured General Markup Language
SL Source Language
SLI Source Language Interference
SPYWARE Accidentally downloaded computer code, which tries to read your hard disk and spy on your computer activities without your permission.
TAFE Tertiary and Further Education Colleges
TL Target Language
TM Translation Memory
TMS Terminology Management Systems
TXT File encoding as simple TEXT file
URL Uniform Resource Locator
WAITI West Australian Institute for Translators and Interpreters
WPD Word Perfect Document
WWW World Wide Web (Internet)
XML Extensible Markup Language
XSL Extensible Stylesheet Language
ZIP Refers to compressed files
*Not all computing acronyms in this guide referring to file transfer protocols have been explained above. If you require their transcribed meaning, which is mostly of little concern to translators, explanations may be found on the World Wide Web on one of the websites dealing with computer acronyms.
e) Bibliography of Print Materials Relating to Translation (in alphabetical order)
Alcaraz Enrique and Hughes Brian, 2002, Legal Translation Explained St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Austermühl Frank, 2001, Electronic Tools for Translators, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Boise-Beier and Holman Michael, editors, 1999, The Practices of Literary Translation, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Cockerill Hiroko, 2006, Style & Narrative in Translations St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
de Linde Zoe and Kay Neil, 1999, The Semiotics of Subtitling St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Dias-Cintas and Remael Aline, 2006, Audiovisual Translation: Subtitling, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Esselink Bert, 1998, A Practical Guide to Software Localization, John Benjamins,
Kay Martin, 1997, The Proper Place of Men and Machines in Language Translation, Machine Translation, 13:3-23 Kelly Dorothy, 2005, A Handbook for Translator Trainers,
St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Larsen Mildred, editor, 1998, Meaning-based Translation: A Guide to cross-language Equivalence, Lanham, Maryland
Maier Carol, editor, 2000, Evaluation and Translation, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Mayoral Asensio Roberto, 2003, Translating Official Documents, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Montalt Vincent and Gonzales Davies Maria, 2006, Medical Translation Step by Step, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Mossop Brian, 2006, Revising and Editing for Translators, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Nord Christiane, 1997, Translating as a Purposeful Activity, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Robinson Douglas, compiler, 2002, Western Translation Theory, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Tymoczka Maria, 2006, Enlarging Translation, Empowering Translators, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Van Coillie and Walter P. Verschueren, editors, 2006, Children’s Literature in Translation, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
Vandaele Jeroen, 2002, Translating Humour, St Jerome Publishing Ltd., Manchester, U.K.
f) Bibliography of Internet Resources
This has been intentionally left blank so that individual translators can include their own resources. Many of the Internet resources keep changing frequently and require constant updating.
g) CAT Tools Available for Download from the Internet
Every existing CAT tool is purchasable and downloadable via the Internet. The costs vary greatly. Unless your business warrants the expense of purchasing one of the more sophisticated and widely used CAT tools (described in an earlier chapter) via the Internet, you may be able to look for freely downloadable Freeware or Shareware Programs. New programs are being developed all the time and it would be presumptuous to recommend one program over another, for it is largely a matter of personal need and the capacity of individual translators to come to grips with the often difficult to learn CAT tool functions.
Many of them require some concept of the internal workings of computers and presuppose that you are comfortable with constant mouse clicking when importing, transferring, exporting, filing and encoding etc. text segments.
Much work needs to be done by program designers to make CAT tools truly user-friendly. However, if you have the time to learn the many superb functions of the most frequently used CAT tools, you will ultimately save yourself a lot of time and above all repeat translations of identical and similar text.
Translatum, the Greek Translation Portal, is one of many Internet sources that offer an excellent summary of CAT tools, their prices and uses. A visit to their website is recommended below:
http://www/translatum.gr/discs/translation-memory.htm
An equally good summary of Translation Tools and Resources appears on the website of http://www.betranslated.com.
translation-tools.htm and on a number of websites compiled by the major translation agencies and several universities around the world.
h) Translation Agencies Offering Work on the Internet
The following are but a very few of the major Internet-listed translation agencies which offer work to translators, who are prepared to undertake work via the Internet and who may be required to pay an annual membership fee to share in the various facilities and privileges open to members. The listing of the agencies is at random and has no bearing on their ranking. It serves simply to save translators time in surfing the net and it must be pointed out that translators will deal with any of the listed agencies at their own risk and that neither the author nor publisher will be responsible for any dealings translators have with the listed agencies.
There are countless others that may simply be found with the aid of your search engine by typing in such search terms as
‘translators wanted’ ‘translation agencies’ ‘web translations’ etc.
i) e-Pay via the Internet
Translators expect to be paid for their work and in order to be paid regularly and from anywhere in the world it may be necessary to open an account with e-pay or PayPal on the Internet. It will be the responsibility of translators to declare and pay tax in their country of residence of any revenue earned on or via the Internet. As always, great caution needs to be exercised when giving personal account details or credit card numbers to other parties on the Internet. Above all, you need to ensure that your malware and spyware defences are up-to-date and activated and that the lock on your browser appears to confirm that your communication is encoded and cannot be easily read by hackers.
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j) Dictionaries and Glossaries Available on the Internet
The Internet features numerous dictionaries for all language pairs and ample specialised glossaries. You merely need to type into your favourite search engine the type of dictionary and/or glossary you are after and you will find an impressive choice.
After using some of the dictionaries available on the net, you will find out for yourself, which of them best suit your needs and which of them (or which specialised glossaries) contain all the specific vocabulary you require for your translation assignment.
k) Logical Steps in Tackling a Translation
At the very beginning assess the text you have been given to determine if you are capable of translating it according to your skill level as a translator. If it is within the scope of your ability, agree to the terms and conditions as outlined by a contract, before starting. Recapitulating the recommended steps you should follow after accepting a text for translation:
1. Read the text to become completely familiar with the subject by undertaking research on the Internet and with the help of specialised material, parallel reading, the compiling of glossaries etc.
2. Decode and extract the textual meaning (once it is fully understood) 3. Analyse semantic and grammatical difficulties
4. Commence the transfer of meaning from the source into the target language by working as accurately as possible and by observing source language interference and false friends (words that sound similar in the two languages, but have a different meaning). For this process, many modern translators use translation software, which is also known by the name of CAT (computer aided translation) tools. (Do not confuse this with machine translation, referred to as MT).
5. Re-encode the meaning in the target language’s semantics and grammatical features, heeding cross-cultural dimensions
6. Carefully proofread the text ensuring that you have produced a faithful, accurate translation, which can be read fluently in the target language.
7. Supply the client with a ready copy of the translated text and present the invoice, which is based on either the source or target language word count.
8. Ensure that a declaration is made about the accuracy of the translation, giving the date and appending your NAATI number and stamp. Many government departments require the translation to have an official NAATI stamp. Note that translations sent by e-mail do not carry an original stamp.
9. If a document translation is not personally delivered, send it by registered mail or express post, which can be traced should it go missing. Always keep copies in case your translation goes missing in transit!
l) Useful Conversion Tables Large numbers
Nomenclature in: USA BRITAIN/EU COUNTRIES ZEROS
million million 6
billion milliard 9
trillion billion 12
quadrillion 1,000 billion 15
quintillion trillion 18
Note that 1,000 is written as 1.000 in most European languages. Also observe the different conventions when typing decimal numbers. Australians use a full stop and speak of 0.6 (zero point six), other countries use 0,6 and call it (zero comma six).
Similar anomalies may apply to the reading of fractions, as is the case with Chinese. It is vital that translators follow the correct cultural conventions in the target language text.
Roman Numerals
Translating or transcribing Roman numerals does present the occasional difficulty when dealing with higher numbers.
Here are the most important Roman numerals and their equivalents.
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
XIX XX XXX XL L LX XC C CX CC CD
19 20 30 40 50 60 90 100 110 200 400
D DC CM M V X L C D M
500 600 900 1,000 5,000 10,000 50,000 100,000 500,000 1 Million
Important Measurements
Units of measurement are too numerous to be listed in this guide. They generally entail:
units of length units of area units of volume
units of capacity (liquid and dry) units of weight
units of speed units of temperature
All conversions can be found on the Internet. It is important that the norm that exists in the TL country is strictly observed.
Thus it is hardly useful to send land measurements in chains and rods to a prospective buyer in a European country where these measurements are totally unknown and will need to be cited in the appropriate metric measurements.
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