How many words per hour is average for monolingual editing? Thread poster: Didi18
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Didi18
United States
Local time: 23:07
English to Spanish
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How many words per hour is average for monolingual editing? How much do you guys charge per hour or per word? Any difference in rates depending on how bad the original source document is? Any difference in rates depending on whether the document was translated by a human or by a machine? Do you charge per total words or per mistakes found?
I'm not sure how much to charge.
Any help/ideas/suggestions/comments are welcome.
Thanks!
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I don’t check translations but I do sometimes correct/edit/rewrite texts written by both natives and non-natives.
I charge my normal hourly rate. You can’t really charge a fixed price or by the word unless you know how much will need changing, which is very hard to judge until you actually do it, especially if there are multiple authors. If they insist on a fixed price, estimate really high and aim to come in lower.
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 08:07
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Didi18 wrote:
How many words per hour is average for monolingual editing?
If you mean editing of texts that haven't been translated:
It is impossible to say, because it depends on the quality of the text and on what your client wants you to do exactly. Some clients need you to rewrite the text for a specific purpose, while others want you to fix grammar and stylistic issues, and still others only want a spell-check and grammar check. If you're looking for upper and lower limits, I'd say 2500 words per hour for perfectly written text that requires no editing, all the way down to 250 words per hour for text that require extensive editing or that was written by a non-native speaker struggling to make his point.
If you mean editing of texts that have been translated:
If we assume that it was translated by a professional translator (not by the client's "bilingual" secretary), I'd say the upper limit is still 2500 words but the lower limit is likely in the region of 1000 words per hour. If it turns out that the translation is very bad, it's best to stop editing, inform the client, and possibly renegotiate.
How much do you guys charge per hour or per word?
Most people that I've encountered on ProZ.com are translators, i.e. if they do do editing, they edit translations. I don't think there are many editors who are exclusively editors here on ProZ.com. If you're interested in monolingual editing, you should join an editing association. Non-translator editors can charge per word, per hour, per page, etc., depending on their client.
A surprising number of translators who do editing of translated texts (even monolingual editing) charge per word. But this can be explained by the assumption that a translated text that was translated by a professional translator should already have a high level of quality and should not really require much rewriting.
Any difference in rates depending on how bad the original source document is?
For editing of non-translated files... not really, no. The editor is supposed to see the text before he starts working on it, and he is supposed to do test edits (for his own purposes) in a few random places to gauge the level of editing required, and discuss it with the client, and then issue his quote to the client.
Any difference in rates depending on whether the document was translated by a human or by a machine?
Fixing machine translations may be called "post-editing machine translation", but it is a misnomer: it isn't editing, but rather a type of assisted translation. I'm not sure how common it is for clients to ask for monolingual editing of machine translated texts, but I assume the rate would depend on the quality of the machine translation.
Do you charge per total words or per mistakes found?
I don't think anyone charges per mistake.
I'm not sure how much to charge.
Charge per hour and assume 500 words per hour when you quote the client. Then invoice for the actual number of hours, up to the maximum number of hours quoted to the client. If you discover that the text is so bad that you can't make an average of 500 words per hour, inform the client and renegotiate.
| | | | Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 07:07
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| This is what I specialise in nowadays | Sep 7, 2020 |
Didi18 wrote:
How many words per hour is average for monolingual editing?
If it's pre-publication proofreading, i.e. looking for difficult to spot slips like "form" instead of "from", missing commas, repetition... but not finding more than a couple per page, then I can do 3,000 words per hour or more of English monolingual work. If it's an ESL writer with lots of jumbled sentences or a native writer who can't write for tuppence, that comes down to 500-750 wph. If I can't even
keep up that speed I normally reject the job as the quality is too bad for editing to be worthwhile. I send it back and suggest that translation or ghost-writing would be a better solution. We aren't mind-readers, after all.
I don't really find much of a difference between translated texts and original texts. This is probably because most of the translations I check have been done by translators working into English but who aren't native English speakers, and most of the original writing is by ESL writers. They can both be really bad or really good. Not having a "source" means that I can't always correct the problem, as you would on a bilingual job. Sometimes, all I can do is leave a comment with a few possible solutions or just flag a sentence for attention as it makes no sense.
How much do you guys charge per hour or per word?
My normal hourly rate. If you don't have one, I imagine you have a target you like to earn from an hour's translation? Or you know how many words you translate per hour and your rate per word? A bit of arithmetic and you'll have your rate per hour. Or check out the ProZ.com tool called Community Rates for an idea of what others are charging -- but only use that as extra information.
Any difference in rates depending on how bad the original source document is? Any difference in rates depending on whether the document was translated by a human or by a machine? Do you charge per total words or per mistakes found?
If you charge per hour then you automatically charge more for poorer quality. Of course, most clients like to know in advance how much it will likely cost. As others have said, if you have to give a rate per word or per job then (a) insist on examining the text, and (b) quote high. I always give clients a maximum, which is about 30% more than I think I'm likely to need, and tell them I'll only charge for the time it really takes up to that maximum, rounded up to the quarter hour. Most of my clients only ask once or twice for a quote and then leave me to charge honestly for my time. That works well for both of us: writers/translators I work with long-term improve their writing and end up paying less; translation agencies pay less if they work with better translators.
My advice: keep statistics of how many words per hour you process and how much you earn per hour, etc. Then your estimating will improve more quickly (in theory -- I still get it wrong sometimes after 20 years!).
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Didi18
United States
Local time: 23:07
English to Spanish
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TOPIC STARTER | Thanks for the replies, XOXOXO!!! | Sep 7, 2020 |
Thank you for your replies!
I was approached by an agency to do monolingual editing for them. I didn't think the terms were too good, and I already had a bad experience editing a document (for another agency) that needed major re-translation.
Before accepting any work from the new agency, I'll ask them what exactly they mean by monolingual editing, and hope they don't mean "rewriting Google Translate".
Thanks!
XOXOXO
Best,
... See more Thank you for your replies!
I was approached by an agency to do monolingual editing for them. I didn't think the terms were too good, and I already had a bad experience editing a document (for another agency) that needed major re-translation.
Before accepting any work from the new agency, I'll ask them what exactly they mean by monolingual editing, and hope they don't mean "rewriting Google Translate".
Thanks!
XOXOXO
Best,
Didi ▲ Collapse
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