Is it reasonable with a deduction on 1/3 of original invoice amount due to post-editing analysis? Thread poster: Fredrik Pettersson
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Is it reasonable with a deduction on 1/3 of original invoice amount due to post-editing analysis afterwards against MT in Memsource?
Total original specification for this job was around 800 USD. The deduction corresponds to a post-editing rate for the whole job if the post-editing rate would be 2/3 of the normal rate for translation of new words.
I think it sounds a lot. The customer describes the process like this:
...we use Memsource’s default post-edit... See more Is it reasonable with a deduction on 1/3 of original invoice amount due to post-editing analysis afterwards against MT in Memsource?
Total original specification for this job was around 800 USD. The deduction corresponds to a post-editing rate for the whole job if the post-editing rate would be 2/3 of the normal rate for translation of new words.
I think it sounds a lot. The customer describes the process like this:
...we use Memsource’s default post-edit analysis feature. This analysis is made after you have completed your translation step in Memsource ▲ Collapse
| | | | Thayenga 
Germany
Local time: 11:10
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
| A few questions arise | Jan 4, 2021 |
Hello Frederik,
the way you describe the case, a few questions come to mind.
1. Were you informed of this analysis a forehand?
2. Were you informed of a possible reduction in payment?
3. Did you agree to the reduced amount?
4. Did you receive a PO before starting the job?
5. If you were asked to complete a translation, then why does the customer apply MTPE "standards" to reduce the amount due?
All the best and Happy New Year!
<... See more Hello Frederik,
the way you describe the case, a few questions come to mind.
1. Were you informed of this analysis a forehand?
2. Were you informed of a possible reduction in payment?
3. Did you agree to the reduced amount?
4. Did you receive a PO before starting the job?
5. If you were asked to complete a translation, then why does the customer apply MTPE "standards" to reduce the amount due?
All the best and Happy New Year!
Thayenga ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:10
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Fredrik Pettersson wrote:
Is it reasonable with a deduction on 1/3 of original invoice amount due to post-editing analysis afterwards against MT in Memsource?
... We use Memsource’s default post-edit analysis feature. This analysis is made after you have completed your translation step in Memsource.
This may be more a Memsource question than a money matters question. I don't know if Memsource has a default discount scheme or if the client can specify how the discounts work. Discounts for MT vary greatly between service providers, so if your question is simply whether a 33% discount is reasonable, then the answer is likely: it could be.
Did the client explain to you beforehand how the discount scheme would work? Were you even aware, before you started working, that the original PO amount is actually a preliminary amount which would be discounted after translation?
I can't think of any moral objection to such a discount scheme, but the way it works must be clear to the translator beforehand. And I can see how a client can easily mistake the amount of effort needed to re-use an MT match without making any edits to it.
I found some information about this on this blog post. An important point in that blog post is that the post-editing analysis is not separate from the TM fuzzy match analysis (I don't know why... it makes no sense, unless the Memsource developers were lazy, or the Memsource company is trying to hide something).
Is the original USD 800 an amount that is based on the assumption that there are no fuzzy matches (against a TM), or is it already a weighted count? Is there a TM in this project?
Did the client share with you the analysis report (and associated discount categories)?
[Edited at 2021-01-04 10:01 GMT]
| | | | Fredrik Pettersson
Hong Kong
Local time: 11:10
Member (2009)
English to Swedish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | I was provided with a link to a webpage where I could find this information, but not easily | Jan 4, 2021 |
I was provided with a link to a webpage with this information, but one has to navigate through a menu structure to find it. In their PDF invocing instructions, nothing is mentioned about this, although in their supplier agreement, it is mentioned (but not as detailed as on the webpage). And overall, I regard this practice as dubious. A few samples of the wordings:
Only translation projects paid per word are subject to MT post-analysis; revision tasks are not.
...you may... See more I was provided with a link to a webpage with this information, but one has to navigate through a menu structure to find it. In their PDF invocing instructions, nothing is mentioned about this, although in their supplier agreement, it is mentioned (but not as detailed as on the webpage). And overall, I regard this practice as dubious. A few samples of the wordings:
Only translation projects paid per word are subject to MT post-analysis; revision tasks are not.
...you may choose which CAT suggestion to work with. You can insert a fuzzy match and edit it or insert an MT match and post-edit it.
...you, as the translator, doesn’t have to work with MT suggestions that are incorrect or not suitable in the specific context, and it also means that we’ll always pay you for your own words
The more you post-edit the MT suggestions, the lower the fuzzy match percentage
If you manually type something identical or similar to the MT suggestion, the post-analysis will make a deduction as it compares the difference between the original MT suggestion and your confirmed translation.
So if my own words happen to be the same as the MT suggestion, I loose payment for my own words.
Furthermore, in their supplier agreement, it says that the final PO will be based on a post-analysis and that I would have had the free will to benefit or not from the MT segments (which is not true: if the MT segments are more or less the same as my own words, I can not choose; the MT discount will apply in that case, which, for simple texts, probably is quite often the case, that my own words are the same or almost the same as the MT suggestions):
The Supplier will receive a preliminary Purchase Order based on a pre-analysis against the translation memory. The final Purchase Order will be based on a post-analysis determining the extent to which the Supplier has chosen to benefit from MT segments.
Almost all words were new: 6807 of total 7254
The PO was issued long time afterwards, I only get a job specification beforehand.
In addition, in the final PO there was only a single line stating translation, quantity and the normal per word rate for translation of new words. No details about the discount for MT words, only a single line with the calculations for the translation of normal new words, stating the full rate for new words.
[Edited at 2021-01-04 12:08 GMT] No mentioning at all in the final PO of MT or MT discount.
[Edited at 2021-01-04 12:09 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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| You can't blame the company | Jan 4, 2021 |
Fredrik Pettersson wrote:
I was provided with a link to a webpage with this information
Then it's your fault for not reading it properly and accepting the job. Don't get me wrong, this practice is appalling, but there you go. They are entitled to conduct their business as they wish and it's up to you to go along with it or not. Next time, you won't make the same mistake or you will come to the conclusion that working with them is still profitable, maybe increasing your rate to compensate for the discounts.
| | | | | Aspects of your agreement | Jan 4, 2021 |
Fredrik Pettersson wrote:
Furthermore, in their supplier agreement, it says that the final PO will be based on a post-analysis and that I would have had the free will to benefit or not from the MT segments (which is not true: if the MT segments are more or less the same as my own words, I can not choose; the MT discount will apply in that case, which, for simple texts, probably is quite often the case, that my own words are the same or almost the same as the MT suggestions):
The Supplier will receive a preliminary Purchase Order based on a pre-analysis against the translation memory. The final Purchase Order will be based on a post-analysis determining the extent to which the Supplier has chosen to benefit from MT segments.
In addition, in the final PO there was only a single line stating translation, quantity and the normal per word rate for translation of new words. No details about the discount for MT words, only a single line with the calculations for the translation of normal new words, stating the full rate for new words.
[Edited at 2021-01-04 12:08 GMT] No mentioning at all in the final PO of MT or MT discount.
If they forgot to apply any discounts in the final PO despite reserving the right to do so in the supplier agreement, then the key question here is whether they have an obligation under the supplier agreement to pay the amount stated in the final PO *even if it is wrongly calculated*, and somehow, I doubt they will have assumed such an obligation. How did you find out about this 1/3 reduction, if it wasn't mentioned in the final PO? In any case, I suspect that if you queried it with them, they would simply say they made a mistake in the PO and send you a revised final PO mentioning the reduction. The terms of your agreement allow them to calculate your fee that way.
Personally, I would not be keen to work with anyone on any basis where the total value of a job is potentially subject to major revision afterwards (unless it's upward revision, in which case, fine!!) In the end, though, it's not so much a question of what's reasonable, it's more a question of whether both parties stick to what they agreed. It's possible that an agreed term might be found by a judge to be so unreasonable as to be unenforceable, but that would only happen in an extreme case, and litigation is not something I would enter into lightly. In this case, you say you had to go through a menu structure to find the information; this doesn't sound unreasonable to me. Did they ask you to confirm by some means or other (e.g. checking a box) that you had read all of the information? Not that it really makes any difference, because the very fact that you went ahead with the assignment without objecting to this term amounts to acceptance.
I think this highlights the importance of making sure you know the basis for payments and actively hunting for this kind of information, even if it means trawling through menus or whatever. The harder you have to look for the information, the more likely it is that you won't like it when you find it! If a client gives you a great deal of information to wade through, don't forget that you can always ask them to point you directly towards the payment terms.
As a final point, I would emphasise that these terms mean you get paid nothing for the time you spend reading the MT output. They told you that "we’ll always pay you for your own words", but the corollary of this - which they don't bother to state, of course - is that they won't pay you for reading the machine's words! Editing involves more than just typing, it involves reading and thinking too. What they're doing here is making sure that you get nothing for an essential part of the review process. Some things will need to be edited, some things won't, but in both cases, you have to read the text and decide. Don't you think you deserve something for the time you spend on that? If you do, then you're free to insist on that in future, and you're free to walk away if a client doesn't agree.
[Edited at 2021-01-04 15:39 GMT]
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the only way to "fix" this is to increase your rate to a level that roughly covers the discount you are giving them by the matching MT + the time you spend reviewing the matches.
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Is this the future?! There is no way I would work like that.
But I suppose it all boils down to whether you still get paid enough per hour.
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 11:10
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Fredrik Pettersson wrote:
1. You, as the translator, doesn’t have to work with MT suggestions that are incorrect or not suitable in the specific context, and it also means that we’ll always pay you for your own words.
2. If you manually type something identical or similar to the MT suggestion, the post-analysis will make a deduction as it compares the difference between the original MT suggestion and your confirmed translation.
Although at first sight, these two items seem to contradict each other, it can be also argued that the second statement is there to help clarify the first statement.
Memsource does not keep track of whether you insert the machine translation, but simply compares your translation against the machine translation blindly. The post-editing analysis does not detect whether you used MT or not. It simply always assumes that you did. It assumes that you would be happy to give a discount if your own human translation is the same or similar to the MT translation.
This is essentially a gambling proposition: you gamble against how accurate their MT system is, and the better it is, the less you get paid, even if the MT system itself did not contribute to improvements in productivity.
If there was a way to detect whether you had actually made use of the MT suggestion, it would have been less of a gamble, since you'd be penalised only for segments where you had used the MT suggestion. But instead, you get penalized whenever the MT system had guessed similar to what you yourself had written.
Some of what you wrote made it clear that the agency considered this to have been accepted by you, if you accept the job. Personally, I think the information is somewhat contradictory in that they claim that you can choose whether or not to give discounts for machine translation, whereas if you look at it very carefully, it should be clear that there is no choice: MT discounts always apply, even if you don't use MT.
I'm not sure if a 1-rating on the Blue Board would survive, since the fine print does confirm their position, even if they appear to contradict some of the other statements in their onboarding materials.
I'm not sure if they would be willing to work with you if you insist on not paying MT discounts.
I think you should also post a warning in the Memsource forum to let other translators know that Memsource is not designed to detect whether MT was used but instead assumes that it was used, when doing post-editing analysis.
Peter Shortall wrote:
As a final point, I would emphasise that these terms mean you get paid nothing for the time you spend reading the MT output.
This is not necessarily correct: the discount for a 100% MT match does not have to be 100%. (A "100% MT match" is a translation that is identical to the MT suggestion.) It is up to the user to decide what discount is applied, but it would be odd if the discount is 100%. For example, the discount for a 100% MT match could be 30%, which means that the time spent reading the MT match is still paid for at 70% even if the translator decides to accept the MT suggestion unedited.
Perhaps Fredrik can tell us what the client's specific discount scheme was.
[Edited at 2021-01-04 16:12 GMT]
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