Advice for translating with DeepL, large volume of DE into EN translation, what are standard rates?
Thread poster: Gudrun Dauner
Gudrun Dauner
Gudrun Dauner  Identity Verified
United States
Member (2006)
English to German
+ ...
Jan 5, 2021

I was asked to translate a large volume of German texts into English using DeepL, the client doesn't expect print quality, just a rough translation of summaries to put online. I work with SDL Trados Studio 2019 Freelance, and so far have avoided machine translations altogether.

What is the standard rate for machine translation post editing per word? Or what percentage of my usual translation rate should I charge?
If the rate is set per hour, how many words per hour are realis
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I was asked to translate a large volume of German texts into English using DeepL, the client doesn't expect print quality, just a rough translation of summaries to put online. I work with SDL Trados Studio 2019 Freelance, and so far have avoided machine translations altogether.

What is the standard rate for machine translation post editing per word? Or what percentage of my usual translation rate should I charge?
If the rate is set per hour, how many words per hour are realistic?

Usually I translate academic texts for publication and use SDL Trados Studio 2019 Freelance plus. I researched online and saw that there is a DeepL plug-in, but for that I would need the DeepL Pro Advanced subscription, or above, which is pricy. My thought was that by combining DeepL with SDL Trados I could improve the quality of the final translation.

I am grateful for any advice, many thanks in advance!
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Kevin Fulton
Kevin Fulton  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 07:36
German to English
Charge as much as you can get away with Jan 6, 2021

Based my own observations, MT quality can vary substantially; depending on the subject matter, Deepl (or Google translate) requires a fair amount of post-editing. Phrases are often mistranslated or the syntax doesn't quite seem right, or terminology is off (depending on the subject matter). My own suggestion would be to offer an hourly rate, perhaps estimating 450–500 words/hour as opposed to say, 300–350 words/hour if you were translating "manually".

Expect others to disagree.


Jorge Payan
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Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
Do a sample Jan 6, 2021

If it’s a big job, it might be worth spending an hour or two working on it to see how much you actually get done.

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Hans Lenting
Hans Lenting
Netherlands
Member (2006)
German to Dutch
MT is a tool for translators, not for LSPs or direct clients Jan 6, 2021

Translators can automatically query multiple MT systems and pick their preferred MT suggestion, hopping between the MT systems, and modify (correct) the suggestions where necessary. Why would you restrict yourself to only one MT system?

MT is a tool for translators, not for LSPs or direct clients. Translators can speed up their work but have to ensure grammatically correct sentences and, above all, consistency. This will require an extra effort, compared to HT and use of your own gl
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Translators can automatically query multiple MT systems and pick their preferred MT suggestion, hopping between the MT systems, and modify (correct) the suggestions where necessary. Why would you restrict yourself to only one MT system?

MT is a tool for translators, not for LSPs or direct clients. Translators can speed up their work but have to ensure grammatically correct sentences and, above all, consistency. This will require an extra effort, compared to HT and use of your own glossaries.
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Jo Macdonald
Jo Macdonald  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 12:36
Member (2005)
Italian to English
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Use fingers to push blade and button Jan 6, 2021

Hi Gudrun
The first thing is to make sure you and the client agree to what they want.

It sounds like they just want a quick, pretty bad translation that's kinda understandable, but with no glaring errors. MT will already give them a bad, kinda understandable translation for free so... just spot check it for errors, right?

While this sounds like just a quick read-through it might take longer than you think because the worst thing about MT is it looks pretty much O
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Hi Gudrun
The first thing is to make sure you and the client agree to what they want.

It sounds like they just want a quick, pretty bad translation that's kinda understandable, but with no glaring errors. MT will already give them a bad, kinda understandable translation for free so... just spot check it for errors, right?

While this sounds like just a quick read-through it might take longer than you think because the worst thing about MT is it looks pretty much OK but often isn't really except for very simple stuff like eBay and other things most people know are written by robots so don’t take too literally.

Methinks the client probably wants to spend as little as possible = free or almost, but is willing to pay just a bit to be reassured by someone else (a pro) that nowhere in the hundred thousand word freebie does it say something like "Use fingers to push blade and button" instead of "DON'T put fingers under blade when also pushing this bleedin button..."

My rates for PEMT are my usual hourly rate €30/h or 75-100%/rate (pro MT) to get it up to an acceptable standard, not as good as a pro translation, about as good as a revision. It’s never gonna cost less than a revision (or take less time) and will probably cost almost as much as a translation (and take almost as long). If the client wants anything less than that I really can’t help, cause they just want me to sign off that it's OK spending less than it takes for me to make it OK.

There is no way I’m going to do PEMT for rates like 3 cents/word.

If they want low quality, just MT it for free and be done. If they want good quality get it translated properly, also by a translator who uses MT as a tool to maybe speed things up a bit and save them a little. There is no quick, cheap and good though.

Find out what they want and if they're willing to pay you to get it there. Then you can decide you’re willing to do that, do a test run to see if you can and if it's worth your time/interesting, then quote a bit on the high side cause it’ll probably take longer and almost certainly be a thankless task unless it’s 10 grand of work for 10 grand’s worth of time.

Memsource can MT all no matches and has a function that calculates how much MT you’ve changed. I’ve used it a few times and it wasn’t awful. The final price of the job was about 5% less than a full rate translation to get it to a decent standard, not rough and ready.


[Edited at 2021-01-06 14:39 GMT]
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Advice for translating with DeepL, large volume of DE into EN translation, what are standard rates?







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