| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5] > | How many words can you translate a day Thread poster: dmoamin
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| Oh yes they do | Aug 19, 2010 |
njbeckett wrote:
Do people still type with the excellent speech recognition programmes available? I say "Nervenleitgeschwindigkeit" to my computer and it writes "nerve conduction velocity"- and a few thousand other set expressions which are very specific. You don't need 70% concordance as you do with programmes like Trados. It's much more relaxing and saves your fingers (of which I use 2 if I do occasionally type a word).
I'm trying to resist jokes about how much I can type while you say "Nervenleitgeschwindigkeit"... I tell you, it's not easy.
Anyway, my serious point is that not everyone translates into English. Do you think there is an "excellent speech recognition programme" for Hungarian? Or Finnish or Afrikaans? Even if I worked mainly into English, I don't think I would use speech recognition for a variety of reasons.
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lbone wrote:
It depends.
I am usually slow at start, and the speed increases when I am familiar with that topic and that client.
| | | | njbeckett 
Germany
Local time: 14:17
German to English
| Hungarian etc | Aug 19, 2010 |
Of course I realise there are not good speech recognition programmes for many languages. All I said was I translate from German into English and 10,000 words a day is not difficult because I speak to my computer and it writes what I say - 99% of the time. And I have programmed it to understand thousands of German expressions and write them automatically in English. So a typical sentence could be "Studies have conclusively demonstrated that magnesium increases Nervenleitgeschwindigkeit", but my ... See more Of course I realise there are not good speech recognition programmes for many languages. All I said was I translate from German into English and 10,000 words a day is not difficult because I speak to my computer and it writes what I say - 99% of the time. And I have programmed it to understand thousands of German expressions and write them automatically in English. So a typical sentence could be "Studies have conclusively demonstrated that magnesium increases Nervenleitgeschwindigkeit", but my computer writes "Studies have conclusively demonstrated that magnesium increases nerve conduction velocity" - every time. This is very useful with set expressions on balance sheets etc. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | What people say and what people type | Aug 19, 2010 |
njbeckett wrote:
Of course I realise there are not good speech recognition programmes for many languages. All I said was I translate from German into English and 10,000 words a day is not difficult because I speak to my computer and it writes what I say - 99% of the time.
Not quite, you said "Do people still type with the excellent speech recognition programmes available?"
They do, because for most people, there is no good software, and even if there was and everyone was comfortable using it, it's not such a big deal as some people make it look like.
Even if you only consider people who work into English, Wikipedia claims that the recognition rate is 80% and I'm inclined to believe that figure more than your 99% claim. Ergo, I'm not so sure speech recognition is that much faster than typing (for decent typists, not the two-finger hunt-and-peck people).
Quite apart from that, it would be pretty simplistic to think that translation output depends solely on the speed at which you can put your words into writing. Quite a lot of people type at 80-100 wpm and even over 100 wpm, which means they can type 30,000 words a day quite comfortably - if translation was just a matter of typing, they would be translating well over 20,000 words a day, for sure... just 6 hours at 100 wpm would produce 36,000 words.
My point is that typing is obviously not the biggest bottleneck for most people.
Here's some math:
Say, you type at a moderate 50 wpm, work 8 hours and translate 5000 words, which most people would consider high output. The actual typing in this scenario takes one hour and 40 minutes, i.e. only a little bit more than 20% of your time is taken up by typing. 80% is spent on analysing the source text, research, composition, review etc.
Even if this same translator were to dictate to DNS at a hundred thousand words a minute, they wouldn't be doing 10,000 words a day.
Of course typing/dictating faster does help - especially if you type really slowly to begin with - but after a certain point, you get diminishing returns.
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njbeckett
Germany
Local time: 14:17
German to English
I work three times faster than 5 years ago because of my speech recognition programme. Accuracy of 80% would be laughable - every fifth word would be wrong. If I dictate I get 95% accuracy with a cheap €20 microphone and with a good USB mike with its own sound card the programme makes a max. of 2 mistakes on a DIN A4 page, if at all.
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njbeckett wrote:
I work three times faster than 5 years ago because of my speech recognition programme. Accuracy of 80% would be laughable - every fifth word would be wrong. If I dictate I get 95% accuracy with a cheap €20 microphone and with a good USB mike with its own sound card the programme makes a max. of 2 mistakes on a DIN A4 page, if at all.
Exactly. I don't want ANY mistakes. That's why I still type.
| | | | njbeckett
Germany
Local time: 14:17
German to English
recognition mistakes can be corrected the same as typing mistakes. Anyway, the slower the competition the better for me.
| | | | | Speed depends on many factors | Aug 21, 2010 |
njbeckett wrote:
recognition mistakes can be corrected the same as typing mistakes. Anyway, the slower the competition the better for me.
I am quite sure speech recognition is not the only factor in translation speed, and so are you, very probably. It would be interesting to know in what ways your competitors are faster than you!
[Edited at 2010-08-22 05:57 GMT]
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Michael Beijer
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:17
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
+ ...
| One small question: how fast do you people actually translate?!? | Aug 21, 2010 |
Please don't tell me you can translate as fast as my mother can type!?
That would mean that you could do 10's of thousands a day.
What always puzzles me is how people say they can translate faster if they use a speech recognition program. But just how fast are they translating? Can they just look at a text and translate it on the spot, as if by magic, instantaneously? I must be very, very slow, because I don't wouldn't even want to be able to type, or dictate, an... See more Please don't tell me you can translate as fast as my mother can type!?
That would mean that you could do 10's of thousands a day.
What always puzzles me is how people say they can translate faster if they use a speech recognition program. But just how fast are they translating? Can they just look at a text and translate it on the spot, as if by magic, instantaneously? I must be very, very slow, because I don't wouldn't even want to be able to type, or dictate, any faster. I think, sloooooooooooooowly, and then think some more, and don't ever run into a barrier where my fingers can't keep up with my mind.
I can more or less manage approximately 2,000 a day. Easy material more, difficult things less. Plus all the time I spend messing around with formatting, compiling glossaries, trying to study things, etc.
Michael ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Many factors | Aug 22, 2010 |
Michael J.W. Beijer wrote:
I can more or less manage approximately 2,000 a day. Easy material more, difficult things less. Plus all the time I spend messing around with formatting, compiling glossaries, trying to study things, etc.
This has been discussed many times in the fora. Translation speeds depend on many factors, being the main ones:
- Your experience as a translator
- Your source and target languages (long words? short words?)
- Your CAT tool, terminology, and how well everything is prepared before the job
- Your knowledge of the matter at hand
- The number of tags and other non-translatables in the files
- The length of the sentences (not the same to translate 100 20-word sentences than 1000 2-word sentences)
- Your computer equipment (do you have to wait for your computer?)
- Of course, and potentially a major factor, your typing (or speaking, for that matter) speed
I have known people who regularly do 2,000 words a day, and people who regularly do 10,000 words a day, and it is all fine. What should concern you most is your quality. If you regularly produce 2,000 words with high quality, that is worth much more than 10,000 with clumsy mistakes.
Being able to type and think fast is definitely a plus. You might want to take typing lessons now, and you will be happy you did.
(Edited to add one more factor).
[Edited at 2010-08-22 05:46 GMT]
| | | | NMR (X)
France
Local time: 14:17
French to Dutch
+ ...
| Same thing here | Aug 22, 2010 |
I took typing lessons when I was 14 years old and am a really fast typist. But the bottleneck is my brain, and I wonder if a speech recognition program would make my brain working faster. And it doesn't handle file management, formatting, glossaries, creative thinking, cross-over proofreading, lay-out adjustments and administrative work. >> 2000-3000 words/day too.
| | | | | Do you also think/do research three times faster? | Aug 22, 2010 |
njbeckett wrote:
I work three times faster than 5 years ago because of my speech recognition programme.
Tomás Cano Binder wrote:
What always puzzles me is how people say they can translate faster if they use a speech recognition program. But just how fast are they translating? Can they just look at a text and translate it on the spot, as if by magic, instantaneously? I must be very, very slow, because I don't wouldn't even want to be able to type, or dictate, any faster. I think, sloooooooooooooowly, and then think some more, and don't ever run into a barrier where my fingers can't keep up with my mind
I'm not a fast typer, but that has never had any negative effect on my translation ability as my brain works faster than my fingers, or my speech were there a speech recognition program for Swedish. Being able to type, or speak, faster than my brain can process the source document, would therefore not be of much use.
bjbeckett - do you always work with exactly the same kind of source document/terminology? If not, how does DNS help you with research? Research of terminology in my experience, even when working in my specialised fields, account for a large amount of translation time.
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| You missed level of knowledge of both source and target... | Aug 22, 2010 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: Michael J.W. Beijer wrote:
I can more or less manage approximately 2,000 a day. Easy material more, difficult things less. Plus all the time I spend messing around with formatting, compiling glossaries, trying to study things, etc. This has been discussed many times in the fora. Translation speeds depend on many factors, being the main ones: - Your experience as a translator - Your source and target languages (long words? short words?) - Your CAT tool, terminology, and how well everything is prepared before the job - Your knowledge of the matter at hand - The number of tags and other non-translatables in the files - The length of the sentences (not the same to translate 100 20-word sentences than 1000 2-word sentences) - Your computer equipment (do you have to wait for your computer?) - Of course, and potentially a major factor, your typing (or speaking, for that matter) speed
Cultural knowledge of both source and target is essential unless you only translate lawnmower manuals or similar.
Otherwise I totally agree.
| | | | Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 05:17
English to German
+ ...
In memoriam | Churning out a gazillion of words quickly? | Aug 22, 2010 |
No way, sorry. That's not what translation means or I would have abandonned this profession years ago.
Sure, I can tell you within seconds what a particular text means. Hey, I am really fast at that! And I can speak into a microphone really fast, too.
But this is not translation. Translation is what my target group, my readership, my viewers and the potential buyers need to hear.
Translation starts when you start doing the inner role play, and you start to... See more No way, sorry. That's not what translation means or I would have abandonned this profession years ago.
Sure, I can tell you within seconds what a particular text means. Hey, I am really fast at that! And I can speak into a microphone really fast, too.
But this is not translation. Translation is what my target group, my readership, my viewers and the potential buyers need to hear.
Translation starts when you start doing the inner role play, and you start to mold, to chisel and to file the message to make sure that the message will actually arrive properly.
Sure, I have no problem with churning out 6000 words per day of any standard contract, tables or similar thrillers. Without CAT-tools, BTW. Everydone does such bread-and-butter-jobs. My profession and my fields of expertise however start in a different dimension and I am not riding this fine horse to death. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | It takes a different mindset | Aug 22, 2010 |
NMR wrote:
I took typing lessons when I was 14 years old and am a really fast typist. But the bottleneck is my brain, and I wonder if a speech recognition program would make my brain working faster.
My experience after some months using and training a speech recognition system with different CAT tools is that the way of working is a bit different. When you type, you can almost start typing immediately and that is time you gain. When, after starting the sentence, you notice that you need to edit or fine-tune your translation, you go back in the text with the keyboard (a lot faster than moving the hand off the keyboard and grabbing the mouse) and can correct immediately.
To save time in speech recognition, you want to make up the whole translation of a sentence in your mind, then say it aloud. You want to hit the nail in the first go, and this is something that takes some training and practice. If after translating your sentence you want to go back and edit something, speech recognition is not that efficient as you have to say what part you want to delete or how far back you want to go, which takes time. It is simply faster to grab the mouse and select the part you don't need and then say that part again. However, speech recognition is designed for full sentences. In my experience, saying partial sentences dramatically reduces the reliability of the recognition. Speech recognition is, in that sense, "excessively smart" as it takes very many things into account. That is great for full sentences, but not for partial sentences.
It is true that when using speech recognition you end up less physically tired (especially in your hands), but it makes you more mentally tired since you have to think a lot more: all thought required for a sentence must be done in one go, before you say anything, whereas with typing you can translate part of your sentence and, while you type, think about what you are going to type next or whether you will need to go back.
I would not say speech recognition is better or worse overall. It just depends on each person, I reckon.
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