| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Percentage that translation agencies charge. Thread poster: MuayThai
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| I think agencies are only allowed to take 40% of the total sum in the US | Mar 31, 2013 |
I have to check more into it -- but this was the law some years ago. Many charge much more -- this is true and employ 5 unnecessary administrative people.
| | | | | Some fallacies here | Mar 31, 2013 |
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
Most of us have great difficulty in assessing what the market can take while deciding on our rates. We either end up quoting way below what the market can take, or way above what would make the existence of agencies economical.
It would be difficult if we were alone in the marketplace, or isolated from each other. No longer, with the Internet. We kinda know what's going on everywhere, however the market is taking too long to adjust on account of some peculiarities of translation.
One of them is - to make a long story short - the difficulty of finding adequate (in terms of competence, specialization, etc.) translators between languages that are not spoken anywhere near countries where the cost of living is low. Attempts to impose low-COL countries' rates elsewhere will usually result in low quality or otherwise inadequate output.
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
One way to arrive at your rates is to calculate your expenses (house rent, mortgage, insurance, taxes, software purchases, holidays, children's education, pension fund, etc., etc.) and fix your rate based on that.
This assumes that the translator has adopted a lifestyle compatible with their profession's income in the place where they live. If there is a mismatch, they should adjust their lifestyle, or change their profession. If they change location, over time they might fall into the case described before.
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
The problem here is that these expenses vary from country to country with the result that you can arrive at wildly varying rates for the same language pair and agencies can always pick up a cheaper translator from a less expensive country.
The trouble here is in always; they can't! Not even often, unless it's standard technical material, or within an area of human knowledge that can be acquired anywhere.
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
Now, if one the other hand, we know how much agencies actually charge their clients, then that will give us a fair idea to base our own pricing strategies and all translators can arrive at a more or less similar pricing based on what the market will take. This will work to the advantage of translators as no translator rationally would want to sell himself cheaply, wherever he may be living, low income country or high income country. I don't think a translator in a low income/low cost country like India or China would have any major qualms with getting paid three or four times what he currently charges.
This goes back to my first point above, again. What is the likelihood of finding an adequate translator in a low-COL country working in a language pair where neither source nor target are spoken anywhere near? Very low, if any.
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
Of course, we will have to allow for the very specific and useful services that agencies provide that we as freelancers can't (which have been lucidly explained by Jose in his post) but even after discounting for these services, the agencies do make a substantial profit, otherwise they won't be in the business at all. So knowing what agencies make out of our labour is a vital information for translators. It would be foolish to discount the importance of such information as it can make our own pricing strategies less of a guessing game and more a case of informed choice based on solid information.
IMHO what agencies charge on top of the translator's rates should have no influence on the latter. I serve great value-adding agencies and file-pushers exactly the same way. The difference is that the latter won't notice the quality I deliver, because they'll only be forwarding my files, never opening and looking into them. Some thoughts on the quality/price relationship in translation on this page under #4. So the file-pushers don't care if, say, IT>DE literature gets translated in the Far East.
Balasubramaniam L. wrote:
I would look forward to seeing in this thread the responses of those translators who have worked for agencies and therefore would have first-hand knowledge of the pricing policies of agencies.
I have been working for various agencies.
The ones I've been constantly translating for began by asking me for my rates. They get to know my service level, i.e. the quality I deliver. When that is not necessary, they'll have the option to shift to cheaper translators, however they usually don't, as trouble is often more costly that the difference in translation cost.
The ones I seldom (or no longer) work with, right at the outset try to impose their low rates. Now and then, if these are not abusively low and the agency looks promising, I do one first job at their rates. Perhaps they've never seen better quality than what they get for these rates, they don't know it exists. IMHO this one-off discount is a better investment in marketing than paying for some questionable online sales promotion services available, since I'm focusing on a qualified prospect.
And then there are local issues, each country has its own. My country, Brazil, in spite of not having the low COL found in some countries in the Far East, as seen on this table has one of the most outrageously high interest rates in the world.
Bottom line is that I offer generous discounts for fast payment. If I contribute significantly to an agency's profit, I'll be able to help them leveraging their profits. From that margin, they'll have cash available to pay me ASAP, thus profiting from the difference between Brazilian interest rates and their local ones.
So there are no hard-and-fast rules here that can be universally applied. While the two major professions that may be practiced worldwide 100% online are - AFAIK - translation and computer programming, the former involves important geographical issues that the latter doesn't.
| | | | | We live surrounded by service providers | Mar 31, 2013 |
Farmers in Spain can either sell their tomatoes, oranges, potatoes... to a fruit warehouse (or whatever they're called in English) at €0.10 a kilo or sell them directly to end-customers at €1.00. My parents-in-law were farmers and I know a bit about the business.
The warehouse takes care of distributing the tomatoes, etc. to markets and shops.
The same thing goes for painters, electricians, etc. They can either work for a business and get paid a monthly salary, o... See more Farmers in Spain can either sell their tomatoes, oranges, potatoes... to a fruit warehouse (or whatever they're called in English) at €0.10 a kilo or sell them directly to end-customers at €1.00. My parents-in-law were farmers and I know a bit about the business.
The warehouse takes care of distributing the tomatoes, etc. to markets and shops.
The same thing goes for painters, electricians, etc. They can either work for a business and get paid a monthly salary, or work for themselves.
We translators can either 'sell' our work to an agency and only have to worry about presenting the invoice at the end of the job, or we can spend time and money marketing our services, finding end-clients and taking all the responsibility for the services we offer. And accepting that we might end up with a few quiet periods.
I think it's just a question of personality, experience and imagination. There are translators who enjoy the commercial aspect of their profession and are quite happy to make the effort to find their own clients. On the other hand, there are translators who don't have the time or confidence to deal directly with the person who's going to use their translations.
I think the same goes for clients. I have the feeling that many end-clients trust an agency more than an individual, or just don't want to spend the time finding a translator who will produce exactly what they're looking for.
If we don't want to work for agencies, then it's just a case of investing time and money, plus a good dose of imagination, in finding our own clients. ▲ Collapse
| | | | NickPalmer 
United Kingdom
Local time: 06:30
German to English
+ ...
| How to check agency rate | Mar 31, 2013 |
I had a friend request a translation from an agency that I work for, to see what rate they'd charge. They quoted 11p/word (that's about US 0.16). They pay me 7p/word. It seems a reasonable ratio to me so I've cheerfluly contin ued with them - they are doing the hard work of going out and hunting down clients.
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| Farming not quite translation, and why | Mar 31, 2013 |
Helena Chavarria wrote:
Farmers in Spain can either sell their tomatoes, oranges, potatoes... to a fruit warehouse (or whatever they're called in English) at €0.10 a kilo or sell them directly to end-customers at €1.00. My parents-in-law were farmers and I know a bit about the business.
The warehouse takes care of distributing the tomatoes, etc. to markets and shops.
I hope you are not suggesting that we do as many farmers are forced to do in Spain so many times: they simply do not harvest their produce because the prices offered by merchant companies simply does not pay the hands required for the harvest.
I do not think agriculture in Europe and translation are at all comparable industries... at least until we translators are paid a subsidy as it happens with agriculture. Income in agriculture in Europe also has this important subsidy component we do not have. It is this subsidy farmers get what keeps them tied down and does not allow them to do what we can and should always do: calculate our price and let others work around it, and not the other way around.
| | | | | I'm not referring to subsidies. | Mar 31, 2013 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
I hope you are not suggesting that we do as many farmers are forced to do in Spain so many times: they simply do not harvest their produce because the prices offered by merchant companies simply does not pay the hands required for the harvest.
I do not think agriculture in Europe and translation are at all comparable industries... at least until we translators are paid a subsidy as it happens with agriculture. Income in agriculture in Europe also has this important subsidy component we do not have. It is this subsidy farmers get what keeps them tied down and does not allow them to do what we can and should always do: calculate our price and let others work around it, and not the other way around.
My in-laws never received any subsidy, and they never failed to harvest their produce (selling it at a higher or lower price) although I admit I'm talking about twenty years ago.
I wasn't comparing the farming and translation industries. I was just trying to illustrate my opinion by mentioning that there are many industries that are controlled by middlemen, although the choice to be under their control is often entirely up to whoever produces the product.
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