Why I hate editing...

[alexpgp]

An essential aspect to accepting an editing job is that you're buying a pig in a poke. Unless you have prior experience with a particular translator (recall my memoir about MDF at Plenum), you have no way of knowing whether the work is done competently, requiring a minimum of changes, or whether the job in question is the Translation From Hell, replete with omissions and riddled with pidgin phrases throughout.

Most clients want to pay for editing by the hour. What they offer is typically much less than what you can earn doing straight translation.

The part that grates the most is how most clients assume that, regardless of the price they want to pay you to edit on an hourly basis, both the quality and the speed of editing must remain the same on your end. This goes directly to the question (which I'm not sure I'll answer in this post) of: "What is a client buying when the job in question is an editing job?"

I suppose an argument can be made for maintaining quality, at least to the extent where things translated wrong are fixed, no argument. On the other hand, I think it can be argued that it the degree to which one goes the extra mile can (should) vary with the rate paid. (You charge more to, e.g., do research to find the "better" term even if the term at hand does the job, or tweak every phrase so that it sounds, dead on, as if it had been written by a native even if the existing words convey the message.) So, within those limits, "quality" can vary with the price paid to do the editing: the more you pay, the more "improvements" (as opposed to "corrections") the client can expect.

What about speed? If I propose to edit for Y dollars an hour, processing Z words in each of those hours, can a client legitimately expect the same Z words per hour if the offered rate is, say, one-third of Y?

I think the same argument (or variation thereof) holds. At my premium rate, I can push myself to work fast. At a lesser rate, I can work at a less frantic rate. How less frantic? I haven't figured that out. Certainly not the reciprocal (half the rate doesn't imply double the time, else quality is a dead letter).

But I have freewheeled enough. It is late. I would like to get through page 75 of the assignment by the end of the day tomorrow.

Cheers...

Comments

[rillifane.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit confused when you say "I suppose an argument can be made." It almost sounds as if you are framing it in moral terms when it is a legal problem.

Entering into a contract to perform services requires a meeting of minds as to the terms of the contract. It strikes me that the difficulty is that (1) neither party is properly framing the exact nature of the service and/or that (2)there is a failure to properly frame the issue of the costs involved.

The solution (from a lawyer's point of view) is greater clarity as to both issues. We lawyers get damned for generating a lot of written detail but we do so to avoid precisely the difficulties that you are experiencing.

It might be worth your time to write out the various possibilities and the costs associated with each job. This might also lower price resistance. Clearly, a job which requires cleaning up a botched translation and putting it into picture perfect shape ought to cost more than a job that merely requires reviewing a well done translation.

Of course, to an extent, it is in the nature of negotiating a price that the person paying should demand more work for less pay. In the end, the answer to this is to simply say "no."

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

You have a point.

What I was trying to wrap my mind around, here, was the following: having stated my price and what I will perform for that price, does a client have, as you say, a moral leg to stand upon when they react indignantly to a reduced scope of work offered in response to their counteroffer?

Looking to food for an analogy, if I offer to cook a cordon bleu meal with ingredients X for a client for $50, and they say they're only willing to pay me $20 for the meal, do they have a legitimate gripe if I agree, on the condition that the same X ingredients are served in the "neighborhood lunch counter" style of cuisine?

Having stated it that way, I'm sure the answer is no.

Moreover, in the end, the answer is to say no if the conditions aren't suitable.

Thanks.

Cheers...