Off topic: Request for quoting advice - translation of a book
Thread poster: Serename
Serename
Serename
Belgium
Local time: 23:06
English to French
+ ...
Aug 19, 2017

Hi all. I am a new member. I haven't been in the translation business for years and I need to prepare a quote for translating a book, which I've never done before. Can someone give me advice on how much I should charge and what a reasonable deadline is to finish such a project (weeks? months?)? Translation is from English into French, word count is 52,000, genre and secondary genre are Fiction and Drama. Thank you so much. Have a nice weekend all!

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Hi all. I am a new member. I haven't been in the translation business for years and I need to prepare a quote for translating a book, which I've never done before. Can someone give me advice on how much I should charge and what a reasonable deadline is to finish such a project (weeks? months?)? Translation is from English into French, word count is 52,000, genre and secondary genre are Fiction and Drama. Thank you so much. Have a nice weekend all!

[Subject edited by staff or moderator 2017-08-21 00:37 GMT]
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Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 22:06
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
How long is a piece of string? Aug 21, 2017

Serename wrote:
Can someone give me advice on how much I should charge and what a reasonable deadline is to finish such a project (weeks? months?)? Translation is from English into French, word count is 52,000, genre and secondary genre are Fiction and Drama.

Sorry, but these are very much "piece of string" questions. Rate will depend partly on (non-exhaustive list in no particular order):
- How much you think your time is worth as a freelancer (which is NOT the same as a wage, for many reasons)
- How much you need to earn per hour (see http://www.proz.com/translator-rates-calculator/ for some help)
- How much other clients are willing to pay for your time
- What the typical average market rate for your pair is (see http://search.proz.com/?sp=pfe/rates for a VERY ROUGH idea)
- What volume of translated and proofread text you can produce per hour
- Whether translation is your main/only source of income
- Whether you'll be concentrating solely on this, or fitting it between other jobs
- Whether royalties etc will be part of the package
- Whether you need to factor in paying for a "second pair of eyes" final proofreading stage.

Deadline is largely dependent on some of the above answers but also:
- You need to avoid getting stale and bored: a change is as good as a rest
- You need to build in LOADS of contingency: the longer a job will take, the more chance of some being needed

Remember that it's extremely dangerous to put all your eggs in one basket, i.e. to work with just one client. If that client fails to pay, or even delays payment, you can find yourself going hungry. So spreading a big job over a longer time is always better, spending some time each day, or at least each week, working work with other clients too. Also, you'll need an advance and probably one or more staged payments so that you aren't delivering an entire book before getting paid..


 


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Request for quoting advice - translation of a book







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