Martin Boyd

Pricing is a delicate topic in the translation industry. As a general rule, translators are averse to discussing their rates, and translator organizations generally avoid publishing data on rates due to concerns that such data may be viewed as price-fixing. The industry standard is to charge by the word, but while this standard is an extremely helpful tool for clients to be able to forecast how much a given project will cost, a one-size-fits-all per-word rate is problematic for those of us who know that not all words are created equal: one word may be translated in a second, while for another hours of research and deliberation may be needed to determine its best equivalent in the target language. Some texts have more of the latter kind of word than others, which is why most translators (myself included) do not publish a “standard” per word rate for all projects and all clients, opting instead to assess each project on a case-by-case basis. We thus tend to speak more of rate “ranges” than specific rates. But for novice translators who want clear advice on what they should be charging for their services, this kind of vagueness can be frustrating. So how can new freelance translators determine what rates they should be charging?

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Martin Boyd

Question: How many translators does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: It depends on the context.

The above joke is probably only funny to translators and people who interact with them on a regular basis, and specifically, to anyone who has ever had the frustrating experience of asking a translator how to translate a particular word and has been met with this same answer. But the fact is, when replying to your deceptively simple question as to how to say “echar” in English, the familiar refrain “it depends on the context” is not merely an attempt to be evasive, because it really is important to know first whether your intention is to “echar algo a la basura” (throw something into the garbage), “echarme una llamada”(give me a call) or “echarme la culpa” (put the blame on me), among many other possibilities.

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Martin Boyd

St. Jerome, patron saint of translators, apparently never obtained certification

Practically since the dawn of history, translation has been of vital importance to human society. All manner of interaction between different communities, whether for trade, cultural exchange, for waging war or making peace, has depended hugely upon the work of translators and interpreters. And yet it is only relatively recently that translation has begun to be consolidated as a profession. And even now, the persistence of the popular misconceptions that translation is an activity that can be mastered by any person with a working knowledge of two languages and a good bilingual dictionary, or that machine translation is effectively eliminating the need for human translators, suggests that we still have a long way to go before translation receives the respect it deserves as a profession.

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