Translation...
...always fit for purpose
Translation
Transcreation
QC/Review
Localisation...
...reaching across cultures
Websites
Games
Books
Audiovisual...
...making content accessible
SDH
Spotting & Transcripts
Origination
What fields do I work in?
Marketing, Tourism, Retail, Literature, Business, Academia, Public Documents, Everyday Documents, Environment, Waste Management, Technology, Documentaries, Culture, History, Politics, General Legal, General Medical, General Financial
What fields do I NOT work in?
Specialised Legal, Financial, and Medical
The Nitty-Gritty___________
Particulars
General and Specialised Translation
General translation is your everyday, bog-standard language work. Although some topical knowledge may be required, the most back-up a translator’ll need is a dictionary and thesaurus. With CAT tool support dealing with term consistency, file-formatting and spell-checking, this is the simplest and therefore quickest translation task.
| Things I can translate generally: letters, emails, manuals, product descriptions, blogs, warning labels, marketing reports and much more |
Specialised translation is a different beast. It requires far greater attention to terminology and often demands in-depth understanding of the broader context of the topic at hand. Thus, this kind of translation requires a lot of research or particular training.
| Things I can translate specialised: food menus and recipe books, essays on European history/ politics/ language/ culture, education and curriculum materials, literature |
Another factor to consider is human vs machine translation solutions. MT should be avoided for specialised topics, unless you have a large volume of corpora and are willing to invest in having an MT engine created for you.
However, for general translation, I do offer light and full post-editing for machine translation. As I work in German, DeepL is my engine of choice, and I am fully trained in MT:PE best practices if you have an engine of your own that you would like me to use.
Please note: I will only ever use machine translation when it has been requested by a client.
Transcreation
Transcreation is a combination of translation and copywriting, and is often seen as not quite localisation. It is particularly useful in my three focus areas: marketing, retail and tourism. This is because it focusses on the effect of a message rather than the message itself. What grasps the attention of your target audience? How will they respond?
| Examples of transcreation: adjusting grammar or information structure of a message, changing colour schemes for a marketing campaign, amending the focus of a tourism brochure, localising a slogan |
What’s important to remember with transcreation is that time is more of a factor. Whereas general translation requires translation proficiency and specialised translation requires topical proficiency, transcreation is about creativity and it is thus harder to pin down a per-word price, which is why it is often charged by the (expected) hour.
Localisation
| What do I localise?: advertising campaigns, video games, table-top games, websites, fiction/ fantasy literature |
Audiovisual Translation
Like any kind of translation, how one moves between audio and visual media depends greatly on the product and target audience.
Bilingual subtitling focusses on captions that work beside audio of a different language. Deviate too much and it can rip away the viewer’s immersion, stay too rigid and the viewer will focus so hard on the subtitles, they’ll miss the content.
| Always keeping the viewer in mind is the best way to subtitle. I can handle both spotting and origination. |
SDH—Subtitles for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing—on the other hand consists of creating a sound environment through only visual cues. This can be a difficult balance between matching the existing sound profile and attaching seamlessly to the video content.
| Subtitling is charged by the source-video minute, although some allowances can be made if dialogue is slim and non-speech information isn’t required. If you only want an SRT file to be translated without spotting quality control, then I will only charge per-word translation rates. |
Intelligent and verbatim transcriptions require different kinds of precision, and one is typically faster than the other.
Quality Control and Review
If I’m to be upfront, I’m not a proofreader, although I do offer services that exist under that banner. (Thus, I recommend always having a dedicated proofreader for each target language that you work with to make sure your copy is as clean as possible, because the little mistakes will always pop out to everyone but you!)
Instead, I offer comprehensive review and quality control services, consisting of either bilingual or monolingual review depending on the project/budget. In this case, the difference I draw between proofreading and QC/review is the awareness that the document being assessed has been translated first and thus there are a list of things to check that go outside of standard proofreading, with or without cross-referencing the original.
| Whether you are a company, individual, agency or another translator, if you need another set of eyes, mine are (figuratively) for sale! |
Pricing
Based on project
Like many translators, I charge based on what’s required of me, mostly by source-word (translation), source-minute (audiovisual) or by the hour (transcreation), depending on the task.
“Translation” for example is a broad term which can cover a lot of different tasks, each having their own time and resource requirements. If you would like a quote, hop on over to my CONTACT page and I’ll happily provide one for free. I’m also happy to be a consultant if you are unsure of your requirements.
Things to think about when outlining your translation project:
- How many words do you need translating?
- What result do you want? What will the final product be?
- When do you need the translation finished?
- What are the main subject areas?
- Do you need human or machine translation?
Things to think about when outlining your subtitling project:
- How long is the media file?
- Does it have a lot or very little dialogue?
- Do you require non-speech information to be subtitled?
- Do you want standard or creative (e.g. animated) subtitles?
- Has the original already been transcribed and spotted (time-coded)?
The more additional things I have to do (research, copywriting, file conversion), the more specialised tools I have to use (app and web media, image editing, game content) and the more demanding the deadline (rush jobs and outside-of-hours jobs) the higher the quote.
Likewise, the less I have to do (light machine translation post-editing, light quality control procedures) the cheaper and quicker I can complete the job.
Based on budget
If you have a project and a limited budget, it can be hard to find the right services for the right price. Translators, too, can find it frustrating to haggle and negotiate over every step in a job because the client is trying to save money where they can.
If that’s the case, then feel free to share with me your project idea and the rough budget you have for it. In turn, I will create a service packet for you that will—as much as possible—get you the best results within your means.
I will also make suggestions on how you could save money or additional services that would be of benefit should you later be able to squeeze them in, regardless of whether you opt for my services or not.
For a free quote or consultation, head over to my CONTACT page.
Minimum cost
Some great advice I got while starting up was to treat every job, no matter how small, as if it will take an hour of my time. This then helps to cover the time spent negotiating and sorting out administrative tasks, even if you’re only translating 100 words.
That’s why I set an absolute minimum charge of £30 / €36 / $39
Currencies
Thanks to the modern world, I can operate in various currencies. This includes British Pound (GBP), Euro (EUR), Dollar (USD) and Japanese Yen (JPY).
Payment Methods
I currently accept two payment methods:
- Bank account transfer. I have a WISE account which has IBANS for the UK, Europe and Japan. I can accept GBP, EUR and JPY via this method.
- PayPal. This is the best option for private individuals. I can accept GBP, EUR, JPY and USD via this method.
