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Response to Post-Machine Translation Editing Request at 50% Discount of Standard Rates
Thread poster: Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
Oct 1, 2014

I received this offer 15 minutes ago:


We are looking for translators who would be interested to participate on a Post-Editing Machine Translation – Light (LIGHT PEMT) potential project. The client is a Skin Care company. We have completed a Light PEMT project for the client but on the Japanese>English, and Korean>English language pairs last May-June 2014.

The Light PEMT service level requires the translator to edit the MT and produce a text that is... See more
I received this offer 15 minutes ago:


We are looking for translators who would be interested to participate on a Post-Editing Machine Translation – Light (LIGHT PEMT) potential project. The client is a Skin Care company. We have completed a Light PEMT project for the client but on the Japanese>English, and Korean>English language pairs last May-June 2014.

The Light PEMT service level requires the translator to edit the MT and produce a text that is accurate, stylistically fit for purpose and grammatically correct, while using the automatic translation as a productivity gain. If interested, full guidelines/instructions will be provided.

Translator must be willing to work with our internal CAT tool - XTM or COACH (training will be provided); must be willing to complete a test (free-of-charge) on a machine-translated (standard completion time is an hour). For Light PEMT, we will offer 50% of your translation rate, and usual TM discount rates will apply where applicable.

Please let me know what you think.


My response was short and I hope I got my point across:


I do not agree with this process of translation, on an ethical standpoint.

I think it is taking advantage of translators and hiring them for far less than what the job is worth.

I also hope you receive many rejections of your offer, like this.


Does anyone accept post-machine translation jobs? I simply cannot!
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Valery Shapovalenko
Valery Shapovalenko  Identity Verified
Ukraine
Local time: 10:38
English to Russian
+ ...
No. This is because Oct 1, 2014

translating a human text, which is logical and concise is our profession, not a PEMT where, as far as I know, machines don't give a hang to the human mentality, which namely we translate/ interpret. Machines can't keep the cause and effect relation, they translate words and their pre-recorded combinations. No one speaks Machine Abracadabra, do you?

In fact, you will work with three documents instead of just two: origi
... See more
translating a human text, which is logical and concise is our profession, not a PEMT where, as far as I know, machines don't give a hang to the human mentality, which namely we translate/ interpret. Machines can't keep the cause and effect relation, they translate words and their pre-recorded combinations. No one speaks Machine Abracadabra, do you?

In fact, you will work with three documents instead of just two: original text, PEMT and YOUR version of the synthesis of the two. Anyway, what you produce will be a HUMAN translation, because you won't just organize the mess of PEMT into smth logical, but rather translate from the first paper. You might give a try, but don't look inside the original - it will be very amazing, how far you will be from the original context.

As a matter of fact, MT as a standalone translation product, is far away even from the murmurs of an idiot. The MT translations are just to help understand, say, to a European missile counteraction professional, what it goes about in that Japanese / Chinese/ Russian / Arabic / Israeli paper with interesting pictures related to his/her profession, without recurring to translator services. No more. They could even try to organize the mess, the MT produces, into smth readable, for their internal use. But the result will be far away from even the grounds to take any decisions, except for ordering the translation of an original article.

It is a blunt non-professionalism to ask translators do PEMTs. And it origins from the strive of the so-called "project managers", who never translated anything, to keep the costs down.

Don't let them. All bad happenings in our profession owe them.
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Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
TOPIC STARTER
Agreed, and we need solidarity Oct 1, 2014

My biggest fear is that our less-experienced colleagues may just happen to accept jobs like this and allow this perverse act to continue.

Therefore, we need everyone to be in agreement that this form of 'translation' is unacceptable, stand in solidarity, and refuse to accept PEMT's!!


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:38
Member (2008)
Italian to English
No gain Oct 1, 2014

DJHartmann wrote:

My biggest fear is that our less-experienced colleagues may just happen to accept jobs like this and allow this perverse act to continue.

Therefore, we need everyone to be in agreement that this form of 'translation' is unacceptable, stand in solidarity, and refuse to accept PEMT's!!




There is no"productivity gain" in using MT. In fact it just slows things up, because the MT results will be all wrong, sometimes disastrously so, meaning that the translator needs to find the source text and compare it with the MT version.


 
Jitka Komarkova (Mgr.)
Jitka Komarkova (Mgr.)  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 09:38
English to Czech
+ ...
I don't either. Oct 1, 2014

As a general rule, replying to any cooperation / job offers, I clearly state that I do not post-edit machine translated contents. Although this PEMT practice may become a norm one day, I do want to contribute to this process whatsover... because I do take my work seriously! And the way to do that is to be professional and, especially nowadays, to maintain one's dignity as well.

 
LilianNekipelov
LilianNekipelov  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:38
Russian to English
+ ...
Post-editing, even though I do not do it because it would get on my nerves Oct 1, 2014

is like translating from scratch, except you have to read what the machine produced first--so, especially in some languages, when very complex texts are involved, it takes more time than translating, and should be charged at at least 100% of the translation rate (not editing rate)

 
Roy Williams
Roy Williams  Identity Verified
Austria
Local time: 09:38
German to English
I've taken a whack at it Oct 1, 2014

I've done some translation work of the agency in question when I started out. That was before they started pushing PEMPT. They weren't (and still aren't) one of my preferred clients, but when things were slow I decided to give the PEMPT thing a try. While the MT wasn't horrible, it was a bit of a pain and their tool really slowed me down. XTM was already cumbersome for translation, but with PEMPT even worse. Their other tool is almost identical to XTM, so I hate it as well.

So I lea
... See more
I've done some translation work of the agency in question when I started out. That was before they started pushing PEMPT. They weren't (and still aren't) one of my preferred clients, but when things were slow I decided to give the PEMPT thing a try. While the MT wasn't horrible, it was a bit of a pain and their tool really slowed me down. XTM was already cumbersome for translation, but with PEMPT even worse. Their other tool is almost identical to XTM, so I hate it as well.

So I learned the hard way that PEMPT is not worth the time and effort.

[Edited at 2014-10-01 08:35 GMT]
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Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 09:38
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
The cold and cynical approach ... Oct 1, 2014

I have looked at the results of monolingual machine processing of language - way back in the 1970s - when my job included PRE-editing texts for machine searching and indexing.

Basically, what we were doing way back then was to write a few lines of human-readable text that described documents (an abstract or summary) and ensuring that it included consistent tags and keywords that machines could search for.

Our work could still be used in the old system, but was also mach
... See more
I have looked at the results of monolingual machine processing of language - way back in the 1970s - when my job included PRE-editing texts for machine searching and indexing.

Basically, what we were doing way back then was to write a few lines of human-readable text that described documents (an abstract or summary) and ensuring that it included consistent tags and keywords that machines could search for.

Our work could still be used in the old system, but was also machine searchable.

It was basically just a stringent form of traditional cataloguing, but by ensuring consistency at the input stage, it meant computers could be used to search for keywords or strings of words - and at the same time that humans who still were still using the manual cards had a more consistent database to search and sort them in.

All the texts were kept within a single subject field. That eliminated some of the ambiguity from different contexts. And of course, no translation was involved.

_______________________________

While in many ways MT is still at that stage, there are situations where machines can handle controlled input for a specific purpose and find equivalents in another language.

For many repetitive texts you CAN and often should translate identical sentences identically, especially if you get whole blocks of identical text.

I have actually tried PEMT.

My response to the offer in the opening post here would be to see whether I could produce acceptable results in half the time it would take me to translate it from scratch.

It is a different mindset from translating, and I understand that some colleagues cannot get their heads around it.
I cannot interpret, and it is comparable to the difference between translating and interpreting.

_______________________________

Post editors must insist on being paid a reasonable rate for their work.
MT is not going to go away, and properly handled and checked, I would not call it unethical.

I have to admit, that my views have changed in the last five years or so. I have called machine translating a lottery, and to some extent it still is, but it is possible to tip the odds quite a long way in favour of the right answer.

Whether it is economically viable depends on many different factors, but pre-editing and selecting suitable input need not be very costly once writers and editors are trained.

If MT can reduce the tedium and increase consistency in very repetitive texts,
and mark the variations for special attention by the post-editor,
and if everyone gets paid for their work,
then I have no problems with it.
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Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
TOPIC STARTER
I shared this post with them Oct 1, 2014

I thought this thread would be useful feedback to the agency in question and so shared the link to it.

I received this reply:


The post has been shared to the members of the team.
We value your opinion and we will take that into account.

We guarantee that you won't receive a similar request in the future.
Thank you very much for your continued help, and support.


 
Narcis Lozano Drago
Narcis Lozano Drago  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:38
Member (2007)
English to Spanish
+ ...
The really cold approach Oct 1, 2014

Dear sir/madam,

I really would like to accept your offer. That would mean that last time I translated hundreds of thousands of words for you, I was such a genius that I was charging you TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS (50% of what I invoiced you!) for something I could do for free (Google Translate) or next-to-free (with proprietary tools, compared to the amount I was charging you), and that would take me just a FEW SECONDS. My goodness, you must feel so bad now thinking you have pa
... See more
Dear sir/madam,

I really would like to accept your offer. That would mean that last time I translated hundreds of thousands of words for you, I was such a genius that I was charging you TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS (50% of what I invoiced you!) for something I could do for free (Google Translate) or next-to-free (with proprietary tools, compared to the amount I was charging you), and that would take me just a FEW SECONDS. My goodness, you must feel so bad now thinking you have paid such an amount of money for a glorified copy-and-paste! Yet you are telling me that, even after knowing that, you are willing to continue paying me that insane amount of money for all non-Post-Editing Machine Translation projects. You are my hero!

Unfortunately (for me because, really, I was starting to love the idea of earning several tens of thousands of dollars/second), that was not the case. I translated it all by myself. MT simply does not work. If some time in the future it really does, rest assured, I will not need that you do it for me. I will use it myself and charge you accordingly. But, well, by the time that computers can UNDERSTAND texts, contexts, hidden meanings, cultural references, nuances, etc., I think that we all (humans, not only translators) will be out of job.

Best regards


P.S.: I would be interested in a different approach. I could send you a MT-translated text for 50% of my rate, and then you can proceed to post-edit it. That looks like a much more profitable deal for me.

[Edited at 2014-10-01 09:01 GMT]
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 09:38
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Could be reasonable Oct 1, 2014

DJHartmann wrote:
I received this offer 15 minutes ago:
For Light PEMT, we will offer 50% of your translation rate, and usual TM discount rates will apply where applicable.


Based on their description of LPEMT, I think 50% discount is a bit steep, but that would depend on the language combination and on how easy their program is to work with, and on whether the translator is used to working in such an environment (and by "such an environment" I mean that XTM is a side-by-side translation system, not an above-and-below one).

Different translators can handle different working environments better than others. For example, my proofreading speed and accuracy is much higher if both source and target text is in the same file (and even higher if the source text is above the target text), but other translators can proofread just as fast if the source and target text are two different files with different formatting. Some can even do it better if it's like that. This is relevant because the question becomes: in what format will the machine translation be provided -- as a separate file, or as matches in a separate box elsewhere on the screen, or next to the source text, or above or below it, and/or in the same font or not, etc? All of these things will inpact on the speed, quality and accuracy of LPEMT.

Another thing that affects speed is your familiarity with that particular MT engine. Different engines have different quirks and deficiencies that must be fixed in different ways by the translator.

So, for me, a 50% discount would not do. But a 20-30% discount might.

Just as you would charge more if the client made it more difficult to do the translation and provided the files in a format that took longer to translate, just so it is not unfair if the client wants to pay less if he can make the translation easier or quicker to perform. The question is not whether it is ethical for the client to ask this, but whether a particular translator's actual speed will truly benefit from the mechanisms aimed at increasing his speed.

Tom in London wrote:
There is no"productivity gain" in using MT. ... [Sometimes] the translator needs to find the source text and compare it with the MT version.


Yes, the "productivity gain" from MT will be much reduced (even neutralised) if the source text is not easily accessible and is far, far away from the MT translation. And if the client is using an online system that the translator can't tweak (by e.g. using the MT translation as a penalised TM that the translator pre-processes with e.g. find/replacement of commonly occuring MT errors), well then, using MT becomes just silly.



[Edited at 2014-10-01 09:10 GMT]


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:38
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Few occasions Oct 1, 2014

One or two of my more trusted agency clients occasionally receive a document that has already been pre-translated by the end user, using Google Translate.

Because they are intelligent people who can see for themselves that the machine-translated document is probably not satisfactory, and because they trust me, they ask me for my opinion as to the quality of the machine-translated document, and whether I think it would be better to begin from the original text and do a completely new
... See more
One or two of my more trusted agency clients occasionally receive a document that has already been pre-translated by the end user, using Google Translate.

Because they are intelligent people who can see for themselves that the machine-translated document is probably not satisfactory, and because they trust me, they ask me for my opinion as to the quality of the machine-translated document, and whether I think it would be better to begin from the original text and do a completely new translation.

In every case, I have always found that the machine-translated document was completely unsatisfactory. It would not have been possible to pick at it like a chicken pecking in the dust, editing a word here and there. So in every case, I've always redone the translation beginning from the source text, and have been paid my full rate for doing so.

I no longer accept invitations to "edit and improve" machine-translated documents - not from my trusted clients and certainly not from people with whom I've never worked before.


[Edited at 2014-10-01 09:37 GMT]
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neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 09:38
Spanish to English
+ ...
GATAFF Oct 1, 2014

The acronym I use as a heading expresses my reaction to this type of request. Unfortunately, proz site rules preclude me revealing what it stands for, but here's a clue: the penultimate F is for "Flying".

 
John Cutler
John Cutler  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 09:38
Spanish to English
+ ...
No way Oct 1, 2014

Wouldn't touch a job like that with a 10-foot pole.

 
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 08:38
Member (2004)
English to Italian
It would really depend... Oct 1, 2014

on the quality of the PEMT (and I have't seen any good quality PEMT until now)... but even so, any productivity gain would be compromised by working in a new tool... at 50% of your rate...

[Edited at 2014-10-01 12:32 GMT]


 
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