| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Do you trust the word count from your clients? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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| Can't agree more | Mar 17, 2007 |
Henry Hinds wrote:
I answered "no", but it is not that I don't "trust" them, it is simply that I always use my own word count. Never have I had any conflict on word count, and my clients hardly ever supply one unless it is just approximate.
With me, no word count or price is final until I see the work and agree on it. I quote nothing I have not seen.
Others who do the same have apparently replied differently, so I don't see the sense of the poll.
Henry's post spells out my opinion.
| | | | | Not a matter of mistrust... but never trust a client's wordcount! | Mar 18, 2007 |
With converted PDF files you never know!
I had a terrible problem with an agency that used to be my favorite one. This is the worse situation I have been involved in in my whole career, and it ended up with a broken relationship and myself losing 400 US dollars.
I think this story should be told and I have been about to do so for too long, so the time has come!
I got this job from this Australian agency -I live in Chile- on a Thursday (their Friday), and de... See more With converted PDF files you never know!
I had a terrible problem with an agency that used to be my favorite one. This is the worse situation I have been involved in in my whole career, and it ended up with a broken relationship and myself losing 400 US dollars.
I think this story should be told and I have been about to do so for too long, so the time has come!
I got this job from this Australian agency -I live in Chile- on a Thursday (their Friday), and delivery time was next Tuesday, first thing in the morning (their time). Everything was fine, as usual. I assembled my team of efficient colleagues, distributed the files, and we started working right away.
The Job Order stated file names and wordcounts. I did not check, as I usually did so when the time came to prepare my invoice. Only on Friday did I run a wordcount and OH GOSH! The file I was translating was more than twice the length the PM had given me. To my dismay, several of my team members were in similar situations, it was Saturday in Australia and I couldn't contact my client.
I split my file, which was the largest one, with yet another translator, and immediately informed my PM by e-mail. On Sunday (their Monday) I received a soothing message from her. Other translators working on the same project had reported similar situations, and it was fine that we split the job with people we trusted, as long as deadlines were met.
To make a long story short:
I failed to meet the deadline by HOURS. That was just myself, because as team leader I had to spend a lot of time checking with each translator and making sure that they would deliver on time, which they eventually did.
But the story does not end with a project delivered just a few hours late. When I was starting to sigh and preparing to unwind after all the stress, the PM began shooting by e-mail:
- Pages A, H, N, P and X missing in file YYYY !
- Pages K, L, T, W and Y missing in file XXXX !
I could not believe my eyes! All files had been completely translated, I was absolutely certain they had.
For the first time in my life I was translating and crying in disbelief, one page after the other, from different files, with the PM pressing me and with no time to get the Trados memories from my colleagues!! The agency's typesetter invariably found missing pages in each translated file as he/she checked against the original.
I called my youngest colleague -who had not participated in that project, but is by far more knowledgeable in practical IT issues than myself. He found that these files were originally write-protected, which did not show after they had been converted to Word. They contained macros... so our Trados translations had not been recorded in some pages.
The PM said she did not know what "MARCOS" were, her client was on a plane and all she cared about was meeting the freaking deadline!
To make a long story short
The agency paid our wordcount on all files my team members had processed... but the PM decided to "punish" ME!!!
Now ask me if I trust anybody's wordcounts. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Target word count | Mar 18, 2007 |
ProZ.com Staff wrote: This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you trust the word count from your clients?". This poll was originally submitted by Elías SauzaView the poll hereA forum topic will appear each time a new poll is run. For more information, see: http://proz.com/topic/33629
Like IreneN, I usually charge by target count and my regular clients are happy with this - with my language pairs (French and Spanish to English), the word count is almost always less in English, so it's generally to the client's advantage. This avoids arguments about source word count with files such as scanned PDFs in which (as far as I know) the source
words cannot be counted.
I do trust my regular clients, of course, and usually their original order is just an estimate, but often extra bits are added to jobs later. As far as I can remember I've never had problems about word counts.
Kind regards,
Jenny.
[Edited at 2007-03-18 15:23]
| | | | | Sorry to hear your story | Mar 18, 2007 |
María Eugenia Wachtendorff wrote:
For the first time in my life I was translating and crying in disbelief, one page after the other, from different files, with the PM pressing me and with no time to get the Trados memories from my colleagues!! The agency's typesetter invariably found missing pages in each translated file as he/she checked against the original.
I called my youngest colleague -who had not participated in that project, but is by far more knowledgeable in practical IT issues than myself. He found that these files were originally write-protected, which did not show after they had been converted to Word. They contained macros... so our Trados translations had not been recorded in some pages.
The PM said she did not know what "MARCOS" were, her client was on a plane and all she cared about was meeting the freaking deadline!
Sorry to hear your story but it will guide us in future, in particular, the case of write-protected files.
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Tony M
France
Local time: 12:45
Member
French to English
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SITE LOCALIZER | I usually check, even with clients I trust | Mar 19, 2007 |
I have to say that I am not one to worry about slavishly precise word counts, and often find it is not worth the time spent checking in lots of messy little files, for example.
I have complete faith in most of my clients, and know that they would never deliberately try and cheat me; but errors do creep in, and I am particularly wary with people who regularly send me oddly-formatted or converted PDF files; in one recent case, the Word count left out more than half of the text, as it ... See more I have to say that I am not one to worry about slavishly precise word counts, and often find it is not worth the time spent checking in lots of messy little files, for example.
I have complete faith in most of my clients, and know that they would never deliberately try and cheat me; but errors do creep in, and I am particularly wary with people who regularly send me oddly-formatted or converted PDF files; in one recent case, the Word count left out more than half of the text, as it was in text boxes!
Most clients accept invoicing based on my declared word count, but with those that argue, I have to check their stated word count before I start work, which of course can waste a lot of time!
Most of the time, I check my own target wordcount, and if it is the same order of magnitude as the client's, I don't waste time investigating further.
Regarding the use of page counts, I don't like using them, since the word count can be so drastically affected by page formatting; however, on a statistical analysis of a representative selection of past jobs (all using computer-generated pages, so not hand-written certificates etc.!), I found that an average of around 330 words per A4 page seems to be fair. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Nikki Graham 
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:45
Spanish to English
| Always better to check | Mar 19, 2007 |
Just before Xmas I was sent a file in both Spanish and Portuguese to translate into English. I was told by the PM that the number of Spanish words I would have to translate in the file was 7,000. However, the word count said there were 17,000 in total in the file, so, smelling a rat, I asked the PM for clarification, telling her that I would not be able to make the deadline if there were more than 7,000 words to translate in the file as it was Xmas. She insisted that the Spanish I would have to ... See more Just before Xmas I was sent a file in both Spanish and Portuguese to translate into English. I was told by the PM that the number of Spanish words I would have to translate in the file was 7,000. However, the word count said there were 17,000 in total in the file, so, smelling a rat, I asked the PM for clarification, telling her that I would not be able to make the deadline if there were more than 7,000 words to translate in the file as it was Xmas. She insisted that the Spanish I would have to translate only amounted to 7,000. I began the work, and after a few days realised that I should have finished translating by now and was nowhere near the end of the file. In the end, the Spanish I had to translate came to nearly 14,000 words and it was extremely difficult to find the time to finish the job. I think I did pretty well to hand it in only one and a half hours late. Payment was on target word count anyway, so that was not a problem. But I do now make sure (with this client in particular) that the number of words I am expected to translate is clear for both of us from the very beginning. ▲ Collapse
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This is what we´re talking about really isn´t it, rather than necessarily the money. None of us want to miss a deadline through no fault of our own, but through "Just a couple of pages" actually meaning seven or eight, or "around 5000 words" meaning more than seven thousand.
If we are careful in how we word our quotations for work, the money is chargeable, but it simply isn´t fair for us to get egg on our faces when the client can´t count and we are put in danger of not being good time... See more This is what we´re talking about really isn´t it, rather than necessarily the money. None of us want to miss a deadline through no fault of our own, but through "Just a couple of pages" actually meaning seven or eight, or "around 5000 words" meaning more than seven thousand.
If we are careful in how we word our quotations for work, the money is chargeable, but it simply isn´t fair for us to get egg on our faces when the client can´t count and we are put in danger of not being good timekeepers!
So, the moral is: always check the word count first thing! ▲ Collapse
| | | | LinguaLab.net
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:45
English to Norwegian
+ ...
| My clients are 110% reliable | Mar 19, 2007 |
I always used to check the word count as one of my earliest clients kept omitting text boxes and headers/footers. But I am happy to say that checking the word count is now a waste of time for me - all my current clients are 110% reliable!
[Edited at 2007-03-19 12:59]
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I just make sure that my client and I are in the same ballparki - that are counting the same material and nothing big has gotten overlooked
Long ago I stopped quibbling about word count. With the volume of work I do, my philosophy is "win some, lose some." There are so many different rules about what and what no to count. Plus, all words are not created equal - some are easy and some are challenging. They are not a perfect measure of our effort, but that's what we're stuck with.
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That's what I answered, because I always check. Mistakes happen,even if it's not often.
Quite funny to read "I trust my clients' wordcounts but I check them"...  Probably we don't have the same definition of "trust"!
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