Calculating fees for translating ancient Chinese Thread poster: Seth Griffin
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Seth Griffin 
United States
Local time: 22:45
Chinese to English
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Hi everyone.
This is a question for Chinese - English translators.
Occasionally when translating documents, I run into brief passages of ancient or literary Chinese that have low character counts but require intensive research to be able to accurately translate. If you are a Chinese - English translator, how do you calculate translation fees for these passages?
Thanks!
Seth
| | | | Randy Wong
China
Local time: 14:45
Member (2014)
English to Chinese
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| At least 3 times the normal rate | Aug 9, 2016 |
I don't translate ancient Chinese literature or poem things, but I know how hard it could be. Our ancestors were really good at expressing with least words (you'll find that they don't even use punctuation marks if you look into the history). I bet no matter how skillful someone is with ancient Chinese language, the translation job would always be a impregnable peak out there ahead of him, especially for poems, how to interpret into target language with proper rhythm brings you all-day headache,... See more I don't translate ancient Chinese literature or poem things, but I know how hard it could be. Our ancestors were really good at expressing with least words (you'll find that they don't even use punctuation marks if you look into the history). I bet no matter how skillful someone is with ancient Chinese language, the translation job would always be a impregnable peak out there ahead of him, especially for poems, how to interpret into target language with proper rhythm brings you all-day headache, of course unless you're a gifted poet. As a universal criteria in Chinese translation area, "Faithfulness, Expressiveness and Elegance" is widely adopted to evaluate qualified works, as long as you're capable of achieving it and you're affirmative that your work will be appreciated by the client, I'll say 3 (or 4) times the normal rate would be fair. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 12:15
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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SITE LOCALIZER | Charge by the time it takes you | Aug 9, 2016 |
I have faced this situation in my language pair (Hindi to English) while translating literary pieces with a lot of quotations from medieval Hindi.
Medieval Hindi can be one of various dialects of Hindi and can be vastly different from the current spoken Hindi, so it is a challenge to translate it. Not only does it require extensive library research, as not much online resources on medieval Hindi is available, but also extensive sessions with university professors in Hindi to underst... See more I have faced this situation in my language pair (Hindi to English) while translating literary pieces with a lot of quotations from medieval Hindi.
Medieval Hindi can be one of various dialects of Hindi and can be vastly different from the current spoken Hindi, so it is a challenge to translate it. Not only does it require extensive library research, as not much online resources on medieval Hindi is available, but also extensive sessions with university professors in Hindi to understand the content and context.
I don't do this type of translation often, but on the couple of occasions when I have done this, I have negotiated separate fees for this, taking into account such factors as the time it will take, the travel and other expenses it will incur, and the loss in other lucrative and much of easier normal translations that I could have take up, in order to be able to create the time that would be required for this type of work.
You should follow some such approach, factoring in all the above types of expenses you would likely incur in this type of work. Another piece of advice is not to get into this type of work unless the subject really interests you or the pay is really good, as otherwise you could hit a dead-end where you are unable to create a suitable translation of the historical source as it too esoteric for you to comprehend, and is more suited for professional scholars who study ancient Chinese for a living. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Eric Stone
Taiwan
Local time: 14:45
Chinese to English
| Leave it to the translators who specialize in classical Chinese | Aug 16, 2016 |
I once translated a wedding certificate that was all done in literary Chinese (including dates written in 八卦), and that none of my Chinese friends could even really understand (as they were college students, not well trained in 文言文). After several hours of painstaking research, I was able to get a decent translation, but it took me like 4 hours for something that paid like US $7 (as the word count was so low).
You could charge 10x your normal rate, but I don't think you... See more I once translated a wedding certificate that was all done in literary Chinese (including dates written in 八卦), and that none of my Chinese friends could even really understand (as they were college students, not well trained in 文言文). After several hours of painstaking research, I was able to get a decent translation, but it took me like 4 hours for something that paid like US $7 (as the word count was so low).
You could charge 10x your normal rate, but I don't think you'll get a lot of business. You could charge 3-4x, but there's still a good chance it won't be worth your time.
In short, I think it's best to leave these translations to people who specialize in ancient (well, more like classical, not technically ancient), literature-type Chinese texts. At least they should be able to translate it at a rate and pace that makes it lucrative for them. ▲ Collapse
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Matthew McKay
Switzerland
Local time: 07:45
Member (2022)
Chinese to English
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| Caveat operarius – let the worker beware | Jun 11, 2024 |
Two comments on this:
1) It doesn't really make sense to charge by the character (not that you implied it did). You could use an approximate Classical Chinese-to-English expansion ratio of 1.75, meaning that a Classical Chinese passage of 100 characters should yield roughly 175 English words, but:
(a) this depends on the historical period, as middle- and late-period literary Chinese prose is nowhere near as terse as the ancient Chinese prose of, e.g., the Warring States p... See more Two comments on this:
1) It doesn't really make sense to charge by the character (not that you implied it did). You could use an approximate Classical Chinese-to-English expansion ratio of 1.75, meaning that a Classical Chinese passage of 100 characters should yield roughly 175 English words, but:
(a) this depends on the historical period, as middle- and late-period literary Chinese prose is nowhere near as terse as the ancient Chinese prose of, e.g., the Warring States period, (and poetry is another matter entirely) and;
(b) this assumes that you are as proficient in your knowledge of ancient or literary Chinese as you are in any modern language and can translate it just as quickly – a level that, in the West, you tend only to see in doctoral or postdoctoral researchers.
2) Translating ancient or literary Chinese is closer to an exercise in transcreation, because it is much more heavily research-based and open to flexibility of rendition. The research component is necessary because, even if you're perfectly familiar with Classical Chinese syntax and have a reasonably good working vocabulary, you may still need to conduct fairly monumental amounts of research to ensure that you're using the interpretation of a given character that is correct for its historical period, in addition to looking up individual concepts, expressions, or objects you might encounter that no longer exist.
Perhaps I'm slow, but where it'll take me perhaps 15-30 minutes to translate a paragraph of modern Chinese, the same amount of ancient Chinese could take me the better part of a week, if I want to get it just right, because I'll also be consulting the existing translations and scholarship on the subject. That's having done original translations of Classical Chinese prose for both my bachelor's and master's theses.
I'm not comfortable stating "at least 3 or 4 times the normal rate", as you simply have no way of knowing whether even that would be fair (and even if it were fair, it's questionable as to whether it would be commercially acceptable to an agency). My preference is for my rates to be justifiable in concrete terms (in case I'm challenged on them), and not just to be arbitrary multiples that I've plucked out of the ether.
Only you know how quickly you can reliably translate Classical Chinese. My instinct would be to charge on an hourly basis (like transcreation), while resisting as far as possible the temptation to go down the research rabbit-hole. Where an agency insists on a per-word rate, I would simply reverse-engineer the per-word rate from my per-hour rate, so that it works out as the same...but I still wouldn't expect an agency to accept it.
[Edited at 2024-06-11 10:20 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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