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How
many words per day? Back
to Articles Well, it is a tricky question - and it doesn't really have an answer! We all have different working approaches, different speciality fields, different software etc. This makes it very difficult to generalize. You will soon notice yourself; two texts of equal length will take you different long to translate. The main factors involved in deciding how many words
you can translate per hour or per day are: Available dictionaries - Looking up words you don't
know will go quick if your dictionaries are good. If you have to
search for words - be it on the Internet or at the library - you
will loose a lot of time. Speciality topic - The more familiar you are with the topic, the quicker the translating will go. Style of the source text - Another factor is the style the author of the source text has used. If you compare two texts within the same topic you might find that one text will consist of floating and poetic sentences whilst the other will have short and hard sentences. Typing speed - How quick can you type? This is also one factor determining how many words per day you get through. Motivation - When you are having a bad day and not feeling too good, it will also be very difficult to get your work done. The more motivated and focused you are, the quicker you can translate. Then you also have to calculate the time it will take you to edit and proofread your work. The translating job does not consist of just translating - you also have to check and double check your work! The average translator will tell you that he or
she can translate 100 words per hour working on a complicated text
where he or she is not familiar with the topic and needs to do a
lot of research. On the other hand the same translator will tell
you he or she can do 500 words per hour working on an easy text
in his or her speciality field. I would use about six hours for the first job and about seven hours for the second job, that is including editing and proofreading, not counting breaks. Even if translation 2 has over double the amount of words, I do not need much more time on that than the first translation. I am not very familiar with the topic environment. I would have to spend relatively much time researching the terminology and looking up words. In addition, I am not very familiar with PowerPoint either. Even though this is a relatively easy program, I am bound to run into a problem or two. A software manual, on the other hand, is right up my street. This is a subject I don't need to do a lot of research on, as I am quite familiar with the terminology used. In addition Word would not cause me any problems. So basically you have to set your own standards.
To do this you can time yourself. See how much you can translate
of different types of texts in one hour. This way you get an idea
of how much you can expect to do in a day of a certain type of text.
You learn as you go - and soon you will be able to predict very
accurately how long it will take you to translate any given text.
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