"Speed translation"

This came in the other day on 23:30 Japan time. The company is located in New York and I would have to check the time difference:

"I have a potentially crazy question to ask you...would you be able to turn around 2 Japanese patent applications, one of 4597 words and the other of 2255 words, by 7:45AM tomorrow?  More feasibly, would you be able to turn around at least the larger patent application by 7:45AM tomorrow?"

My first response:
Good morning (3 am!) from Japan
Thank you for your job offer, but ...
with all due respect - the requested due date is very unrealistic!

Having a short look showed approximately 23 + 12 pages of translation.
Together that would be 35 pages of PATENT SPECIFICATION, which is a lot more difficult than ordinary text.
In a few hours???
Maybe even asking for a discount rate?

I am not capable of working that fast (being busy with other work anyway).
I would like to meet the person who actually CAN do that.
Even if somebody says s/he CAN produce that much patent translation in such a short time ... I would not trust that person/translation.
Please ask ANYBODY working in ANY patent office about the feasibility, and more importantly the trustworthiness of the produced translation.

Sorry, but I cannot help you, even if I wanted to.
And my professional pride demands that I DO NOT accept work, when I cannot take responsibility for the results.

When the other party agreed, I added a little metaphor:
No problem and no harm done.
It is simply amazing how little the people who are asking for this kind of work actually KNOW about what is involved in translation -- or else CARE about it.

To put it in a little (distorted, sorry) perspective:
Let's say someone asks a construction firm to something like the Empire State Building - in two weeks with a budget of 8.75 USD.
I can see the exhilarated president of the construction company ...
And naturally everybody would agree that this absolutely normal ....

*************************
One of my grandfather's favorite sayings was“Use the right tool for the job”
―common-sense advice that applies to a wide range of situations.
Unfortunately, as Mark Twain observed, common sense isn't very common!

Rate? --- No problem!

Patent drawing of flight simulator by Rougerie (France - 1928) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Japanese Language Book (Photo credit: born1945)

The other day I was asked, whether I can translate FOUR related patent specifications, 2 from Japanese and 2 from English, into German. The Italian company (CAESAR SRL) wrote in its mail:
"We evaluated this job as:
- 5055 words from English / - 4000 words from Japanese
approx. qty: 9055 words / fixed price: € 780,00 --> 0.086 Euro/Word"

0.08 Euro/word for a patent specification from Japanese to German???

A few days after I reclined the offer, I got a mail from "wagner-international", asking me, whether I can do PRECISELY the same job (J-G portion only).
That made me celebrate. WONDERFUL!!!
Apparently nobody else is working for so low rates (for material of this complexity). And I told Wagner so.

That company says of itself: "We specialize in cost–effective, expert communication and media solutions ..."
Meaning: we squeeze every last drop of sweat and tear out of the translator to provide clients with CHEAP (the magic word of our time) product.
If it kills a few (thousand) translators ... well, that is their problem.

On the other hand ...
I got an inquiry --- by telephone! --- about a patent translation from France.
Once I had a look at the text, got a better readable PDF file here in Japan and told them my rate (the due date was fixed up front), the person at the other end of the line said: Rate? -- No problem!
That was not a translation agency, it was a patent office:
International Patent-Translation Bureau (IPTB)

On the one hand you have the agencies (sounds like "agent" from the movie "Matrix") that try to cheat and possibly kill translators,
and on the other hand you have companies knowing that some things simply have their price.

Opting for "cheapest is best" will run people/companies into trouble sooner or later. I have seen it many times ... those companies for which I was too expensive receive claims from their customers and then ask me (or anybody else) to have a look at the tranlation and "brush it up a little" ...

Oh, how stupid!

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