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English to Korean translators horrible pay
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mindmetoo



Joined: 02 Feb 2004

PostPosted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mithridates wrote:
Perhaps I should have kept my rates a secret? It usually is just something I do from time to time, usually for people I know.


I'm working with one translator for what I consider sub standard wages but my feeling is I only work at my hagwon job for 3-4 hours a day. I have loads of free time and don't particularly need the money. For an intellectual exercise and sushi money, I'll edit.
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JongnoGuru



Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep

PostPosted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Son Deureo! wrote:
JongnoGuru wrote:
mithridates wrote:
For Korean to English I've always charged 30000 a page, or 5000 for proofreading.


I'd've sworn you were a native speaker. Confused

Seriously though, those are pretty decent page rates...for the early 1990s. Shocked


May I ask what more standard rates are for translating and editing?


Well, it's a bit like asking what's the "standard rate" for interior decorating. Your neighbour's wife, who studied design back in college, may do it for nothing. But hiring a "name" in the industry could cost you more than all your furniture is worth. And you, the customer, may not see a whole lot of difference between the two end-results...

Used to be that the professional translation agencies in the city -- many owned, if not necessarily staffed, by credentialed female HUFS grads -- would establish a "going rate" (whatever it may have been) for translation & editing. The quality varied (and still does) wildly from agency to agency, translator to translator, and one never could be sure that a real native-speaker (as opposed to "Edwin Park", the 1.5-gen gyopo, or "Ms. Kim", who studied at "Toronto College" and "speaking very good the English") would handle or at least supervise your project.

I do know that trained, professional Korean (non-native) translators could command 25,000 to 40,000 won/page by the late '90s/early '00s (not sure how much of that was commission to the referral agencies), but their stuff still had to be proofread or edited or rewritten or even re-translated. Not many Korean clients are be able to judge that, and as a result, we constantly see those knee-slapping howlers (corporate & government slogans being the most prominent and unforgiveable) that doubtless cost the end-clients millions upon millions of won.

So if non-native translators made up to 40,000 won/page five years ago and their work STILL needed touching up (at the very least), then I guarantee you there were professional native-speaking translators commanding many mahn-won jahdees per page above those figures. (This isn't speculation.)

My point is ... what the heck was my point?... my point, my point... Oh yeah! I've seen translation rates that range from "will translate for food" to "you can't afford me if you even have to ask that question"...

Indeed, I wonder if the whole notion of a "standard" hasn't become quaint and out-dated in these difficult economic times, when every English Lit. major in Korea fancies her or himself a translator and hangs out the ol' cyber-shingle.

Editing? Couldn't say for sure, but I was friends with a small team of native English editors in the late 90s who charged 40,000 won for the first page, 30,000 won/page thereafter. We never had to use them, but they always had more work than they could handle.

The Guru
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mithridates



Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

PostPosted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 4:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ha! I was up to 25 Starbuckses (??) in Seoul plus two in Busan last time I counted. I actually prefer the Coffee Bean though.

Also, I should note that I don't enjoy translating as much as I thought I would and only do it when someone I know asks. For some reason when I first started studying languages I had some vague idea that I would be translating RPGs and short stories, all perfect and just as fast as I'm typing right now. I should have known that I just liked writing on its own.
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JongnoGuru



Joined: 25 May 2004
Location: peeing on your doorstep

PostPosted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, I give up -- what is this morbid fascination with Starbucks you two have?
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mithridates



Joined: 03 Mar 2003
Location: President's office, Korean Space Agency

PostPosted: Tue Sep 14, 2004 5:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'll tell you my reasons (this includes other popular coffee shops with good atmosphere):
I have to study every day and I can't do it at home. If I stay at home for more than three hours after waking up I feel lazy and restless. If I go to a coffee shop with no customers I feel like I've paid a few thousand won just to sit at home (no people there either) and so I need to go to one with more people.
I've met a great many people in Starbucks, and will continue to do so. I also rarely drink.

Mindmetoo, time to step up to the plate. Why do you like Starbucks?
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helly



Joined: 01 Apr 2003
Location: WORLDWIDE

PostPosted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 7:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Used to run a deal with a guy that charged him 50,000 per project regardless of length. If I felt it was too long, it would simply say I couldn't do it. Most were short (the shortest was 6 lines) advertising copy and product packaging copy jobs. Going up to 5 pages on occasion wasn't so bad when I was getting paid so much for so little work on the other projects.

Had another where the rate was 30,000 per page in powerpoint presentations.

Did resumes for 100,000 a pop. Resume plus cover letter was 150,000.

Oh, but that was long ago....
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SuperHero



Joined: 10 Dec 2003
Location: Superhero Hideout

PostPosted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 9:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mindmetoo wrote:
mithridates wrote:
Mindmetoo, which Starbucks? I have yet to visit all of them in Seoul.


Look. If your thing is to visit all the Starbucks in Seoul during your one year contract, then let me warn you that's MY thing. So please get another thing! Smile

been there done that.
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mindmetoo



Joined: 02 Feb 2004

PostPosted: Wed Sep 15, 2004 9:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mithridates wrote:
Mindmetoo, time to step up to the plate. Why do you like Starbucks?


Well I lived in Seattle for almost four years so I got hooked on Starbucks. They tend to roast their beans on the stronger side making other people's coffee seem weak after you've been drinking Starbucks.

All in all, it's just my comfort zone. I have no problem eating like a Korean but Starbucks is just my one Western life style touch stone.
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Hollywoodaction



Joined: 02 Jul 2004

PostPosted: Fri Sep 17, 2004 7:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

If you pay 8k a page, don't expect the translator to do a good job, or to know how to do a good job. Translation is practically a science. It takes years of training to be able to do it correctly. Refering to a simple English-Korean dictionnary, as I suspect many 'translators' do here, just doesn't cut it. Sure, you can take a couple of hours to do a quick translation, but it takes time and effort to do it correctly. One simply can't cut corners, especially if the text being translated is of a certain importance, such as a contract. I know a few translators in Canada, and it's not uncommon for them to spend the better part of a day, or two, slaving over reference books in order to find the correct translation for a single word or expression.
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mindmetoo



Joined: 02 Feb 2004

PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 6:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I just finished a job for a guy with Woori Financial. It was a two part job. Met him in a funny way. He was looking for a guy in the COEX Starbucks and asked me if I was him. "Are you Scott?" "No." He lingered a bit hoping I was confused about my own name. We struck up a convo, found out this Scott was supposed to meet him to edit a business proposal. Hey, I write and edit biz stuff. "If Scott doesn't show up, send the document to me. I'll look at it." Anyway, Scott blew him off. He sends me the doc. I quote him 10,000 won per page. His English didn't look too bad. I get into it. It's quite interesting, about pension plans. Hey, I'm probably the only person who gets warm fuzzies when he hears "Sarbanes-Oxley" so pension plan marketing tents my BVDs, boyee. I got to do some research to bring myself up to speed. I like that. I make his bad English into a nice tight bit of marketing material. That's my career back at home, eh.

Fork, I'd charge $40 an hour easy for my services back in Canada.

But I got loads of free time. I like the mental exercise. I like that I'm helping this guy in a pinch, cutting him a deal on copy editing, and I'm throwing in some professional copy writing on top of it.

Right so I meet him the next week. He seems to be pleased with my writing. AS HE SHOULD. We can do biz. He's now got this big power point presentation. I guess he's going to present before Microsoft. He pays me the 60K cash for the first document. Upon leaving, I again reiterate the 10K per page rate. I stress I felt it was pretty fair. (City Hall used to pay me 12K a page in 2003.) Instead of him saying "yes" he was like "give me discount on this one". "Ummm, well, let me see."

I begin to kind of figure it out. His title is something like Senior Manger of Marketing Communications. He used to live in New York and worked for Met Life. Woori, no doubt, hired him thinking he could do all this writing. Of course, his writing is, well, if I had a 12-year old that could write like that I'd be impressed. But if I was a foreign business in Korea and he gave me the document as he wrote it, I'd toss it in the trash and go with Citigroup or something for my pension needs.

And he's a Christian. A small warning bell in Korea.

So anyway, I edit his 14 page text for a PP presentation.

Raw stuff like:

Quote:
Great effort will be made for the introduction of successful corporate pension plans to the company and for the better post retirement life of the employees.

The life time of average employee�s postretirement in korea is expected to be much longer employee� working period. Korea is one of the fastest aging trend in the world. It is very insufficient for the employees to set aside their retirement funding for themselves, according to the KDI.


Not the worst shyte I've had a Korean dump on a piece of paper and expect me to edit, but this guy ain't going to get past any desks manned by a white man with his biz english.

I email him the competed work on time, even though he gave me half the document late. There's a couple issues in his document that I highlight that we have to deal with before it's final final. I quote him 80K for the 14 page document. 5 pages were mostly text reused from the white paper. I grant him another free page. So I charge him for 8 pages in total. 10K per page.

He responds:

Quote:
When I get and look at it, it is not professional editing and most of them is my terminalogy.


I explain that some pages may appear to be his "terminalogy" but I spent time adding prepositions, articles, making the capitalization consistent, adding periods to the end of bullet points, shortening bullet points for a punchier PP page, and so on.

I paste him back a few examples of my changes.

I finish my email with:

Quote:
Anyway, 10,000 won per page for straight editing of a specialized
technical document is a fairly good price. I felt I added value with
some creative copy writing. But if you feel my editing and copy
writing are unsuitable, then we should part ways at this juncture and
you should pass this document on to a professional editor.

If I can't do a suitably good job, please do not worry about paying me.


If the guy was just trying to ajumma me down, all kinds of whiny complaints about the product to get you to knock some off the top, he'll probably be surprised I'm willing to walk away from the project (I still have 60K of his party cash in my pocket). Let him find another foreigner who will work for less and do a more "professional" job. Uh huh. Or let him contact a professional company in Korea and see what they'll charge him.

Working for less isn't worth my time.

So if you stumble upon this Korean guy working for Woori who goes by the name of James and offers you an editing job, assume risks.
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ella



Joined: 17 Apr 2006

PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 9:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
For best results, a native speaker should translate to one's own native language.


There should be a team of two bilingual translators, each a native speaker of one of the languages. I know no one wants to pay for that here but speaking from my experiences translating documentary footage, that does get the best result. Some entertainment film production companies use translation teams for that reason, for subtitling (although most don't - often with hilarious results).
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Mashimaro



Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: location, location

PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 3:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mithridates wrote:

Also, I should note that I don't enjoy translating as much as I thought I would and only do it when someone I know asks.

Do you enjoy translating more these days Mith? And if so, why the change?
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SeoulFinn



Joined: 27 Feb 2006
Location: 1h from Seoul

PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 6:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I happen know someone who gets at least 80 won per word. If it's a rush job, the rate goes higher than that. But on the other hand, she's not translating the "easy stuff" either and can do Korean-English, English-Korean, Spanish-Korean and vice versa.
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Cheonmunka



Joined: 04 Jun 2004

PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 6:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
translators used to get paid more but the economy has been so crappy


See, even in 2004, people thought the economy was getting crappy.
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Yaya



Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Location: Seoul

PostPosted: Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The truth is, there are FAR more Koreans who can do English-to-Korean translations (or so they think) than the other way around, thus a high supply will lower the price.

One translator told me the dropoff for English-to-Korean translations can be as high as 50 percent.
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