Contact Karel Kosman - French to English translations translator
French to English Translation
Project
Contact Karel Kosman - French to English translations translator
(email correspondence with translators on French to English translation projects)
I'm processing the accounting now and have collected the following:
Before Ortansa:
1974
396
Before
568
10
where the first number is the number of untranslated words
for the first file, and the second for second. Unfortunately I did not
anticipate this, but expect I'll remember to manage it better for future
projects. Anyway, I saved backups of the files, but not at every step, and by
the time I made a second backup when I sent it to
Concerning the quality of your work, generally I would say you helped and I would like to work together on future projects, but I found that a lot of it still did not make sense to me and I was forced to have it proofread by at least two other people. Perhaps with English not your native language, you read the French, understand it, look at google's translation which I tried to polish up a bit, see that it looks roughly the same, and accept it. But I simply did not understand it still. If I had at least understood it I could have proofread it and polish it up to native English. So I'd like to focus on this for future projects. I'm sure we'll get a good system going. I'll keep working on getting more clients, and hopefully more work from this customer. I wasn't very confident with the quality but imagine that things should improve as my understanding of French improves.
Thanks, i'll have a look at it. Please let me know about the customer's feedback. Good night
Let's hope it was ok! As a curiosity, do you think it would be possible to send me the final version? I would like to see what came out.
Managed to deliver on time and did the best that I could. Now to see if the customer likes it. Was a tough job. We'll see.
How it went with the documents? My explanations were of any help to you?
here are the Word files. Just do a search (ctrl f) for the + character to find those areas I am not sure about. If the + is after a word it means I am unsure about the word. If it is after a comma or a period, it means I am uncertain about the entire phrase or sentence. If it is individual terminology and you do not know, I can do the research on the net, but there are many sentences which don't make sense to me (+ sign after the sentence), and hence I cannot proofread them into native English. Perhaps if you explained it in a longer sentence or something, as if you were explaining something to a baby. I will look at your changes and then rewrite the trouble sentences so they make sense. I cannot hand it like this to the customer. If you cannot get it done by 2pm GMT time today please do not bother. The sooner the better.
Sorry, I do not know if it was specified in my profile, but now i am working as an in-house French to English translator and i am at work now. During week-ends i am free, but during week days, only in the evening. I could get home around 18.00 Romanian time, but I am not sure. If you could put the sentences in question in a Word file, I will try to look at it, but I cannot see them in Transit, because I do not have the privilege to install it on my computer at work. Beginning tommorow I am on vacation, if you can wait by then, if it only for your skill improvement.
okay, will calculate as soon as I get this done. In the meantime there is still a lot of the French to English translation which simply does not make sense to me and which I marked with the + character. I have two translators who said they will help me today but they are not responding. As a backup would you be available to help? You will need to focus on those parts I marked and make sure they make sense to me, not just accept a literal translation which "seems okay". Would you like to try that now? I fear I am running out of time.
Yes, only for the untranslated segments, the others are rather more related to the proofreading than to the translation.
for the French to English translation at 0.02 per word, was that only for the Untranslated segments? Transit can give me a word count of Untranslated words, as you would have skipped over the segments marked as Translated whenever you pressed ALT INS.
There were 3.75 hours of proofreading.
I know, but I don't remember you telling me how many hours it was. I need a final bill.
The proofreading charge is of 15 EUR/hour.
So is the total charge 0.02 per word or is there also some proofreading charge?
The rates are, for translation, 0.03 Euro/source word and for proofreading, 15 Eur/hour. Since many of the words were translated, I can discount to 0.02Eur /source word. You just have to count the words, since you have a rather special system. Please tell me if it is ok with you. As for moneybookers, it is ok by me, but I will send the account details later, I still have to confirm an Euro account through it.
you do not need to issue me an
invoice, but it suffices to send me the details of your charges by email. What
are they? For payment, I think moneybookers.com within
I look forward to see what the feedback will be, both from the other translator and from the customer. I am very interested to develop my skills, as I translated mainly with one of these language and my native one, so it is a challenge to develop my skills in translating between French and English. As for the payment, I too had prefered a sooner payment, but if this is the situation, there is no problem, I can wait by then. Just let me know what I have to write in the invoice for the translation part. I do not know how you count words, especially if it is a partial French to English translation. As for proofreading, I counted 3.75 hours, this was easy. I will send you the invoice and you can pay when the customer pays too. But let me know as well on the method of payment. Waiting to hear from you soon,
just forwarded your proofread to another translator and I plan to put everything together tomorrow. I will prepare files so that you can see the changes, because it is important to me that you develop your skills as well, as part of the team. We'll see how it all looks tomorrow, and then the customer's reaction. The customer will pay end of January, unfortunately, and I do not have enough resources to pay you before that (although I have some capacity if you are in a bind). Otherwise I myself prefer to pay sooner. Tough industry to work in sometimes. Thank you for all your great work and we'll be in touch.
Here is the rest of the proofread file. Please confirm that you received it and it's ok to open it. You said that you will have someone else proofread and double check the documents. If you receive some written feedback on the subject, could you forward it to me too? I would be interested in other opinions as well. Please keep me informed on the continuation (payment, future projects, etc). Thanks and have a nice week-end (or what is left of it)
Can you manage by tomorrow afternoon sometime? For the signs, as per the instructions I sent, you should be able to hide a lot of them. Changing the look and feel, size of fonts and various colours can make your work experience more pleasant.
Yes, I will be available all day tomorrow, so I will be expecting the file whenever you can send it to me. I've got used to Transit, but it looks so much more complicated than Wordfast, what I am currently using. maybe because there are so many signs on the screen. But now it's ok. I just received the file, by when would you like to have it back?
Okay, looks good. I'm almost done with the first file and I'd like to send that to you earlier part of tomorrow, possibly tonight if I manage. I gather you will be available all day tomorrow? Feeling more comfortable in Transit now? How does it compare to a full translation?
This is the translated and proofread French to English document. Please tell me if you receive it and if it is ok. Should I receive any more files or that was it for the time being?
I just checked the help files and it apparently only concerns the dictionary. So if you say no, it sends everything, making the file larger, and if you say yes (I guess better) it will only send the dictionary records that you made changes to.
I think I can finish it tonight, but I do not know at what time, maybe somewhere around 10. I wanted to send everything, but I could only chose yes or no, so i chose yes. what happens if i choose no?
It seems that I received all your changes. Best to send "everything" I guess. I do not want to pressure you because I am more concerned about quality, but just trying to organise things. When do you think you will be comfortably finished? In the meantime he can start on the first half of the first file.
I am at about half of the second file. Did you receive the file I send you entirely or just the modified phrases? I am somewhat confused because Transit asked me if wanted to send only the modified records. If you want someone to double chech tomorrow everything, it means you want me to send you the file tonight?
how is the progress going with the second file? I'm thinking that I'd like to use one translator to read through everything and double check the meanings. He could start on it tomorrow morning.
definitely save the file before closing. I do not think it has an autosave feature, so I regularly press ctrl s while I translate. I believe I made this suggestion in the instructions. I will take a look at your file after lunch. Thank you,
this is the proofread first file up to the point where you translated it. Please confirm that you received it in good order. Now, before closing this file, it is enough to save? the file will be automatically saved where I opened it? I will start in a few minutes the second one you sent me, so I want to make sure I do not lose all the work i've done so far.
Okay, and don't forget to go carefully over my French to English translation as well. My French is quite rusty but I'm improving quickly.
I am almost done with the French to English translation, i only heve to proofread it, may 2 hours, maximum 3. I can't really say, I don't know how big it is. But I think 2 hours is a good estimate.
Please send it after you proofread and finalised the first half to the best of your abilities. When do you think that might be?
It is ok with Transit, I got used to it, but I still hesitate sometimes, though rarely. The subject is ok, but the problem is that there are some small mistakes in the french document or misuse of a word, probably typing mistakes, but they mislead and have to take some time to assess the true meaning. But, lucky me, I have some experience with typo mistakes and the meaing beyond it, I work often with texts like this. Do I send you the file after translating it or after proofreading it?
I've just "finished" the second file and have attached it to this email. Once you've finished the first half of the first file (up to the second +++) please send it to me so that I can continue translating that file. How is it going in general? Do you feel confident with this subject? How is it working in Transit? Here is the text. I am well beyond the quarter for the translation, but there is still the proofreading to do. Please, tell what you think of what I suggested.
Yes, the send option. It should produce a .txf file I believe.
How can I send it? Do I use the send option or another way?
I've started on the second file, and farmed out the second half of the first file. I'd rather get this done ahead of time so I have enough time to polish it up and bring it to perfection. I'd like to arrange a steady stream of work for all of us. After you've done about a quarter of your section can you send it to me so that I can take a look at your progress?
it is going ok, though a bit slow as i am afraid not to make mistakes with Transit. But I am getting used to it, so it's ok. Have you managed to go any further with the French to English translation?
how is the progress going?
yes I did and I just sent you a response. I hope you have everything you need to start. Need to get outa here. Good night.
have you received the French to English translation test? It was in the previous e-mail I sent you.
I have depleted my energy for
today. I am attaching what I have translated today. I have proofread up the
first +++ and translated (without proofread) up to the second +++. Copying here
some new instructions which I've added since the last instructions I sent you: -
oh yes, and as explained in the detailed
I read you instructions and I hope I'll get by without any problems. If there is something that puzzles me, I will ask. Tonight I am available for some 2 more hours, so around 21.00 Romanian time 9which is also Bulgarian tiem, as far as I know) and tomorrow and the day after abut all day long, at least I plan to take this time to translate and go through the text thoroughly. From the last phrases I understand that I can start translating and proofreading the French to English document I already have, up to the +++ point. Please let me know if this is correct.
I am happy to read your very intelligent questions and I think we can work together. While I was translating I was compiling the below set of instructions for you and others. I think it will answer many of your questions. Please read and question me further concerning anything else you do not understand. Right now I am proofreading the French to English translation and think I will bring it up to a half decent level. What times are you available tonight, tomorrow and over the weekend? The below is a first draft and I have not had a chance to proofread it yet.
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Thank you for your reply. I look forward to working with you again soon.
I do not need an invoice from you and I will send you the funds myself. Today I will download all the emails to my computer and process the accounting for this job. Your work was indeed useful and I hope to work together again.
I hope my work yesterday was helpful. Please let me know whether I should send you an invoice through PayPal, or that you will transfer the funds yourself.
I have attached here the TXF file (I pressed "yes" to send only the modified record). It's getting rather late for me right now, so I'm afraid I won't be able to deal with the other document until later today. I am free from the afternoon onwards (around 5pm GMT). I hope my work is satisfactory to you.
I wrote all the instructions for a reason. There is even a Quick Instructions section for the bare necessities. Project Send... Do you have capacity now for the other file?
I have just finished the proof-reading. How can I send this back to you? Should I just save it (Ctrl+S), and then mail you the same file back?
figure out the view symbols thing? How is progress going?
The website instructions I sent you should explain it plainly: View Display/Hide Attributes Hide Tags, maybe also Hide Segment Markers. Make sure you see the dictionary too.
I'm sorry, I'm still trying to figure out how to configure the program so that I only see the source and target texts, and not all the other characters. Again, with a Word/Pdf document I probably would have finished by now. I will let you know as soon as I've finished this with Transit.
so you haven't even started yet?? It's a bit pricey but I just want to make sure I do a good job to keep getting more work from this customer. Your translation charge would fit into my budget too. Like I wrote, I'm not so concerned about making money on this project but want to make sure I do a good job. My French is quite rusty at the moment, but I'm learning quickly. Gmail notification works great and thank you.
I apologise, I misunderstood and assumed I was meant to translate these 950 words. My rate for proof-reading is 0.025 GBP/word, so a total of 23.75 GBP. Is this within your budget?
what will be your charge for proofreading this/checking meaning? I have a limited budget as I am translating this for an agency.
Sorry, I mixed up the name, it's called G-Mail Notifier: http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/notifier_windows.h tml Yes, PayPal is perfect. My account is this same e-mail: [email protected]. Regarding tariff, my usual charge is 0.05 GBP/word. However, if you can give me regular work, approximately 10,000 words/week, I am more than willing to reduce this to 0.04 GBP/word. I hope this sounds okay to you.
so I guess it is getting late
there and soon you will not be able to translate further and work on the other
file? I looked up Google Alerts on the web but it seems to be something else. I
too would like to be notified when I get gmail but couldn't find any such tool.
For now I have to frequently check the browser tab. No problem about answering
any of your payment questions. If you are in the
Googlemail and Gmail are the same server, but I am getting
messages forwarded to my other e-mail on Outlook, because it alerts me when the
message comes in. There must have been some forwarding delay. Don't worry, I'll
install Google Alerts now, and this incident shouldn't occur again. I will start
work on the French to English document you have sent me, and as long as I don't
have too many problems running the Transit, I should have it done by morning
(your time). I am actually in
I forgot to mention but I mark areas I am not sure about with the + character. Please leave them in the document but just concentrate more on those areas. If the + is after a word it refers to that word, otherwise if it is after a comma or period it means the entire phrase or sentence preceding it should be looked at more carefully. Words marked in red are in the dictionary I created from my research on the internet, but is not necessarily correct (my best guess). You should be able to see my dictionary terms in a separate window while you are proofreading and the cursor is in the segment with the red marked word. Once you are done I have the first but larger file I could also send you. I am working on it now.
that is odd. Is google mail the
same as gmail? If so I would think they are part of the same server and you
should get the mail immediately. It is important that our communication is
reliable, if we want to develop a partnership together. Did it really come late
or did you just accidentally overlook it? I am sending you the second file to
look at. It is only about 950 words so should hopefully not take you long.
Please do it early in the morning as I have another French to English translator
I'd like to look at it after you. I believe you are in
I'm sorry for this delayed response: for some reason I just received this message only a few moments ago. I am free for consultation today and tomorrow, and hope I can be of assistance.
as explained in the instructions I sent, you can modify the view to remove the colouring and all that, so that you only see text and nothing else. You can resize the windows and change the font sizes so that you can see lots of context text around the active segment. Well, hopefully I will be able to convince you to try it one day. I'd like to get a steady stream of work in this language combination. Will you be available for consultation on Monday, possibly Sunday? That might be possible without the software.
Thank you for your quick reply. I agree, it is an advantage for the source text to move down as you go to the next sentence to translate. However, it is rather hard to focus on one's work, when there are so many different character and colours embedded within the text. It seems unnecessary to have to delete the original text before having to type in the French to English translation. And for a good quality translation, context evaluation is absolutely essential (to review previous parts of the text, which you have already translated, to be able to move on), and I'm afraid that it is very complicated to read through either the source or the target text. I have a great effectiveness in my own set-up, whereby I only need a text document, and I will return the same only translated. Through this set-up, I can reach up to 3500-4000wpd. I'm sorry that I cannot help you by using this software, but of course I am available to help with any terminology. I have worked on Legal Contracts, especially Real-Estate, in the past, and more importantly I am an excellent Internet Researcher, and can find out the correct translation very quickly. I hope I can be of assistance to you.
what is the problem? I've worked with the program for many years and I find it easier than Word. When you scroll down in the target window the source text moves with you, so you do not have to fumble around constantly with two windows. Also you do not need to worry so much about formatting. I've already farmed out the files but I would like to get you ready for future projects. Or perhaps you could help with terminology for this project. Are you well familiar with this subject?
Thank you for your detailed and complex e-mail! I should insist that if I could work on your translation through MS Word I could finish a lot sooner, and I would be happy to help with your French free of charge (within reason), explaining grammatical changes, sentence structuring, etc. I can follow your directions, but I can already foresee stumbling with a lot of technical issues in dealing with this software. I'm sorry to say that unless we can work through this alternative I have suggested, I will not be able to participate, as I cannot foresee how much time I need to spend for the project. I apologise if I have caused any inconvenience, but thank you kindly for the opportunity.
oh yes, and I like to resize the windows so that the fuzzy window is not maximized but in the bottom right. So then I can just click into either window with the mouse to get to it. Otherwise alt 1 or 2 works too.
Thank you for your prompt reply. My apologies for the delayed response, I was just setting up the program and figuring out how to work it. I am able to operate it, but in a mediocre fashion as the "Fuzzy Index" keeps replacing the "French" window after I press ALT+INS a few times, and I don't know how to recover the window except closing the program and re-starting it. I can do this French to English translation, however I would be much more efficient if given a simple text file (whether a .doc, .pdf, .txt, etc.). I can pick up where you left off (where some of the sentences are untranslated), without any problems. However, if this software is important to you, we can give it a go on the first project. Regardless, I appreciate the opportunity to work for you. If you are satisfied with my rates, we should start talking about my responsibilities (so I acknowledge your expectations and am able to fulfil them), start date, and form of payment. Thank you again for your time and attention, and I look forward to your response.
Thank you very much for getting in touch with me. I am
indeed available, and would gladly help you out with your French to English
translation projects. To answer your questions in order: 1. I can adapt to using
Transit Termstar, no problems. I am very good at learning new s/w. 2. My
specialisation in translation lies within the Business / Commerce / Marketing /
Economics / Finance world, as I earned a BA in Business & Economics (University
of
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Yes it would be my pleasure to assist you with French to English translations. English is my first language and I tend to work from Portuguese and French into English. I have been a translator for 16 years now so my level of experience is quite high. My translation rates into English are US10c per word (I tend to charge in US dollars) - I am not sure what that is in euros but I should imagine that it is quite close. I do not have an hourly rate. The only measure I would have for that would be against my interpreting rate which is US$65 per hour - I think it would be less for translation. Perhaps I could leave it to your discretion to suggest a rate? I shall revert to you once I have downloaded the software.
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I think there is no other way than to guess, and next time I'll try to organise it better. But its difficult when several of us are working on the same file. But things should improve over time.
So far I have 1974 words for the first file (which should be less since I think I translated some more before sending you the second half of file 1, and 396 words for the second file.
So what do you FEEL could be appropriate for the first file? You said at 0.02 Euro per word, and to that we would still add your total hourly charge (can't find it at the moment, do you remember?).
So how about you just give me a total price that you feel is fair for the amount of work you did?
For the changes I made a comparison of the files and saw your changes, but for some reason Word puts the changes in the file it compares TO (I had your file open and compared it against the file I sent to you). I did not realise this and since then I copied over top of the TO files during my various exports, and now cannot see or send you your changes. In any case at the time when I looked at your changes, before officially accepting them into Transit and part of the project, I saw that you had made a lot of changes but that there still seemed a lot of sentences which did not make sense to me, and possibly many sentences that you did change. In any case I acknowledge that you contributed to this project - I am just trying to improve things for next time. But next time I'll be more careful about comparing and managing documents etc. so that we can examine things better. Just trying to improve things in preparation for upcoming projects.
So you said you generally cannot work during weekdays? Can you work on week evenings, and generally on weekends then?
I do not really know how to help with the word counting. I can send you the intermediary files, the one after proofreading the first part of the first file and the final proofread file, if this will be helpful to you. Let me know and I cand send the pxf files.
As for the French to English translation process, it may look like I have kept the sentences in google translation, but actually some of them were completely messed up, words were related or placed near words they had nothing to do with, so I didn't just keep them as such.
And some were incomprehensible for me to in the file you sent me on Monday morning if I could give you some explanations. besides, I had the feeling that some of the changes I had made when proofreading were gone. I had tried to rephrase in order to make them more inteligible.
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Okay, punched it into my accounting and waiting for your Moneybookers account. Hopefully the customer will be happy with the quality. I'm not super confident but we tried our best. Should improve next time.
They said they can pay end of January.
You cand send them to me through moneybookers, but I will give you the details in a few days, I still have to confirm the account in EUR. I just wanted to underline some of the small difficulties, just as you did, it will help us both in the future. Since it was a first experience in this type of work, I think it is worth talking about what did not work quite well and try to fix it in the future. As I told you, can only work on evenings and week-ends, due to my in-house French to English translator job. But i can dedicate several hours a day to the extra jobs. If you have nay other questions or ideas or suggestions, do not hesitate to tell me.
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there are two ways we can go about this:
1) Transit will be free for you and it would be good to have that installed as well, for general or smaller projects
2) but if I would assign you a larger file, or it is a larger project, and you feel you have a lot of built up French to English translation memory on the subject, Transit and Trados are compatible through .tmx exports, so we could figure out some possibility.
But glitches may develop through option 2, or some information may get lost, for which reason I generally try to avoid it. In any case it can be an interesting option for larger projects.
Otherwise I was told that Trados and Transit had similar interfaces, so I feel it shouldn't be so unpleasant for you to migrate to Transit for the smaller projects.
Interested in your feedback.
Will be Trados OK? Or Transit only?
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thank you for the nice email and I will certainly try to get juicy work for all of us. You have a nice Christmas season too. I hope you get all my mails because it seemed that last time you did not get one email from me when I was offering you the work. If we find this problem again we will have to think of some solution. I am good at resolving such computer related problems.
Thank you very much for getting back to me.I have read the two emails you have sent to me and contents well understood.Well,0.05 Euro/sourse word is okay. Rememeber I said my price for now ranges from 0.03-0.06 and could change depending on field and text type.
I have never used Transit before but judging from your recommendations, it seems to be instrumental for a French to English translator. I think it is worth trying it. I will follow the links you have sent to me and try to acquaint myself with the software as best as i can and if I have any problem using it, I will definitely get back to you for help.
Again, note that I am very interested in working with you on all future French-English translation projects that you come across. It is true that one might not be very free to handle all the projects as they come. I will be nice to inform the translators working with you about projects to know if they are willing and free to participate in the project. I think this is a nice approach to making sure that projects are completed on time.
I will be hoping to hear from you as the days go by. I will be praying for you and all of us so that you can land juicy projects or us all. Until then, accept my best wishes for Christmas and New Year 2010. Remain blessed.
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