Poll: Of roughly how many words is your average project?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
SITE STAFF
Jan 2, 2019

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Of roughly how many words is your average project?".

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Muriel Vasconcellos
Muriel Vasconcellos  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 04:45
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
8,000 to 50,000 Jan 2, 2019

I rarely get a job that's less than 8,000 words. Most of them run between 20,000 and 50,000.

Gareth Callagy
 
neilmac
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 12:45
Spanish to English
+ ...
I don't know Jan 2, 2019

Why would I want to know this? I'm usually too busy actually working to deal with such minutiae.

[Edited at 2019-01-02 10:01 GMT]


Alexandra Speirs
 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 11:45
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Other Jan 2, 2019

Average? I’m not sure as I’m all over the place. Since 2005 I’ve been keeping track of the number of words translated per year because I was asked then and I had no idea, my average in 2018 per month was 48,004 words with a good number of projects ranging from 4,000 to 8,000 and a small number going to 75,000 to 100,000 words…

 
Elizabeth Tamblin
Elizabeth Tamblin  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:45
French to English
Tricky to say Jan 2, 2019

The last project I agreed to do was 3,000 words. That was supposedly the number of "new words" to be translated. In reality, the 3,000 words were scattered throughout a document of over 50,000 words, so effectively I had to edit the whole thing as well as translating the words I was paid for. It took several days.

 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
Fewer than 1,000 Jan 2, 2019

It's fewer than 1,000, not less than 1,000

#pedanticiknowbutwearesupposedtobelinguists


Kay Denney
Vi Pukite
Michele Fauble
Noura Tawil
 
Philippe Etienne
Philippe Etienne  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 12:45
Member
English to French
around 1500-2000 Jan 2, 2019

Editing/proofreading projects included as translation-equivalent projects price-wise.
Roughly: income over 8 years (no readily available data before that) divided by number of jobs over 8 years divided by word rate (hardly changed over the period)
Plus or minus 15% for wind speed and CPU temperature variations.
Range: between 107kwords and min fee.

Philippe

[Edited at 2019-01-02 11:19 GMT]


 
Mario Freitas
Mario Freitas  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 08:45
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Average? Jan 2, 2019

There is no such a thing in my world. I receive several projects every week, ranging from 100 to 50.000 words, at very irregular ranges. An "average" for this type of thing makes no sense at all. I mean, it's calculable, but it measures nothig and this number would be useless statistically.

Christine Andersen
Kay-Viktor Stegemann
 
Barbara Cochran, MFA
Barbara Cochran, MFA  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 07:45
Spanish to English
+ ...
Anymore, 50,000 To 500,000 Words Jan 2, 2019

Actually, the last literary project I undertook turned out to be between 900 and 1,000 pages long. And I will be undertaking another one, probably in March of this year, which will amount to somewhere around 550,000 words, for the same client.

It seems that Italian authors really like to write long books, much to my delight!


 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 12:45
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Probably below 1000 on average Jan 2, 2019

The last jobs I have done in December and around the Christmas break have been about 6000 words, 4000, 4500 words, 478, 168, 109, 25 …

My general impression is that many jobs are between 500 and 1000 words, and I note them down, but there is really no such thing as an average project.

The types of jobs and clients, amounts of research or re-creation required, and factors like that vary enormously. For many readers, English will not be their first language, but they ma
... See more
The last jobs I have done in December and around the Christmas break have been about 6000 words, 4000, 4500 words, 478, 168, 109, 25 …

My general impression is that many jobs are between 500 and 1000 words, and I note them down, but there is really no such thing as an average project.

The types of jobs and clients, amounts of research or re-creation required, and factors like that vary enormously. For many readers, English will not be their first language, but they may recognise the terminology - it can be quite an art to write in plain language without dumbing down.

A hundred words or a thousand words are not just words - they are all different!
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Victoria Britten
Victoria Britten  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 12:45
French to English
+ ...
I count in subtitles or minutes, not words (mostly) Jan 2, 2019

These days the majority of my work is subtitling, for which the gold standard is a subtitle count but the very widespread practice is to count minutes, with anything from 0 to 20+ subtitles per minute.

Apart from that I also do linguistic revision of school textbooks for teaching English: there, it's the number of pages that counts; and proofreading is often per page here in France.

I just received a request for a "straight" translation - two texts, 743 + 559 words - FW
... See more
These days the majority of my work is subtitling, for which the gold standard is a subtitle count but the very widespread practice is to count minutes, with anything from 0 to 20+ subtitles per minute.

Apart from that I also do linguistic revision of school textbooks for teaching English: there, it's the number of pages that counts; and proofreading is often per page here in France.

I just received a request for a "straight" translation - two texts, 743 + 559 words - FWIW!
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Maxi Schwarz
Maxi Schwarz  Identity Verified
Local time: 06:45
German to English
+ ...
It varies widely Jan 3, 2019

I couldn't quote a meaningful average. I'm wondering if this is useful information in any way.

 
Rebecca Garber
Rebecca Garber  Identity Verified
Local time: 07:45
Member (2005)
German to English
+ ...
It varies Jan 3, 2019

It varies a lot. From two words to 20k.
Which means that an average becomes a meaningless number very quickly.

The only number I'm interested in my productivity is whether my income covers my expenses. As long as that answer is yet, averages can go hang.


 


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Poll: Of roughly how many words is your average project?






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