Cover not available
Article published In:
Fair MT: Towards ethical, sustainable Machine Translation
Edited by Joss Moorkens, Dorothy Kenny and Félix do Carmo
[Translation Spaces 9:1] 2020
► pp. 35–57

‘Time is money’ and the value of translation

ORCID logo | University of Surrey
This article uses a multi-faceted approach to discuss the relation between time, money and different perspectives that help define the value of professional translation. It challenges the narratives created by the translation industry on post-editing as a revision of pre-translated content, confronting them with the detailed description of the task in industry standards and with the reality of translators’ work. The article also addresses the different roles that time plays as an instrument of analysis and evaluation of translation, and as a fundamental factor in the definition of labour relations in the translation market. The main claim of the article is that translation is increasingly specialised high-value work, requiring translators that are able to make complex and efficient decisions, especially when they are expected to work under time restrictions, with the support of content that has been previously processed by machine translation.
Keywords: value of translation, time as a definer of value, professional translation, post-editing of machine translation, translation productivity, economic factors in translation, translation efficiency, translation industry
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Time-based descriptions of processes in translation
    • 2.1Translation, revision and post-editing in translation studies
    • 2.2Translation, revision and post-editing viewed by the industry
  • 3.Effects of time in professional translation
    • 3.1Evolution of prices over time
    • 3.2Training for saving time
    • 3.3Do translators save time with PE?
  • 4.The different faces of time in translation
    • 4.1Time as a metric of productivity
    • 4.2Time as a definer of labour
    • 4.3Time as an opaque metric for value
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.00020.car
References (60)
References
Alves, Fábio, Arlene Koglin, Bartolomé Mesa-Lao, Mercedes García Martínez, Norma B. de Lima Fonseca, Arthur de Melo Sá, José Luiz Gonçalves, Karina Sarto Szpak, Kyoko Sekino, and Marceli Aquino. 2016. “Analysing the Impact of Interactive Machine Translation on Post-Editing Effort.” In New Directions in Empirical Translation Process Research, edited by Michael Carl, Srinivas Bangalore, and Moritz Schaeffer. Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing Switzerland. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Austermühl, Frank. 2013. “Future (and Not-so-Future) Trends in the Teaching of Translation Technology.” Tradumàtica: Tecnologies de La Traduciò, no. 11: 326–37. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bayer-Hohenwarter, Gerrit. 2009. “Methodological Reflections on the Experimental Design of Time-Pressure Studies.” Across Languages and Cultures 10 (2): 193–206. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carl, Michael, Srinivas Bangalore, and Moritz Schaeffer (eds). 2016. New Directions in Empirical Translation Process Research. Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing Switzerland. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carl, Michael, Barbara Dragsted, and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen. 2011. “On the Systematicity of Human Translation Processes.” In Tralogy 2011. Translation Careers and Technologies: Convergence Points for the Future. Paris, France. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Castilho, Sheila, Joss Moorkens, Federico Gaspari, Iacer Calixto, John Tinsley, and Andy Way. 2017. “Is Neural Machine Translation the New State of the Art?” The Prague Bulletin of Mathematical Linguistics 108 (1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Christensen, Tina Paulsen, and Anne Schjoldager. 2011. “The Impact of Translation-Memory (TM) Technology on Cognitive Processes: Student-Translators’ Retrospective Comments in an Online Questionnaire.” In Proceedings of the 8th International NLPCS Workshop (Special Theme: Human-Machine Interaction in Translation), edited by Bernadette Sharp, Michael Zock, Michael Carl, and Arnt Lykke Jakobsen. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur.Google Scholar
Common Sense Advisory. 2019. “Translation Industry Headed for a ‘Future Shock’ Scenario.” Common Sense Advisory. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Daems, Joke, Sonia Vandepitte, Robert J. Hartsuiker, and Lieve Macken. 2017. “Translation Methods and Experience: A Comparative Analysis of Human Translation and Post-Editing with Students and Professional Translators.” Meta: Journal Des Traducteurs. 62 (2): 245. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
DePalma, Don. 2013. “Post-Editing in Practice.” tcworld e-magazine. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Depraetere, Ilse. 2010. “What Counts as Useful Advice in a University Post-Editing Training Context? Report on a Case Study.” In François Yvon and Viggo Hansen (eds). EAMT 2010: Proceedings of the 14th annual conference of the European association for machine translation. EAMT.Google Scholar
Désilets, Alain, Christiane Melançon, Geneviève Patenaude, and Louise Brunette. 2009. “How Translators Use Tools and Resources to Solve Translation Problems: An Ethnographic Study.” In Machine Translation Summit XII – Workshop: Beyond Translation Memories. Ottawa, Canada. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
De Rooze, Bart. 2003. “La Traducción, Contra Reloj [Translation, against the Clock].” In Actas Del I Congreso Internacional de La Asociación Ibérica de Estudios de Traducción e Interpretación, edited by Ricardo Muñoz Martín, 59–66. AIETI.Google Scholar
van Egdom, Gys-walt, Lucas Nunes Vieira, and Jakub Absolon. 2018. “Towards Testing Post-Editing Performance: A Futureproof Diagnostic.” Tradumàtica: Tecnologies de La Traducció no. 16: 114–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
EMT Expert Group. 2017. “European Master’s in Translation – Competence Framework 2017. European Master’s in Translation (EMT).” Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Flanagan, Marian, and Tina Paulsen Christensen. 2014. “Testing Post-Editing Guidelines: How Translation Trainees Interpret Them and How to Tailor Them for Translator Training Purposes.” Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8 (2): 257–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
FIT (Fédération internationale des traducteurs). 2017. “FIT Position Paper on the Future for Professional Translators.” Paris.Google Scholar
Franklin, Benjamin. 1748. “Advice to a Young Tradesman.” In Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin: Consisting of his Life, Written by Himself, Together with Essays, Humorous, Moral & Literary, Chiefly in the Manner of the Spectator (1793). P. Wogan, P. Byrne, J. Moore, and W. Jones, Dublin. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
García, Ignacio. 2012. “A Brief History of Postediting and of Research on Postediting.” Revista Anglo Saxonica no. 3: 293–310.Google Scholar
. 2015. “Cloud Marketplaces: Procurement of Translators in the Age of Social Media.” The Journal of Specialised Translation no. 23: 18–38.Google Scholar
Guerberof Arenas, Ana. 2008. “Productivity and Quality in the Post-Editing of Outputs from Translation Memories and Machine Translation.” Universitat Rovira i Virgili.Google Scholar
Guerberof Arenas, Ana, and Joss Moorkens. 2019. “Machine Translation and Post-Editing Training as Part of a Master’s Programme”. Jostrans – Journal of Specialised Translation no. 31: 217–238.Google Scholar
Huang, Jin, and Akshay Minocha. 2014. “Cognitive Process of Revision: The Behaviours and the Motivations Behind.” In Translation in Transition – Between Cognition, Computing and Technology. Copenhagen.Google Scholar
ISO (International Organization for Standardization). 2015. Translation Services – Requirements for Translation Services. ISO 17100:2015. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
. 2017. Translation Services – Post-Editing of Machine Translation Output – Requirements. ISO 18587:2017. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel Ángel. 2012. “Translation under Pressure and the Web: A Parallel Corpus-Study of Obama’s Inaugural Speech in the Online Media.” The International Journal for Translation & Interpreting Research 4 (1): 56–76. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Joscelyne, Andrew. 2018. “Translators in the Algorithmic Age: Briefing Based on the TAUS Industry Leaders Forum in Amsterdam in June, 2018.” Amsterdam. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Kenny, Dorothy, and Stephen Doherty. 2014. “Statistical Machine Translation in the Translation Curriculum: Overcoming Obstacles and Empowering Translators.” Interpreter and Translator Trainer 8 (2): 276–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Khalzanova, Serafima. 2008. “Revision and Time Constraints in Translation.” Dissertation (Diploma of Advanced Studies). Universitat Rovira i Virgili.Google Scholar
Kinnunen, Tuija, and Kaisa Koskinen (eds). 2010. Translators’ Agency. Tampere University Press.Google Scholar
Koponen, Maarit. 2015. “How to Teach Machine Translation Post-Editing? Experiences from a Post-Editing Course.” In Sharon O’Brien and Michel Simard (eds). Proceedings of 4th Workshop on Post-Editing Technology and Practice (WPTP4). Association for Machine Translation in the Americas, 2–15.Google Scholar
. 2016. “Machine Translation Post-Editing and Effort Empirical Studies on the Post-Editing Process.” University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Krings, Hans P. 2001. Repairing Texts: Empirical Investigations of Machine Translation Post-Editing Processes, edited by Geoffrey S. Koby. Kent, Ohio & London: The Kent State University Press.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Doug. 2008. “Inflation Everywhere – Except in Our Pricing. Does It Matter and What Can We Do about It?” ATC Annual Conference 2008 44 (0).Google Scholar
Manyika, James, Susan Lund, Jacques Bughin, Kelsey Robinson, Jan Mischke, and Deepa Mahajan. 2016. Independent Work: Choice, Necessity, and the Gig Economy. McKinsey & Company.Google Scholar
Marking, Marion. 2019. “Inside the Contractor Debate Affecting US Freelance Translators, Interpreters, and LSPs.” Slator. 2019. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Massardo, Isabella, Jaap van der Meer, Sharon O’Brien, Fred Hollowood, Nora Aranberri, and Katrin Drescher. 2016. “MT Post-Editing Guidelines.” TAUS.Google Scholar
Mazur, Iwona. 2007. “The Metalanguage of Localization.” Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 19 (2): 337–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mesa-Lao, Bartolomé. 2013. “Introduction to Post-Editing – The CasMaCat GUI.” In SEECAT – Speech & Eye-Tracking Enabled CAT [Handout]. Copenhagen Business School.Google Scholar
Milan, John M. 2016. “An Hourly Fee for Translation?” ATA Chronicle (June): 28–29.Google Scholar
Moorkens, Joss. 2017. “Under Pressure: Translation in Times of Austerity.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 25 (3): 464–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moorkens, Joss, and Andy Way. 2016. “Comparing Translator Acceptability of TM and SMT Outputs.” Baltic Journal of Modern Computing Modern Computing 4 (2): 141–51.Google Scholar
Moorkens, Joss, Sharon O’Brien, Igor A. L. da Silva, Norma B. de Lima Fonseca, and Fábio Alves. 2015. “Correlations of Perceived Post-Editing Effort with Measurements of Actual Effort.” Machine Translation 29 (3–4): 267–84. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moorkens, Joss, Sheila Castilho, Federico Gaspari, and Stephen Doherty (eds). 2018. Translation Quality Assessment : From Principles to Practice. Springer International Publishing AG. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mossop, Brian. 2014. Revising and Editing for Translators. Third Edition. London & New York: Routledge. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Office for National Statistics of the UK. 2018. “Inflation and Price Indices.” Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Pielmeier, Hélène and Paul O’Mara. 2020. The State of the Linguist Supply Chain. Common Sense Advisory.Google Scholar
Pym, Anthony. 2019. “How Automation Through Neural Machine Translation Might Change the Skill Sets of Translators.” Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Sager, Juan. 1993. Language Engineering and Translation: Consequences of Automation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Slator. 2019. “Slator 2019 Language Industry Market Report.” Slator.Google Scholar
TAUS. 2009. “The Innovation and Interoperability Roadmap for the Translation Industry.” TAUS.Google Scholar
. 2012. “Moses: Commodity Creates Opportunity.” Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
. 2016. “Post-Editing.” Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
. 2019. “DQF BI Bulletin – Q4 2018.”. TAUS.Google Scholar
. 2020a. “Harmonized error typology”. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
. 2020b. “DQF Dashboard.” Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
. 2020c. “TAUS DQF Dashboard.” Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Vasconcellos, Muriel. 1987. “Post-Editing on-Screen: Machine Translation from Spanish into English.” In Proceedings of the Conference Translating and the Computer 8, edited by Catriona Picken, 133–46. London: Aslib. Accessed March 14, 2020. [URL]
Wood, Alex J., Mark Graham, Vili Lehdonvirta, and Isis Hjorth. 2019. ”Networked but Commodified: The (Dis)Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy.” Sociology 53(5): 931–950. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zhechev, Ventsislav. 2014. “Analysing the Post-Editing of Machine Translation at Autodesk.” In Post-Editing of Machine Translation: Processes and Applications, edited by Sharon O’Brien, Laura Winther Balling, Michael Carl, Lúcia Specia, and Michel Simard. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cited by (20)

Cited by 20 other publications

Baumgarten, Stefan & Carole Bourgadel
2024. Digitalisation, neo-Taylorism and translation in the 2020s. Perspectives 32:3 ► pp. 508 ff. DOI logo
Fırat, Gökhan, Joanna Gough & Joss Moorkens
2024. Translators in the platform economy: a decent work perspective. Perspectives 32:3 ► pp. 422 ff. DOI logo
González-Pastor, Diana
2024. La traducción automática y la formación de traductores en España: Perspectivas desde la industria y el ámbito académico. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción 17:1 DOI logo
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel A.
2024. Of professionals, non-professionals and everything in between: redefining the notion of the ‘translator’ in the crowdsourcing era. The Translator 30:1 ► pp. 29 ff. DOI logo
Martínez-Carrasco, Robert
2024. ¿Qué empleabilidad? Análisis curricular de los grados de Traducción e Interpretación en España. Mutatis Mutandis. Revista Latinoamericana de Traducción 17:1 DOI logo
Sakamoto, Akiko & Sarah Bawa Mason
2024. In search of a fair MTPE pricing model: LSPs’ reflections and the implications for translators. Perspectives 32:3 ► pp. 460 ff. DOI logo
Sakamoto, Akiko, Darren van Laar, Joss Moorkens & Félix do Carmo
2024. Measuring translators’ quality of working life and their career motivation. Translation Spaces 13:1 ► pp. 54 ff. DOI logo
Sánchez-Castany, Roser
2024. Industry Insights About Translation Technologies: Current Needs and Future Trends. In New Advances in Translation Technology [New Frontiers in Translation Studies, ], ► pp. 99 ff. DOI logo
Tieber, Michael & Stefan Baumgarten
2024. Mean machines? Sociotechnical (r)evolution and human labour in the translation and interpreting industry. Perspectives 32:3 ► pp. 379 ff. DOI logo
Asscher, Omri
2023. The position of machine translation in translation studies. Translation Spaces 12:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
Latorraca, Rossella
2023. Lost in post-editing. An exploratory study on translation trainees’ perceived EN>IT post-editing vs. translation performance. Ampersand 11 ► pp. 100144 ff. DOI logo
Massidda, Serenella & Annalisa Sandrelli
2023. ¡Sub! localisation workflows (th)at work. Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 9:3 ► pp. 298 ff. DOI logo
Mezeg, Adriana
2023. Ali sploh še potrebujemo prevajalce?. Ars & Humanitas 17:1 ► pp. 139 ff. DOI logo
Ramírez-Polo, Laura & Chelo Vargas-Sierra
2023. Translation Technology and Ethical Competence: An Analysis and Proposal for Translators’ Training. Languages 8:2 ► pp. 93 ff. DOI logo
Rico, Celia & María del Mar Sánchez Ramos
2023. The Ethics of Machine Translation Post-editing in the Translation Ecosystem. In Towards Responsible Machine Translation [Machine Translation: Technologies and Applications, 4], ► pp. 95 ff. DOI logo
Tieber, Michael
2023. Investigating Translation Concepts in Machine Translation. In Translaboration in Analogue and Digital Practice [Transkulturalität – Translation – Transfer, 57], ► pp. 109 ff. DOI logo
Yong, Ching Yee & Kang Cheng Phun
2023. Discover Life: Self-Fabricated Smart Mirror using Microprocessor and OpenCV. Journal of Physics: Conference Series 2609:1 ► pp. 012005 ff. DOI logo
Lambert, Joseph & Callum Walker
2022. Because We’re Worth It. Translation Spaces 11:2 ► pp. 277 ff. DOI logo
Rico, Celia
2022. Mind the gap. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation 68:5 ► pp. 697 ff. DOI logo
Nunes Vieira, Lucas, Valentina Ragni & Elisa Alonso
2021. Translator autonomy in the age of behavioural data. Translation, Cognition & Behavior 4:1 ► pp. 124 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.