The time to process each individual service is different for each text and depends on many factors within the individual steps of that particular service. So, you should plan for sufficient time for the entire translation process. As a rule of thumb assume that it will take me at least as long to translate your text as it took the author to complete the source text.

Translating

This depends on how translation-friendly the source text has been worded. Some texts have been worded so well that they can be processed without so much of an effort, while other texts are a more or less real challenge in terms of wording and choice of words. For translating from Chinese I am usually calculating with a daily output of 3,500 to 4,500 characters, for translating from English, I am calculating with a daily output of 3,000 to 4,000 words.

Revision

This depends on the quality of the translation. In my experience, my hourly output ranges between 500 and 1,500 characters or words based on the source text.

Proofreading

This depends on the linguistic quality of the text I have to proofread. In my experience, my hourly output ranges between 3,000 and 4,000 words.

Post-editing

This depends largely on the quality of the machine translation and your editing requirements. Processing times may vary between the time for doing a revision and doing a proofreading.

Converting files with OCR

This depends on the quality of the scan or image to be converted as well as the complexity of the text to be converted. Pure running text, for instance, can be converted significantly quicker than a text with many images and/or tables. These factors of course also have an impact on how much time I will have to spend on editing the converted text. In my experience, my output per standard page ranges between 5 and 30 minutes.

Formatting

This depends on the complexity of the source text as well as the quality of the OCR conversion and how much you would like the target text to look like the source text. In my experience, my output per standard page of the translation ranges between 5 and 15 minutes.

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