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In-House vs Freelance Translators: Differences in the Speed of Translation

An original research work by Garooneh Khachatori, Nickee O’Bryant, Euleth Ruiz, Maria Rodriguez

TRST 301

Introduction

There are a variety of factors that can determine the speed at which a translator is capable of working such as the use of CAT tools and work culture environment (i.e., working with a team vs. independently). The growing translation industry has created a higher demand for the delivery of "faster translations" to clients. Knowing what aspects contribute to a faster translation will help translators decide which type of work environment is more efficient to work in. In this work, we will investigate whether working as a freelance translator or an in-house translator changes the speed at which a translator finishes his/her project. The results of this study will help translators determine if they would be interested in working as freelance or in-house translators. It will also help clients decide which type of translator they would prefer to hire.

This paper aims to show the differences in the speed at which in-house translators vs. freelance translators complete their projects. It is legit to think that in-house translators, who can count on more tools, have a stricter schedule and work within a team, will perform the translation task faster. However, there is not much evidence available focusing on the factors that might impact the speed at which the translation task is performed, above all in regard to the comparison between in house vs. freelance translators. For this reason, we will identify and reflect on the factors that might determine potential differences in speed between in-house vs. freelance translators.

We will then explain each of the factors that we think are helping in-house translators work faster than freelance translators. For example, in-house translators work with other people, and they have a team that is always cooperating with them. This is one of the most influencing factors after the availability of highly efficient cat tools within translation companies. The most significant impact of a team is in achieving more together than individually. It empowers each of the members who are doing the translation, eliminating the obstacles preventing them from doing the translations in less time. This promotes more flexible work structures and an horizontally organized collaborative environment; not only the individual translator will make sure that the work is ready on time but he/she will guarantee that the highest standards have been reached. In other words, we suggest that the more people work on a single translation, the faster they translate.

As sketched above, besides the help of a team, there are other factors that influence the way translators translate a document. The use of cat tools is one of the most prominent in the field. Of course Cat tools are not meant to replace the work of the translator; they assist him/her during the execution of some tasks, to save time and costs related to the work.

Here, we will be testing how the use of the cat tool allows translators to reduce the time it takes to translate a specific part of a document— considering that some of the software used by translators who work as in-house translators in some cases are different from those used by a freelance translator. Because most of the time, translation corporations use proprietary, more efficient software we propose that the use of those specific Cat tools will impact the speed of translation as it is measured by delivery times.

Literature review

Coherently with what has been sketched above, previous literature suggests that the working environment might play a crucial role in how time is managed in translation tasks. In the first research article considered for the present investigation, Anna Kuznik (2016) analyzes the impact that translators’ work environment has, whether they work for corporations or on their own. Our group wanted to focus mainly on the different processes that both translators carry out, making a comparison to find if it is here where there is a difference in terms of time. We discovered that translators who work as in-house translators already have a specific procedure for each type of translation “To achieve their proposed performance goals, managers have to carry out systematic studies of work processes and positions, and design standard production routines” (Kuznik, 2016) Here we can see that the fact that the translators who work as in-house translators have a coordinator can be an advantage to carry out the work successfully and in less time because there is coordination, project managers make sure translators use their time efficiently.

In addition, our second article by Lafeber (2012) talks about the skills and knowledge that translators should have in order to produce a quality product in a reasonable time.

Translators deploy a range of skills and draw on different types of knowledge in the exercise of their profession; however, the author suggests that there is a positive correlation between the amount of domain-specific skills displayed and the translation outcome. Moreover, the authors highlights that "the skills and knowledge of several people in one place, focused on a single translation, not only improve the work but also reduces production times". This paper directly reinforced our initial idea that there will be differences in the work of in-house vs. freelance translators (i.e., two heads are better than one). Finally, the article by Heidi Verplaetse (2019) explores the different cat tools, terminology systems, and corpora used by in-house translators vs. freelance translators. The author argues that the cat tools used by in-house translators are sometimes more efficient than those used by freelance translators. These big translation corporations can afford the best tools for their employees. Verplaetse discusses how many times in-house translators have applications (cat tools and terminology systems) that are not yet accessible to freelance translators; "Companies focused on this area (in-house translators) prefer the use of translation memories, because these informative tools help the translator to perform their work faster and more efficiently, reducing delivery times" while "Those who work as freelance translators use cat tools and terminology systems fewer because they work under their own hours and their delivery times are more flexible on many occasions". Hence, all the articles that have been consulted support the ideas that our group is seeking to explain in this paper, all based on the differences that exist between in-house translators vs. freelancers.

Research Objectives & Rationale of Study

Our observation was that different types of translators work at different speeds. Therefore, in this study, we wanted to determine whether in house translators are faster at completing a translation project than freelance translators. The overall speed is determined by how long a project takes to finish, including translation, editing, preparing the invoice, receiving and delivering the original and translated text, etc. As a result, we decided to use some of these factors such as time of translation, editing, invoicing, and use of CAT tools to compare the speed of translation between in-house and freelance translators. Our hypothesis is that the speed of translation will be different in the two groups, meaning one will be faster than the other; alternatively, it might be observed that there will be no differences at all. Our prediction is that if the two types of translators are given the same project to work on, the in house translators will complete it faster than the freelance translators. Our prediction is based on the assumption that in-house translators have a strict schedule that they must follow, more tools and assistance provided by their company, and the ability to work with other teams and receive guidance.

Methodology

In order to test our prediction, we conducted a survey in which we randomly reached out to both freelance and in house translators via email and posted the survey on the ProZ website which targets freelance translators. In the survey, the participants were asked to indicate whether they work as an independent freelance translator or for a translation company with a team. The next step was to look at an article by CNN, “What Happens Next with the COVID Relief Bill”, and answer the following questions; How long would it take you to translate the document from English to another language? How long would it take you to edit the document from English to another language? How long would it take you to prepare an invoice? And finally, do you use

CAT tools and which ones? The participants were given space to type in their answers. The survey was open to accept responses for 47 days, after which the 46 responses were recorded. Due to item non-response error, where many participants misunderstood or did not answer the questions asked, the questions about time spent editing and a total of 5 responses were excluded from the final data.

After collecting the data, two graphs were generated, one for the time spent translating and the other for time spent preparing the invoice. The graphs are reported in the Findings and Results section. Then, R Studio was used for a statistical two sample t-test data analysis. This analysis allowed for the comparison of the mean time spent translating and invoicing between in- house and freelance translators, the results of which will be discussed later in this paper. Finally, the use of cat tools for each individual was recorded and compared.

Findings

After gathering data from the survey responses, it was observed that the average time spent translating the document for in-house translators (2 hours) was less than that of freelance translators (2.92 hours). For the 14 in-house translators, the least time taken to translate was 1 hour while the maximum was 4 hours. As for the 27 freelance translators, the least time taken was 1 hour and the maximum time taken was 7 hours. These findings were confirmed by the results of a two-sample t-test, which yielded a p-value of 0.02604 which is less than 0.05, meaning the time spent translating by in-house translators is significantly less than that of freelance translators. Secondly, it was observed that the average time it took for an in-house translator to complete the invoice (17.14 minutes) was more than that of the freelance translator (10.52 minutes). For the in-house translators, they took a minimum of 5 minutes and a maximum of 30 minutes. For the freelance translators, the minimum was 3 minutes and the maximum was17.5 minutes. These findings were confirmed by the results of a two-sample t-test, which yielded a p-value of 0.9979 which is more than 0.05, meaning the time spent invoicing by in-house translators is slightly more than that of freelance translators. Finally, it was observed that all 14 in-house translators answered that they use CAT tools while four of the 27 freelance translators (14%) said that they do not use CAT tools. Overall, these findings align with our initial hypothesis that there will be differences in the time between in-house translators and freelance translators when translating the same document. It proved our prediction that in-house translators will be faster in completing a translation compared to freelance translators.

Discussion

In our experiment, we found three things. First of all, it was observed that in-house translators were faster at translating the document than freelance translators. This is supported by the fact that having specific procedures for translations and project managers ensures that in- house translators are using their time efficiently (Kuznik 2016). This may also be explained by the fact that in-house translators are able to collaborate more easily with other translators which can reduce the time it takes to complete the translation.

Secondly, we found that in-house translators took longer to complete an invoice compared to freelance translators. This may be explained by the fact that in-house translators must work as a team and therefore have to consult with others before completing the invoice which will ultimately take more time. So while the collaborative aspect of the in-house translation may shorten the translation time, invoices will take longer when more people are involved. Freelance translators, on the other hand, do not have to consult with as many people since they do almost everything themselves and will therefore complete the invoice faster. This is important because it helps the client understand why the completion time for their invoice and translation project may differ depending on which type of translator they employ. It can help the translator determine on average how much time they will be spending on the invoice which can influence their decision to join a translation company as opposed to becoming a freelancer.

Finally, we observed that more in-house translators answered that they would use CAT tools than freelance translators. This is supported by Verplaetse who found that freelance translators use CAT tools less often than in-house translators because their schedules and delivery times are more flexible and because some CAT tools used by in-house translators are not accessible to freelance translators (2019). And since in-house translators also were on average faster in completing the translation, this may indicate that the use of CAT tools reduces the time used to complete a translation project. It may also indicate that in-house translators are slightly more inclined to using CAT tools. However, for this to be more conclusive, we would have to increase both the in-house and freelance sample sizes significantly.

While our results do seem to prove our hypothesis and confirm our prediction, it is important to note the possible errors that could have taken place. First, our survey essentially asked translators to estimate how long it would take for them to translate our document. This could lead to potential errors in the calculation since they did not actually time themselves performing the translation, something we could not ask them to do unless we were prepared to pay them as well. Secondly, we noticed that in wording some of our questions, it made it sound like we assumed that every translator translated from English to another language, something that was pointed out to me by a helpful user on ProZ. Another example of a question that lacked clarity was one we asked about editing. Some respondents thought that the editing was referring to their translation while others assumed that they would be editing a translation received from another translator. Finally, in our survey, we asked about the use of CAT tools but it is unclear if the respondents were saying that they use them in general or that they would use them for the document we provided. In any case, this data is useful but we would highly benefit from running this experiment again with more precision and clear questions. Overall, we only had a total of 41 responses to use for analysis, so we would suggest increasing the sample sizes for in-house and freelance translators and clarifying our meaning for each question.

Implications of Our Study

These findings support the idea that translation can be a more efficient and faster practice if it is worked together on it as a group like in-house translators do. We can use the information found in our study to strengthen the notion that networking is an important aspect of the practice because a group together can create the same translation outcome in a shorter amount of time than if a translator was working alone. The findings from the study help determine the speed at which the two types of translators can get the same project done and which one is more convenient to the needs of a client. For that reason, we can generalize our findings to the Translation Market because translation is not just about creating high quality texts anymore but at the same time being able to keep up with the speed at which a client needs their final translation product. Studies such as this one can help clients decide which type of translator is more convenient depending on their timely needs. As well as help individuals decide which type of translator they would like to be depending on if they can get work done faster as a group like in house-translators do or independently as a freelancer.

Suggestions to Our Study

After conducting this study we realized that future research could focus on the experience of individuals as we are unaware of how long most of our participants have been translating for. This is important to know because more experience is likely to increase the pace at which a translator works and impact which translation tools they utilize. Another aspect that we didn’t consider but is important information for translators to know would be which CAT tools work best to speed up a translation which could help freelancers work at a faster speed. Some CAT tools might be more useful to work with than others which is why testing out the speed that translators work under different ones could strengthen the results of our study. Additionally, we didn’t examine which languages take longer to translate than others as some languages might be harder to work with than others. Due to our time limitations our sample size for this project was also very limited to only 41 responses, however, in future research we could take into account testing out the data above with larger sample sizes to reconfirm and strengthen some of our findings.

Lastly, now that we know that if the two types of translators received the same project to work on, the in-house translators will complete it faster than the freelance translator. We propose to do future research to find out exactly what are the factors that are helping in-house translators work at a faster speed than freelancers and once we know them, provide them for freelancers to see if it’ll speed up the rate at which they work at. These future ideas could be useful in the translation research field to develop new techniques for translators to use in order to get more projects done for their clients in less time. It’s important to test out the practices that translators are doing now and find out what is helping them get projects done faster and what is holding them back. The differences across translators will always exist but by targeting them we could learn ways to improve the ways in which the practice is being done.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we found that in-house translators seem to translate faster than freelancers due to the collaborative aspect of their work environment and use of CAT tools. In addition to working with a team, in-house translators have access to better CAT tools than the ones freelancers have available. Both are beneficial to translators to learn how to use as translation is not just about creating high-quality texts anymore but about being able to keep up with the speed at which a client needs their final translation product which is why it’s important for them to figure out ways in which they can keep up with time.