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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
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