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Acceptable length of test task
Thread poster: Jenny Nilsson
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:38
French to English
. Aug 12, 2020

At the agency I never sent any texts longer than 250 words. But I could usually tell whether a translator had done a good job simply by running a spell check: the good ones had always run it last thing just before sending. Once I'd whittled out those who hadn't run it, I'd look at the first sentence and usually would whittle out a good half of the spell-checkers. Then for the small handful of translators left, I'd look at the rest of the translation, but rarely had any surprises as to quality.... See more
At the agency I never sent any texts longer than 250 words. But I could usually tell whether a translator had done a good job simply by running a spell check: the good ones had always run it last thing just before sending. Once I'd whittled out those who hadn't run it, I'd look at the first sentence and usually would whittle out a good half of the spell-checkers. Then for the small handful of translators left, I'd look at the rest of the translation, but rarely had any surprises as to quality.
So I'd say probably nobody needs any more than a couple of sentences. Definitely never translate more than 250 for free. We sometimes paid translators for tests, especially for tenders. One told me that he'd refund us if we could prove that we failed to get the bid because of his translation. That never happened because he was excellent. ▲ Collapse
 
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Acceptable length of test task







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