Career / Experience

I hold a BSc degree in Engineering, plus a Certificate of Proficiency in English (ECPE) (University of Ann Arbor, Mich, USA).

I have been active in the Marketing and Exports sales of Industrial goods, up to Commercial Director, 1974 to 2005, and I have been involved in both translating (English / Spanish, both ways) and writing (also in both languages) throughout, though it was all started in a casual way. When needing to translate sales literature, technical manuals, specs and copy, I found that both MY translations and my originals worked better, and that's how I got involved -what with close deadlines, extensive travel in between and meetings.

So I know -firsthand- about the pressures, the deadlines and everything: Considering that I was both the translator AND the client, that I knew firsthand also when -and why- I wanted it done by a deadline, and that it was me at the receiving end (or that I alone was responsible for missing a deadline for a tender, for instance, not to mention that it was me too at the meetings involved), I KNOW that better than most... And this is why I hold no portfolio.

All of which means that, since I was both the translator and the client (until recently, so personal references are now available: See WWA section, top right corner this page) I have never bothered to gather references or (for starters) becoming a member of a proper professional association and getting proper credentials –my client(s) did appear to be perfectly happy without them.

The reason is that I have always enjoyed translating, even when that has interfered with my chosen executive career at some points in time (more than once, in fact). I might say that translating was sort of a hobby for me, but a very serious one –otherwise I would have landed in dire difficulties sooner rather than later, and I would certainly have had to relinquish translating, had the results been less than perfect, even for once.

This means also that, hobby or otherwise, I have been keeping my translation skills perfectly honed throughout my career –well over 35 years so far- and that I have done so in-depth in quite a wide variety of specialist technical fields in accordance with the jobs as described in my CV, but that I can prove it (objectively) only to myself.

I can say also that I have signed NDA agreements on a few important projects, like one for a continuous casting steel mill, a CNC machining center (maintenance, erection and commissioning and operation manuals), a few on automation, one commercial brochure for a transport plane... but I cannot disclose further details about that..

I use memoQ translator pro, fully updated. According to my (wide) experience in the matter, I have no difficulties in handling sdlxliff packages -both in imports and exports.

   Pricing / Other services

6. RATES

• Translation (EN > ES (Spain’s): 0,10 to 0,14 EUR per source word (that depends on the urgency and both the difficulty of the subject matter and the quality of the original text, and let me put an example here):

“For the power supply switch of plant side, cable for main switch power of the machine side in the power supply, use standard cable which can supply the required power safely”

That requires translating into PLAIN English first:

“The cable tap from the main line switch to the machine main (supply) switch must be correctly and safely rated for the current and voltage absorbed by the machine” (“and safely” being actually a “belt-and-braces” approach, as “correctly rated” conveys the “safety” notion as a build-in, but just in case...). The end product in Spanish is actually cheaply priced at Eur. 0,12 in this case.
Especially in “gems” like the one above: If you are confronted with a phrase like this for every three or four (in a 20.000+ word, ultraprecise 5-axis CNC machining centre installation and maintenance manual, for instance), speed decreases substantially and requires lots of additional querying, which again brings speed down. That means that price MUST increase in such cases (plus, very probably, the deadline must be extended).

Discounts: The following grid applies:



• Proofreading: (ES > ES): Euro. 0,04 per word (full text), assuming a mostly correct original, not to be edited or (in fact) retranslated, in which case a steady 1000 words per hour will be the output (burst rate would be up to 1500 or even 2000, but that depends on every case). In fact, I prefer to examine the original before committing to a closed price and (more so) to a closed deadline.

• Editing: Euro 45 per hour

• Other jobs (Translating texts embedded in graphic objects, for instance): Euro 35 per hour.