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Translation Management Database measures



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This video demonstrates some of the measures that I calculate to monitor translation project activity, notably word rate, hourly rate and words per hour performance.

I record the time spent working on translation projects, the volume handled and time spent on management activities.

The translation management database stores a project title, customer, number of words, the price and the system calculates the word rate for that project.

I make an estimate of how long the project is going to take. Based on the price and the time, I calculate an hourly rate for each project.

The accumulated time spent on projects allows me to calculate how much time I have spent on production in a week and allows me to compare it against my objective. And the difference.

So I know my production time and volume. I also record the amount of time spent on management projects and these added together is the total time spent in any week.

When I work on projects, I have a timer which allows me to record the start and end time that I work.

I work in pomodoro batches and the accumulation of those batches allows me to calculate the total time spent on a project.

In turn I calculate an average word rate (which is the number of words that I produce or translate per hour).

I have different types of task - normal translation, French to English for me, English to French translation, proofing, revision and others.

This project data also allows me to calculate an hourly rate which is the price divided by the number of hours actually spent.

Once the project is complete, I base the hourly rate on the actual time spent. When the project is in progress, the hourly rate is based on the estimated time.

I can see the progress I'm making on a project, how many days it's taking and what the rates are so the, hourly rate, the word rate and the time spent for each day spent on the project.

And because I have the word rate calculated for each project, when I do my GTD review, I know on average what the word rate is per period. I calculate an average word rate here per quarter.

The WPH or number of words per hour enables me to make estimates, depending on the type of project.

Once I know how many words I can do per hour, I can estimate the number of hours for a project and then I will be more confident about delivering on time.

Hourly rate is important because it helps me to know whether a project is profitable and whether I should take it or not.

And knowing how much production time I'm doing on average helps me effectively to predict turnover. If I know that I'm doing a certain number of hours per week at a certain rate I can start to
predict how much I can earn.
Category
Management
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