ace-translation wrote:
If we take into account secretarial standards of about 45 words per minute, a well trained secretary should be able to type 2700 words/hour. This, of course, is only possible if she/he maintains the same output for 60 minutes (without blowing her/his nose, drinking, sneezing, yawning...)
It is also worth mentioning that we are only talking about typing here and not translating...
GoodWords wrote:
I hope my post on typing speeds isn't misinterpreted as saying that typing and translating are almost alike. My point is that if a good typist can only type, say 2000 words per hour (allowing time for blowing the nose, drinking, etc.), (and who could keep that up without a break for hour after hour?), then any claim for translation speed has to take this figure as a baseline. It would be unreal to imagine that someone could translate faster than a mere typist could type.
See the following post which provides the reference to my article (available online at no cost) containing a survey of translation speed that I conducted in early 2004. I also explained in that article how typing speed is one (very important but not only) variable in determining translation speed:
http://www.proz.com/post/207158#207158
Jeff
http://www.geocities.com/jeffallenpubs/
[Edited at 2005-03-01 15:49]
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