Hi, > What you're considering is (or should be) neither necessary > nor desirable. Your translation vendor should be using a > translation memory (and you should request a copy of it, > since you've paid for it, so that you're not locked into this > vendor because it's holding your translation memory hostage). > > When you send an updated set of files for a book that's > already been translated once, the unchanged paragraphs will > match the translation memory. Only the portions that are new > or changed need to be translated. > > If your vendor isn't using translation memory, find a new > one. If it is using translation memory, there's no point in > you trying to dissect files and reassemble them -- you'd gain > nothing and risk all kinds of problems.
Of course almost all translation agencies use a translation memory system nowadays. If the vendor uses a translation memory system, such a system can easily check the number of non-translated segments (a segment is a translation unit) and segments which can be pretranslated or translated with the help of fuzzy-matches. However, the vendor will still charge for pretranslated segments. The reason is that often the terminology must be changed with new text. Or references to a previous segment will not be correct any longer, because e.g. you inserted another segment. The reference may still be correct in English but not in a foreign language. The costs per pretranslated segment depend on your vendor, mostly around 25 % of non-translated segments. Best regards Winfried