The Notion Translation database stores details of translation projects, customers, and the terms used for analysis and reuse in furture projects.
![[translation-projects-and-terms.png]]
## Translation database overview
*Projects* are customer orders, treating a subject, translating a document of any type from source language to target. They are effected for customers, in general agencies. The agencies have an 'end customer' which can be useful to know because it can be a source of vocabulary, technical terms and background information.
*Terms* are the terms needed during a project to complete the translation, involving the source and target language, alternatives in both source and target language, abbreviations, descriptions, full explanation and sources.
*Customers* can be the order giver, either an agency or direct customer, and when the customer is an agency, the end customer owns the source and will receive the final target translation.
![[Translation-database-entities.png]]
## Projects
### Overview of projects
Translation projects are effected for customers. They must be completed by an expected due date, and are invoiced against customer PO number. Each project will have associated terms, and a domain, enabling you to understand customer profiles, which domains they work and evaluating your level of expertise by project type-domain.
![[translation-projects.png]]
### Description of project fields
The essential fields help you to identify a project. The most important are the volume (number of words), price, word rate, delivery date, and in order to evaluate your productivity, word rate per hour (wph).
![[translation-projects-fields.png|300]]
| Field | Usage |
| -------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Folder | The name of the folder in which the source documents and project files are stored |
| Order no | Internal order number (to relate back and check project is invoiced) |
| Words | Number of words to be translated |
| Domain | Theme, subject area or industry |
| Client company | End customer when the customer is an agency |
| Type | Project type: Translation, Audiovisual, Revision, Reverse translation (target to source) |
| Customer PO | Customers order number (for later invoicing) |
| Price | Order price (in currency) |
| Word _rate | Price per word (order price / number of words) |
| Hours | Number of hours taken to complete the project |
| WPH (words per hour) | Number of words translated per hour (Number of words / Number of hours taken) |
### Project types graph
These statistics apply to my translation work between 2018 and 2024. 734 projects undertaken.
French to English translation: 495 projects (67.4%)
Revision (MTPE or proofing or revision): 141 (19.2%)
Audiovisual (Video subtitling or audio transcription): 70 (9.5%)
English to French translations: 28 (3.8%)
![[translation-rpojects-count.png]]
### Numbers of Projects by domain
| | Projects | kwords |
| ------------------- | -------- | ------ |
| General | 141 | 206 |
| Technical | 141 | 599 |
| Legal and business | 71 | 262 |
| Marketing | 62 | 118 |
| Audiovisual | 50 | 118 |
| Industrial | 49 | 272 |
| Information systems | 32 | 283 |
| Tourism | 32 | 144 |
| Finance | 28 | 87 |
| Sport | 25 | 37 |
| Management | 24 | 60 |
| Medical | 17 | 88 |
![[translation-projects-count-by-domain.png]]
### Words by domain graph
| Domain | kwords |
| -------------------- | ------ |
| Technical | 599 |
| Information systems | 283 |
| Industrial | 272 |
| Legal and business | 262 |
| General | 206 |
| Tourism | 144 |
| Audiovisual | 118 |
| Marketing | 118 |
| Medical | 88 |
| Finance | 87 |
| Consumer Electronics | 70 |
| Management | 60 |
![[translation-projects-word-count.png]]
### Words by Year graph
| Year | kwords |
| ---- | ------ |
| 2018 | 237 |
| 2019 | 457 |
| 2020 | 432 |
| 2021 | 370 |
| 2022 | 482 |
| 2023 | 301 |
| 2024 | 262 |
![[translation-rpojects-count-by-year.png]]
## Terms
### Overview of terms
An overview of terms, enabling you for any term to navigate back to the project and the customer, thus the understanding of the context of use.
![[translation-terms-overview.png]]
### Volume of terms
In reality I store many more terms than this, because many are still in the [[Manage Translation Projects in Microsoft Access]]. Many are also duplicated in project term bases.
![[volume-of-terms-by-domain.png]]
### Terms Fields
Terms are the core of translation work. Either you know a term through experience, or you will be researching and storing terms for a project. Fields such as 'alternative' and 'avoid' demonstrate that you have evaluated a term against alternatives, and avoid might be due to feedback, thus creating a customer project-specific corpus.
![[translation-terms-fields.png]]
| Field | Meaning |
| -------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Project | Link from the term to the project in which the term is used |
| French | Source language term |
| English | Target language term |
| Example phrase | An example phrase which might help to clarify the meaning |
| URL | Link to an expert source |
| FR Abbr | French abbreviation for disambiguation |
| EN Abbr | English abbreviation for disambiguation |
| Alt EN | Alternative term or synonym. It's often useful to distinguish terms NOT chosen for the translation. |
| Alt FR | Alternative source term |
| FR Description | Full description of the term in French (generally the source language) |
| EN Description | Full description of the term in English (generally the target language) |
| Comment | Comment on the appropriateness of the term (for customer) |
| Avoid | A term to avoid, as a reflection of customer feedback and to focus on recommended terms |
The body of the term might include a full description or background explanation of the term.
### Glossaries
See [[French to English Vocabulary for Translation]] in Accounting and Finance, Document management, Supply Chain, Engineering and specific vocabulary for foundries, and carpet weaving.
## Customers
### Customer Overview
Notion allows you to get an overview of customers, with a link to the projects executed. This allows you to navigate from customer > project > to terms, thus maintaining a termbase by customer.
![[translation-customers-overview.png]]
### Customer Fields
The main focus of the data stored for customers, apart from contact details, is the projects executed for the customer, the rates charged, the volume of business, and payment terms. This enables you to evaluate the "value" of the customer, and ultimately colours how reactive you will be to requests, or offer discounts, etc.
![[Agency-fields.png]]
| Field | Meaning |
| ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Type | Agency, online or direct |
| Country | Customer location |
| Translation rate | Word rate for standard translation |
| Hourly rate | Hourly rate for certain tasks invoiced per hour |
| Urgent rate | Higher rate for urgent tasks |
| MTPE rate | Word rate for Machine Translation Post-Editing |
| Proofing rate | Rate for proofing only |
| Transcription rate | Rate for audio transcription |
| Subtitling rate | Rate per minute for video subtitling including conforming |
| Terms | Payment terms (end of month, 30 days, 60 days) |
| Invoice policy | When to send invoice (immediate, end of month). Affects payment terms. |
| Status | Active or inactive customer based on project volume |
| Currency | Invoicing currency (you might invoice in customer rather than your supplier currency ). |
| Address | Address (Street, Postcode, country) |
| Language | Communication language |
| Archive | The customer might be archived if not active for a long time |
| Action | Any next action needed to take with this customer |
| Toemail | Check box as a reminder to send an email for action |