It all depends on whether you will lose face in the eyes of client if you accept the edits. When responding to an LTB, you can either defend as many of your decisions as possible, or you can accept as many of the proofreader's preferences as possible. I will only rarely refuse to respond to an LTB (only if the list of errors are very long and are mostly preferential edits or even errors). If the LTB was done by another person, and the agency asks me to respond to it, then unfortunately there isn't much I can do - the client considers responding to an error report as part of the translator's job. If a client asks me to generate an LTB, I politely refuse the job ('Unfortunately, I don't offer proofreading/editing that requires me to classify errors by severity and type'). It would be extremely silly to do an LTB on a machine translation before the machine translation has been edited. LTBs are more of a problem, but they typically only apply when there has been a proofreading.

If you know that a client is an Xbench type of guy, you can avoid many flags by simply adjusting the way you translate. It should not be necessary to add 'false positive' next to all false positive flags, though, but it can be an idea to mention this to the client in the e-mail. If you've fixed an error, add the word 'fixed' next to it and highlight it (e.g. If the client generates the Xbench report and sends it to the translator, you should obviously fix any real errors. When you've reached that stage, you can generally just paste the phrase 'false positive' in all cells of the last column (or even: simply tell the client in the e-mail that the flags are all false positives). If the translator himself creates the Xbench report, then you should fix the translation until the Xbench report contains only false positives. One problem with such a report is that some clients typically want you to comment on each flag, and that is just silly (and should be paid with a high hourly rate).

Whether the client wants the translator (or post-editor, in this case) to do the Xbench report, depends on the client. Unfortunately many clients that work with LTBs or Xbench reports simply assume that the translator knows that this report forms part of the job (and that tells you how much they think you should be earning!). Shouldn't the job, in this case, be payed per hour and not per word? I am asked to make a LTB or Xbench report of the file and to send them both when I finish.ġ.

Xbench report excel error