| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | A note to cheapskate agencies Thread poster: Viktoria Gimbe
|
|---|
| High volume? | Feb 17, 2008 |
From what I understand, the overall word count is 20,000. They say they need to work in a team of translators. Apparently, they agreed to a ridiculous deadline that cannot be met by one translator alone (we love that, don’t we).
So one translator won’t translate the 20,000 words anyway, but rather 5,000 or whatever. This means they request a volume discount for 5,000 words (or whatever), not for 20,000 (we love that, don’t we).
The other day I was offered to tak... See more From what I understand, the overall word count is 20,000. They say they need to work in a team of translators. Apparently, they agreed to a ridiculous deadline that cannot be met by one translator alone (we love that, don’t we).
So one translator won’t translate the 20,000 words anyway, but rather 5,000 or whatever. This means they request a volume discount for 5,000 words (or whatever), not for 20,000 (we love that, don’t we).
The other day I was offered to take on 5,000 words out of an extremely difficult contract with an overall word count of 30,000 and was asked to reduce my usual rate because of high volume… I had no time anyway but I would not have accepted those conditions. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I am on the same planet | Feb 17, 2008 |
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
they will find plenty of professional - yes, professional and good - translators prepared to work at these conditions. Viktoria, I think you live on a different planet sometimes...
No, she's not on a different planet Giovanni.
Professional and good translators know how much they can translate a day. There have been many discussions on that topic (how many words you can translate a day).
To offer consistent quality in your work, you need a minimum of time.
For instance, I myself never agree to more than 2000 words a day. Sometimes I'll translate more, sometimes it will be hard to even get to 1000. And 2000 words a day sometimes means 8 hours in front of your computer. 5 days a week if you're lucky. Busy on weekends while all your family and friends are enjoying free time together.
So yes, I do expect to be paid decently for my efforts.
Another example: I am proofreading (editing, really) texts in a specialised field. The price per word was low, so only beginners (or people not being offered sufficient well-paid jobs) agreed to do the job. The results are desastrous, of course, and the outsourcer is paying many unnecessary hours of proofreading (good for me). But a proofreaded or edited text will never be as good as a good translation from the beginning.
We need to fight these agencies that are lowering the overall quality of translated texts. Believe me, most of these agencies would charge their client more than the double of what they are willing to pay you.
Everybody needs to work, I understand that. And getting established sometimes mean offering reduced rates. But if you get good feedbacks and build a good experience, you should ask for reasonable rates.
You cannot bargain translations like you would bargain 2 kilos of potatoes at the market.
And don't forget, the more you are willing to reduce your rates, the more the agencies will ask for it. Will you still be there when they'll offer 0.2 cents a word?
| | | | | service not product | Feb 17, 2008 |
Christiane Lalonde wrote:
You cannot bargain translations like you would bargain 2 kilos of potatoes at the market.
Of course not. Translations are not standardized products and translators are not interchangeable manufacturing units.
Viktoria, love your image of a red velvet rope across your front door !
And Giovanni, if Viktoria is on another planet, she far from alone up there -- there is indeed a translation market that calls for professionals, expects quality and is willing to pay for it.
Cheers,
Patricia
| | | | Viktoria Gimbe 
Canada
Local time: 20:03
English to French
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Lots of interesting comments | Feb 17, 2008 |
Giovanni, when you say I'm on a different planet, I take it you mean that the majority of translators who offer a quality service is actually willing to undersell themselves. In that case, consider this thread as an invitation to join me on my planet - a planet where translators get paid what their work is worth, where they have free time after they get their work done to enjoy the money they make, where they get recognition for what they do and are treated like human beings and not like machine... See more Giovanni, when you say I'm on a different planet, I take it you mean that the majority of translators who offer a quality service is actually willing to undersell themselves. In that case, consider this thread as an invitation to join me on my planet - a planet where translators get paid what their work is worth, where they have free time after they get their work done to enjoy the money they make, where they get recognition for what they do and are treated like human beings and not like machines. I don't mean that all the people on my planet are people who make good money - there are people up here who don't even make half the money I make for the same volume of work. But what is common to all the people on my planet is that they all have integrity. Through this thread, I am inviting those who haven't got a clue of what their services - and their time - is worth to stop for a minute and think about it. I may be on a different planet, but I manage to work full time at an above average rate on this planet, more so than people on your planet.
Giving volume discounts makes absolutely no business sense in the field of translation. Production in our field is consistent, unlike in most other industries. If I get twice as much work, I will work for twice as long - so why would I accept to be paid less? The longer I am booked, the less chances I get to enjoy life. Let's not forget that one hour of intellectual work equals five hours of physical work. Translating for only two hours a day is already more work than a factory worker accomplishes in a typical workday. When I am done with my eight to ten hours of work, I am often so tired that even if I have a few hours to spend with friends and family, I can't enjoy it and I am sort of in the moon. This is a very important aspect of our work. Cheapskate agencies tend to forget that we are people and that the only reason why we do accept work is to have earnings that we will have the pleasure of spending. If I don't have time to enjoy the money I make, it makes no sense to work. I consider that giving a volume discount equals being robbed of my free time. It comes down to volunteer work. I have nothing against volunteer work - I just prefer to offer it myself if and when I have time, and not being forced to give it away, to a for-profit organization to top it off.
When agencies accept unreasonable deadlines, they are doing a huge disservice to the community as a whole, including themselves. Consistency and quality are the obvious issues. The less obvious one is that, when a translator is asked to translate only part of a document and the rest is translated by others, each translator has to work longer for the same amount of money, which again makes no business sense. In my experience, when I am part of a team where each translator works on different parts of the same document, I have to watch that I use the same terminology the others use. To achieve this, I have to send e-mails back and forth to the other translators to agree upon terms. If there is no termbase or glossary involved in the process (most of the time, there isn't, and the termbases I do use are always ones that I create, without even being paid for it in most cases), tough luck to us trying to keep a registry of the agreed upon terminology. If we are not all on the same continent, things get even tougher: by the time my colleague tells me what terms s/he uses, I have another 2000 words done, and I will then have to go back and search and replace the terms, which again takes a lot of time, and let's not forget that search and replace adds to the likelihood of errors occurring. Then, there is the inevitable situation where two translators don't agree on a term - who has the last say? This just generates even more e-mailing back and forth. I am not a secretary - I am a translator. I am supposed to spend all my time working, not solving problems. I am paid to translate, and when I spend time solving problems, I don't get paid at all for that time. If I remember correctly, agencies make their cut on the price of a translation precisely because they solve the problems. That's what they are being paid for. But when they get paid for the work that I am performing - isn't there something wrong with that picture? If anything, in cases where an unreasonable deadline was accepted by the agency, causing them to split the document among several translators, the translator should charge more than their usual rate, not less, to cover for things described above. The agency who posted that job is basically saying "since you will have the occasion to spend hours fixing problems, we would like to be paid for that". Huh?
I feel that agencies who post jobs like the one we are discussing display a huge amount of contempt towards translators, and if the community lets them keep acting this way, then the general public will also look at us with contempt. We are often forced to submit low quality work because of things that are completely out of our control - and guess who gets the blame? And the best part of this is that agencies are actually benefiting from this. If the general public has a negative opinion of translators, guess who they will give their translation work to, when given the choice between freelancers and agencies?
So, for all these reasons, I condemn agencies who ask for volume discounts, especially when a document was split between several translators to meet a ridiculous deadline. I needed to post because in this particular case, they are actually demanding it without even offering any benefit in exchange. This is really going over the border. ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
| Peanuts and monkeys | Feb 17, 2008 |
I agree with you completely Viktoria. I suppose there will always be somebody willing to do work at super budget cut-price megacheap rates, but I wonder what the quality will be like...Surely the best way forward is to specialize, invest in yourself and your skills, and always quote the rate that is best for you, i.e., that will allow you (give you sufficient time) to do a first-class job and retain the sort of demanding clients you want to retain.
All the best,
Colin B... See more I agree with you completely Viktoria. I suppose there will always be somebody willing to do work at super budget cut-price megacheap rates, but I wonder what the quality will be like...Surely the best way forward is to specialize, invest in yourself and your skills, and always quote the rate that is best for you, i.e., that will allow you (give you sufficient time) to do a first-class job and retain the sort of demanding clients you want to retain.
All the best,
Colin Bowles ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Ways to stop getting upset | Feb 17, 2008 |
1) Make your rates public
Outsourcers won't contact you if your rates are way beyond their budget. Only outsourcers who are comfortable with your rates will get in touch.
It's a good way to coarsely filter out collaboration offers from markets that are not yours. It also saves replying time.
2) Disable automated job alerts
Instead, you visit the jobs board online as appropriate during the day.
You may then take cheap offers less personally than when they ge... See more 1) Make your rates public
Outsourcers won't contact you if your rates are way beyond their budget. Only outsourcers who are comfortable with your rates will get in touch.
It's a good way to coarsely filter out collaboration offers from markets that are not yours. It also saves replying time.
2) Disable automated job alerts
Instead, you visit the jobs board online as appropriate during the day.
You may then take cheap offers less personally than when they get in your inbox.
It's easy and effective.
Philippe ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jeff Whittaker
United States
Local time: 20:03
Spanish to English
+ ...
Sometimes agencies just need to tell their clients "No". Another huge job was recently posted (over 3,000,000 words for delivery next Monday) and translators are being invited to just "roll in"??
If there is not enough time to do the job properly and if the agencies do not already have the required resources (translators) in their database, they should just refuse the job or suggest a more reasonable deadline to the client. How can the agency offer any type of quality control if the... See more Sometimes agencies just need to tell their clients "No". Another huge job was recently posted (over 3,000,000 words for delivery next Monday) and translators are being invited to just "roll in"??
If there is not enough time to do the job properly and if the agencies do not already have the required resources (translators) in their database, they should just refuse the job or suggest a more reasonable deadline to the client. How can the agency offer any type of quality control if they hire unknown translators to work under impossible deadlines on translations that will then be pieced together in an ad hoc manner?
I remember when we used to have weeks to polish a translation, now everything is due tomorrow. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | D'y think they're reading? | Feb 18, 2008 |
Viktoria Gimbe wrote:
I just wanted to let cheapskate agencies know that I am not available, not now, not later, not EVER, to take work from them (and I don't even care to know how much they would have been willing to pay me).
I dunno, d'y think cheapskate agencies come to the forum for a bit of light reading, especially at the weekend?
I appreciate the cathartic nature of (and basically agree with) what you're saying, but how many of them will get the message as posted here?
And do cheapskate agencies even recognise themselves?
It seems to me that proz:
a) is shifting away from the purely translation-provider POV to catering for translation-buyers (or whatever terms you like - from just "us" to include "them", in ultra-crude terms)
b) loves site traffic most of all.
Anything running counter to those points is unlikely to be given much consideration, I would venture to suggest.
If I see job postings like that, I sigh, maybe even flip my middle finger at the screen and mumble a low curse, and then crack on with my day... But, each to their own
| | |
|
|
|
Aniza Borhan
Malaysia
Local time: 09:03
Member (2007)
English to Malay
+ ...
| Agree.. agree | Feb 18, 2008 |
Christiane Lalonde wrote:
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
they will find plenty of professional - yes, professional and good - translators prepared to work at these conditions. Viktoria, I think you live on a different planet sometimes...
No, she's not on a different planet Giovanni.
Professional and good translators know how much they can translate a day. There have been many discussions on that topic (how many words you can translate a day).
To offer consistent quality in your work, you need a minimum of time.
For instance, I myself never agree to more than 2000 words a day. Sometimes I'll translate more, sometimes it will be hard to even get to 1000. And 2000 words a day sometimes means 8 hours in front of your computer. 5 days a week if you're lucky. Busy on weekends while all your family and friends are enjoying free time together.
So yes, I do expect to be paid decently for my efforts.
Another example: I am proofreading (editing, really) texts in a specialised field. The price per word was low, so only beginners (or people not being offered sufficient well-paid jobs) agreed to do the job. The results are desastrous, of course, and the outsourcer is paying many unnecessary hours of proofreading (good for me). But a proofreaded or edited text will never be as good as a good translation from the beginning.
We need to fight these agencies that are lowering the overall quality of translated texts. Believe me, most of these agencies would charge their client more than the double of what they are willing to pay you.
 Everybody needs to work, I understand that. And getting established sometimes mean offering reduced rates. But if you get good feedbacks and build a good experience, you should ask for reasonable rates.
You cannot bargain translations like you would bargain 2 kilos of potatoes at the market.
And don't forget, the more you are willing to reduce your rates, the more the agencies will ask for it. Will you still be there when they'll offer 0.2 cents a word?
I couldn't agree with you more, Christiane. And yes, I still consider myself a newbie and I do find that I'm subjected to that group of "inexperience" translators. And these agencies, they will always say that's THE HIGHEST rate we pay for your language pair. But then, I also heard from the experience pals of the same language pair that they are able to get double than what I did. And that is not even near 0.2 cents per word. Arrrggghhhh. Oui! Translation is not such an easy job, u know!
[Edited at 2008-02-18 02:12]
| | | | | Next thing you know, | Feb 18, 2008 |
translation "agencies" will not allow you to charge for the word "the" (or its equivalent in other languages). After all, you only have to translate that word once.
Words don't get cheaper by the pound.
| | | |
I don't have the time to read Viktoria's post at the moment, but you will be surprised at how many good professional translators undersell themselves. This is what I wanted to say. If you are not aware of that, then I think you live on another planet...
And by 'professional', I mean doing a professional job, delivering good quality. Unfortunately, even professional translators are often not aware of the value they offe... See more I don't have the time to read Viktoria's post at the moment, but you will be surprised at how many good professional translators undersell themselves. This is what I wanted to say. If you are not aware of that, then I think you live on another planet...
And by 'professional', I mean doing a professional job, delivering good quality. Unfortunately, even professional translators are often not aware of the value they offer, or they undersell themselves for many reasons (for example, quantity vs high rate approach).... If this was not true, then there wouldn't be a problem. The problem is when good translators undermine the market offering very good products at very low rates. Translation agencies love that!
Giovanni
[Edited at 2008-02-18 09:46] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Sad but true | Feb 18, 2008 |
Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:
I don't have the time to read Viktoria's post at the moment, but you will be surprised at how many good professional translators undersell themselves. This is what I wanted to say. If you are not aware of that, then I think you live on another planet...
And by 'professional', I mean doing a professional job, delivering good quality. Unfortunately, even professional translators are often not aware of the value they offer, or they undersell themselves for many reasons (for example, quantity vs high rate approach).... If this was not true, then there wouldn't be a problem. The problem is when good translators undermine the market offering very good products at very low rates. Translation agencies love that!
Giovanni [Edited at 2008-02-18 09:46]
Giovanni has a point. It is sad but true. I tried discussing similar issues in Hindi forum especially when I noted that some people were offering a rare combination in which there are practically no good dictionaries available at a very low rate...
I do not know how can people offer such a low rate especially since one needs to spend 2-3 times more time to do a good job in that combination as compared to a French to English job... still people agree to work at 4 cents a word in that particular combination!!!
If those rates are any indication then it's no wonder that translation rates are falling. Where does it all end?
Maybe the other discussion about a translation web-site (where you pay 40 USD for a translation test) is a pointer. Here's the link to discussion in French: http://www.proz.com/topic/97279
[Edited at 2008-02-19 19:14]
| | | | | Pages in topic: < [1 2] | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » A note to cheapskate agencies | Pastey | Your smart companion app
Pastey is an innovative desktop application that bridges the gap between human expertise and artificial intelligence. With intuitive keyboard shortcuts, Pastey transforms your source text into AI-powered draft translations.
Find out more » |
| | Wordfast Pro | Translation Memory Software for Any Platform
Exclusive discount for ProZ.com users!
Save over 13% when purchasing Wordfast Pro through ProZ.com. Wordfast is the world's #1 provider of platform-independent Translation Memory software. Consistently ranked the most user-friendly and highest value
Buy now! » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
Translation news
