| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Be paid nearly nothing for your work. Apply Here! Thread poster: Andre Ferreira
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Oleg Rudavin 
Ukraine
Local time: 18:24
Member (2003)
English to Ukrainian
+ ...
| My thoughts, exacly, but... | Feb 14, 2014 |
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
Translations are not produced by machines with a little bit of human supervision...
Our work is a craft. We are all very invested in a very creative process...
It's because translators think they have to take any job that they can get. That's a very desperate attitude...
I'm ready to sign under every word of it but:
When I come onto the market offering a translation service which is basically similar to that offered by my colleagues and start telling potential buyers how long I had studied, how hard I work to keep my knowledge up to date, or how much I've invested into continuous education, dictionaries and CAT tools, a wise potential buyer will ask me, "Will your service get me more money?" - "No". - "Or will my profits drop drastically if I hire another translator, whose quality is worse than yours?" - "Unlikely". - "What happens when someone who bought a car we make, subscribes to a magazine we publish, or pays for a workshop we organize, notices poor grammar in the text or a few misinterpreted terms?" - "Well, nothing provided the car runs smooth, the magazine has shiny pictures and enchanting stories, and the workshop was good overall".
It's different in the medical, legal or sometimes in technical fields, because my answer would be "Well, the patient might die, you may lose in a law suit, or your machine will explode."
Probably my reference to mass production wasn't exactly correct. What I mean is that translation or interpretation (I prefer calling them "the linguistic component of a product/service") is not taken into account by consumers when they select the product or service, most of them being easily replaceable with a similar product or service (that's where the mass production comes in).
In my opinion, no market segment or niche in the translation industry is safe from the kind of price erosion seen in general over the last 15 years. If what you say is true, I imagine more and more translators (especially the good ones) will want to try/educate themselves in these especially good niches/fields and the competition will become just as fierce.
Well, the good ones are already doing it. I don't expect fierce competition for many reasons. For one, it's pretty tough to be a really good jack of two trades - translation and area of specialization.
I believe it is the quality that sets a professional apart, no matter in which fields he or she works. And as I argued before, if one provides "quality" based on skills, education and experience, it ought to pay off and pay the bills or it's not going to be worth it.
Absolutely! However, the buyers or our services (including end buyers) view it at a slightly different angle.
| | | | Erik Freitag
Germany
Local time: 17:24
Member (2006)
Dutch to German
+ ...
| Slightly OT: Computing power is not the problem | Feb 14, 2014 |
Giles Watson wrote:
To be honest, I'm surprised MT hasn't come along much much faster than it has. The underlying approach seems to be to regard computing power as an infinite number of monkeys, in the Douglas Adams sense of the primates who, given enough typewriters, will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Programmers factor in all sorts of algorithms to organise the shifts, allocate the monkeys to workgroups or tweak the number of keys on the typewriters but so far the output has remained palpably simian.
Lack of computer power is not the reason why machine translation doesn't seem to take off. If that were the case, you could simply let a moderately powerful computer work a whole year on a short paragraph and expect to get an excellent translation. That's not going to happen.
The infinite monkey theorem (which Douglas Adams only quotes) usually serves to demonstrate some characteristics of the concept of infity. But there's something in it that's useful for assessing the possibilities of MT as well:
When given enough time, a monkey typing randomly on a typewriter will eventually not only produce the works of Shakespeare (all of them), but any other book that has ever been (or will be) written, too. The problem is that the monkey will produce an even larger number of books that at first glance might look like Romeo and Juliet, but are different, each in a different way and to a varying extent. So how do you know which book the monkey has typed is the right one? There's only one way: you need to compare it against Shakespeare's original. That's a task a monkey can't do (and that's not a question of having infinite time for the task).
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 17:24
Italian to English
In memoriam
efreitag wrote:
Lack of computer power is not the reason why machine translation doesn't seem to take off.
Sorry if I wasn't clear but it never crossed my mind that it might be.
If that were the case, you could simply let a moderately powerful computer work a whole year on a short paragraph and expect to get an excellent translation. That's not going to happen.
It would take a lot more than a year, or perhaps much less. We're talking about probabilities, not predictable events.
When given enough time, a monkey typing randomly on a typewriter will eventually not only produce the works of Shakespeare (all of them), but any other book that has ever been (or will be) written, too. The problem is that the monkey will produce an even larger number of books that at first glance might look like Romeo and Juliet, but are different, each in a different way and to a varying extent. So how do you know which book the monkey has typed is the right one? There's only one way: you need to compare it against Shakespeare's original. That's a task a monkey can't do (and that's not a question of having infinite time for the task).
Now we're getting somewhere. Style is about content but it also has to do with what the writer leaves out, and what the audience was expecting to be left out. Discarded style options are often more interesting, or at least informative, than the ones the writer - or translator - actually used. Even an expert monkey-based system can't reflect all the valid translation options, which are going to change over time anyway as the audience changes.
| | | | Kersti Skovgaard
Estonia
Local time: 18:24
Member (2005)
English to Estonian
+ ...
| stick to your guns | Feb 14, 2014 |
If an agency wishes to keep a solid pool of end-clients who are ready to pay for quality, it needs to deliver quality. As far as I know end-clients pay the same as ever, at least USD 0.22 or more. There's no reason why a middleman should take a big chunk of that and leave the translator with bits and pieces.
Even though many (not all) agencies try to pay as little as they can I have been able to raise my rates from USD 0.09 (when I began translating) to an average USD 0.12-0.14, in ... See more If an agency wishes to keep a solid pool of end-clients who are ready to pay for quality, it needs to deliver quality. As far as I know end-clients pay the same as ever, at least USD 0.22 or more. There's no reason why a middleman should take a big chunk of that and leave the translator with bits and pieces.
Even though many (not all) agencies try to pay as little as they can I have been able to raise my rates from USD 0.09 (when I began translating) to an average USD 0.12-0.14, in some cases 0.16. True, every time I put the rate up a couple of clients disappeared... for a year or so . In the meantime, I was given revision jobs. In some cases, retranslating was easier than correcting. I used the track changes function and told the agency that unless the quality of translations improves I won't accept any revision jobs from them. Over the past 2 years, I have doubled my revision rate and the quality-conscious agencies accept that. Most of those who were not happy with my translation rate have "re-discovered" me.
This may indicate that we should not accept jobs from low-rate middlemen, even from the "biggies". Not mentioning any "biggie" names here, there are reports of cosmic profits of big agencies who have offered me... USD 0.04 or at best EUR 0.04, and an unfavourable Trados split. If they are not willing to pay for quality, they get what they are willing to pay for or nothing at all. In my language pair, one "big name" has been looking for translators for about a month now, by both contacting individual translators and the local translators' association, it seems no luck so far - we don't translate for EUR 0.04.
For me, there are two kinds of translators: (1) beginners and the desperate ones, and (2) seasoned professionals who know their value. There is enough market for both kinds, but in different segments. Let the beginners and the desperados deliver whatever quality for whatever rate. Good regular end-clients expect more than that and if a translator /an agency fails to deliver, they will find another one. Once learned their lesson that stinginess may not pay their bills, agencies will adopt a different policy, by treating translation professionals in a fair manner. A translated text is like any product that can come in different qualities and is priced accordingly. In some cases the quality is not that important to the end-client and that's ok. PMs should find out what kind of quality the clients expect, not just how much they are prepared to pay, and choose the right kind of translator for the right rate.
By sticking to my guns and letting a couple of less profitable clients (agencies) go, I have been able to earn more and work less. ▲ Collapse
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Kersti Skovgaard
Estonia
Local time: 18:24
Member (2005)
English to Estonian
+ ...
Andre Ferreira wrote:
What could be done and/or suggested to ProZ?
[Edited at 2014-02-11 05:48 GMT]
For starters, Proz could promote the Certified PRO status more, not just as an option under the Professional Credentials section. As things stand now, the Certified PRO status doesn't mean much. There should be more information for the outsourcers about what to look for (incl. WWA and Kudoz points) on the Home page.
It's time for the translation market to be segmented. There is market for both low cost jobs with little or no quality guarantee, and the premium segment, and anything in between. A client who knows little or nothing about the translation market should have the possibility to choose translators/agencies according to his needs just like people choose any other products. Especially now that there are more and more all sorts of scammers, both translators and agencies.
The Certified PROs should stand out, compared to the rest, or all the effort means nothing.
| | | | | 6000 words for 200 Euro...not from an agency in China or India | Feb 14, 2014 |
A German translation agency contacted me yesterday. They asked me whether I could translate a 6000-word document from German to Thai for 200 Euro. It is an urgent task and I should deliver the translation as soon as possible. So, I declined this job. Today they sent an email to me again. This time they offered 300 Euro for 6000 words! Do they think that I cannot do the math? I live in Germany and their company is also in Germany. So, they know how high the cost of living here is. I find their ra... See more A German translation agency contacted me yesterday. They asked me whether I could translate a 6000-word document from German to Thai for 200 Euro. It is an urgent task and I should deliver the translation as soon as possible. So, I declined this job. Today they sent an email to me again. This time they offered 300 Euro for 6000 words! Do they think that I cannot do the math? I live in Germany and their company is also in Germany. So, they know how high the cost of living here is. I find their rate insulting and I have never expected such a low rate from a European agency. Do they think that they can sustain their business by paying translators peanuts?
A few months ago, a Japanese agency offered me a low paid job. When I declined the job, they told me that I "should accept their rate and do that job" if I wished to get more projects from them. No way!! Who do they think they are?
[Edited at 2014-02-14 13:55 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member for the following reason: Poster asked me to hide the post | | You shouldn't / can't live off chips for too long | Feb 14, 2014 |
Giles Watson wrote:
But in a market, downswings are followed by upswings, or crashes, or booms, or periods of stagnation. There is - literally - no end to this discussion.
Not sure what you're saying. Are you saying the bottoming-out of the translation business (crash) is upon us and will be followed by recovery and booms and then eventually repeat the cycle? Possible.
But I am talking about a systemic shift in the business. I am referring to outsourcers who are trying to dictate unacceptable terms. I could never support or accept such practices/terms. And feeding their never-ending cockiness doesn't do anyone any good, not even them, as long as they get bad quality.
Giles Watson wrote:
If all the customers want any old translation yesterday in preference to wonderfully written wordsmithery the day after tomorrow, the wordsmiths are not delivering quality in the customers' terms.
Currently MT, Google Translates and the like are educating customers, who have always been sceptical of the need to pay anything at all for translations, to expect unpublishable instant versions for free. Their entirely human reaction is to hold onto the "instant" and the "for free" while seeking ways to improve quality.
Yes, for example, cities simply enable Google translating of/for their websites. But not all are interested in that because it does make a difference if you want to reach out to a certain culture or language group. I wouldn't generalize and say they will all just hold on to/are interested in the "instant/for free." But be that as it may.
There are plenty of translation jobs for professionals to go around.
It only becomes a problem when more and more translators are accepting peanuts and deliver quality. You might not agree that that's what's happening but it will if the current trend continues. And I argue it has much less to do with general economic circumstances than with millions of people trying to make as much money off us as possible.
Giles Watson wrote:
To be honest, I'm surprised MT hasn't come along much much faster than it has. The underlying approach seems to be to regard computing power as an infinite number of monkeys, in the Douglas Adams sense of the primates who, given enough typewriters, will eventually reproduce the works of Shakespeare. Programmers factor in all sorts of algorithms to organise the shifts, allocate the monkeys to workgroups or tweak the number of keys on the typewriters but so far the output has remained palpably simian.
Since the days of Homer the whole point of composition has been to engage your audience so you can communicate a message and MT, which I tend to think of as standing for "monkey translation", doesn't do style, engaging or otherwise.
Obviously you can also teach your monkeys with input from flesh-and-bone translators to create expert systems, which can work in very controlled environments. Is it worth setting up such systems when there are so many cheap-as-chips "translators" who SAY they can do the job just as well?
Not yet, evidently.
I like your image. Maybe Peter Fox could create a song and video for it.
I agree it's not worth setting up these systems (and I sure hope it won't come to that) but only as long as the cheap-as-chips translators CAN actually do the job and do it, just as the cheapo-outsourcers want it.
This should be a contradiction since cheap-as-chips should never equate quality.
We shouldn't have to worry about it.
It does become a problem if too many good people sell themselves too cheap.
If that's the case, my theory is that the trend will bottom out eventually. Good people (the ones providing good quality) aren't willing or able to live off chips for too long. It's not healthy, really. They'll stand their ground or leave the business. These developments are, however, systemic. The economy plays a role only insofar as it a) continues to demand quality and b) will only get it from people who charge more and always have.
B
[Edited at 2014-02-14 17:26 GMT]
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Andre Ferreira wrote:
While people are obviously free to accept anything they feel is fair for their own hard work and, of course, to say no to such behaviors, when people feel is OK to be paid nearly nothing for a slowly built competency, I feel is very disrespectful. In addition, it collaborates to bring down the value of work of The Collective.
What is your opinion on this? What could be done and/or suggested to ProZ?
Thank you everyone
Andre
Andre, I would suggest to Proz.com to do away completely with the job poster's ability to suggest/propose a rate/price. It's like going to a lawyer and saying - here - this is what I want and am willing to pay you. Take it or leave it. And I know bidders are told they don't have to bid with the price suggested by the poster - but come on, you think the ones quoting a higher price will "win" the bid?!
And to translators, i would point them to Proz.com's rates page which suggests minimum and average prices that are much higher than what most job posters on this platform and other platforms suggest.
See: http://search.proz.com/employers/rates
Also, the following Proz.com Wiki page is a good and helpful read for any newcomer to the profession, helping to do away with myths about rates that are propagated everyday by many low-paying outsourcers:
http://wiki.proz.com/wiki/index.php/Determining_your_rates_and_fees_as_a_translator
Let me quote one sentence from the wiki page:
"Unfortunately, the reality is that more and more translators are acquiescing and agree too willingly to the lower rates just to get the work."
[Edited at 2014-02-14 17:29 GMT]
| | | | Giles Watson
Italy
Local time: 17:24
Italian to English
In memoriam
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
Giles Watson wrote:
But in a market, downswings are followed by upswings, or crashes, or booms, or periods of stagnation. There is - literally - no end to this discussion.
Not sure what you're saying. Are you saying the bottoming-out of the translation business (crash) is upon us and will be followed by recovery and booms and then eventually repeat the cycle? Possible.
Yes, that's more or less what I am saying.
But I am talking about a systemic shift in the business. I am referring to outsourcers who are trying to dictate unacceptable terms. I could never support or accept such practices/terms. And feeding their never-ending cockiness doesn't do anyone any good, not even them, as long as they get bad quality.
Computer technology, including MT, has certainly broadened the market, creating new opportunities for translators and new expectations in their customers. But nobody is forcing us to accept the unacceptable and even initially timorous translators don't stay on a high-carb diet forever if they're any good. They tend to find better customers, rack up their rates and leave the chips to the next generation of newcomers.
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
There are plenty of translation jobs for professionals to go around.
It only becomes a problem when more and more translators are accepting peanuts and deliver quality. You might not agree that that's what's happening but it will if the current trend continues. And I argue it has much less to do with general economic circumstances than with millions of people trying to make as much money off us as possible.
Well, we're also trying to make money off them.
This should be a contradiction since cheap-as-chips should never equate quality.
We shouldn't have to worry about it.
Quality is in the eyes of the beholder. I prefer to think in terms of customer-perceived value and decide, case by case, whether I can or cannot deliver it.
It does become a problem, if too many good people sell themselves too cheap.
If that's the case, my theory is that the trend will bottom out eventually. Good people (the ones providing good quality) aren't willing or able to live off chips for too long. They'll stand their ground or leave the business. These developments are, however, systemic. The economy plays a role only insofar as it a) continues to demand quality and b) will only get it from people who charge more and always have.
As I said above, I don't think it's always the same people who are selling themselves cheap and most of those who do can't deliver the customer-perceivable value added by an experienced translator. Most long-term outsourcers know this. It's newbies, often moving into non-traditional media (online stuff like websites, apps games and the like), who tend to have low rate expectations and go for chip addicts.
As a rule of thumb, don't bother with any outsourcer who attempts to set a rate before you've had a chance to see the text. There are lots of reasonable customers out there and many use Proz.
[Edited at 2014-02-14 17:43 GMT]
| | | | | Poor quality always has a negative effect | Feb 14, 2014 |
Oleg Rudavin wrote:
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
Translations are not produced by machines with a little bit of human supervision...
Our work is a craft. We are all very invested in a very creative process...
It's because translators think they have to take any job that they can get. That's a very desperate attitude...
I'm ready to sign under every word of it but:
When I come onto the market offering a translation service which is basically similar to that offered by my colleagues and start telling potential buyers how long I had studied, how hard I work to keep my knowledge up to date, or how much I've invested into continuous education, dictionaries and CAT tools, a wise potential buyer will ask me, "Will your service get me more money?" - "No". - "Or will my profits drop drastically if I hire another translator, whose quality is worse than yours?" - "Unlikely".
There's nothing wrong with having a good profile and letting your prospective clients know about your education and experience. Experience does count in our sector. And I would venture to say that the answer to your questions above is hardly a resounding "NO." Whatever you do in business comes back to your business. How good is your business, how trustworthy is it when the translated website is of very poor quality? What does it say about the integrity of a business owner who doesn't care how bad the translated site is?
Are there people and businesses out there who don't care about the quality of the translation and just want to pay as little as possible. Yes, maybe. And maybe they have no reason to care because they're not really successful in the first place.
Poor translations never have a positive effect. Not just with regard to the buyer, but the translator brings himself/herself in disrepute. From my experience, buyers who are cheap still want the quality and will complain if they don't get it.
But the ones who do want a professional translation (and not just a Google translator link) usually have a reason to want the "good translation": it reflects well on their business ethics and they do it because they want to reach a new market and are looking to make more money. Good quality always has a positive effect, and it helps the translator gain a good reputation.
Even the middle-man outsourcer who charges the end client $0.25/word and pays the translator $.05/word will probably come back to the translator if the quality is poor. He/she might want to get an additional discount for the poor quality. Please show me a job post (English>German) that says "we pay $.04/word and just do a poor job, it's okay." The opposite is true - often such posters list lots of requirements that fit a professional, not a would-be translator.
I don't believe the issue is that simple.
And when you say "When I come onto the market offering a translation service which is basically similar to that offered by my colleagues", what does that mean to you: that you are going to charge a smaller fee because that's what a particular outsourcer "usually" pays some of your "colleagues?"
Do you really know your service is similar to whoever else's? I think of my service as based on my unique language skills, education and experience. They're might be several thousand similar translators out there who charge less but they're probably not charging adequately. I am running a business too, and I don't give out freebies.
Oleg Rudavin wrote:
- "What happens when someone who bought a car we make, subscribes to a magazine we publish, or pays for a workshop we organize, notices poor grammar in the text or a few misinterpreted terms?" - "Well, nothing provided the car runs smooth, the magazine has shiny pictures and enchanting stories, and the workshop was good overall".
If I am the one reading the magazine, I probably cancel my subscription.
Oleg Rudavin wrote:
It's different in the medical, legal or sometimes in technical fields, because my answer would be "Well, the patient might die, you may lose in a law suit, or your machine will explode."
These might be different fields, but we, the translators are in the "word"-business, and that goes for any of our fields of expertise. A wrong word/term/phrase/sentence or an unidiomatic expression is wrong in any of our fields. Some of the texts you refer to (technical , medical) might grammatically be far less complicated and "quality" means foremost "correct terminology" whereas in other fields (marketing) a very advanced understanding of idiomatic phrases and marketing lingo is essential. In any case, my point is that it's about translating a text "correctly" and often adding style and extraordinary flair.
Each field has its specific challenges, and in each field, "quality" means "quality." Thus I don't agree to a broad relativistic view of fields of expertise which might serve as an excuse to pay the translator less. I am not saying you can't distinguish between easy, difficult and very complex language and argue for respective rates. But we have to be careful. Lots goes into any professional work, and rates/prices need to reflect that.
There's no excuse for paying/accepting low prices. It's a bad thing as I have discussed earlier.
Oleg Rudavin wrote:
Probably my reference to mass production wasn't exactly correct. What I mean is that translation or interpretation (I prefer calling them "the linguistic component of a product/service") is not taken into account by consumers when they select the product or service, most of them being easily replaceable with a similar product or service (that's where the mass production comes in).
You are saying the consumer looks for price only because he/she figures he/she gets the same "product" from a million other translators. The same good product? Well, then we really need to keep lowering our prices or eventually we're all going to be out of work.
I don't provide lower-quality work for less money to clients who would request that lower quality. That's not what I do. I only offer professional service for clients who expect quality. Otherwise, I would be competing with each and every would-be translator. If I can't make money the professional way at adequate prices anymore, I'm out. But until then, I will speak up against "colleagues who undercut our professional prices because this does have any effect on what and how many jobs are available for professionals.
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
In my opinion, no market segment or niche in the translation industry is safe from the kind of price erosion seen in general over the last 15 years. If what you say is true, I imagine more and more translators (especially the good ones) will want to try/educate themselves in these especially good niches/fields and the competition will become just as fierce.
Oleg Rudavin wrote:
Well, the good ones are already doing it. I don't expect fierce competition for many reasons. For one, it's pretty tough to be a really good jack of two trades - translation and area of specialization.
I think it's an essential requirement for us to be a good translator (linguist) and good in our filed(s) of expertise. I myself won't change my fields of expertise. That's what I am good at. I am not going to compete with others in their fields in which they have 10-15 years more experience than I do. I am not saying that others won't do it.
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
I believe it is the quality that sets a professional apart, no matter in which fields he or she works. And as I argued before, if one provides "quality" based on skills, education and experience, it ought to pay off and pay the bills or it's not going to be worth it.
Oleg Rudavin wrote:
Absolutely! However, the buyers or our services (including end buyers) view it at a slightly different angle.
The buyers see it from their point of view but the professional buyer will appreciate good quality and a fair price.
At the end of the day, poor quality and cheap prices are bad for us all.
[Edited at 2014-02-14 21:36 GMT]
| | | | | The crux of the matter | Feb 14, 2014 |
Giles Watson wrote:
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
But I am talking about a systemic shift in the business. I am referring to outsourcers who are trying to dictate unacceptable terms. I could never support or accept such practices/terms. And feeding their never-ending cockiness doesn't do anyone any good, not even them, as long as they get bad quality.
Computer technology, including MT, has certainly broadened the market, creating new opportunities for translators and new expectations in their customers. But nobody is forcing us to accept the unacceptable and even initially timorous translators don't stay on a high-carb diet forever if they're any good. They tend to find better customers, rack up their rates and leave the chips to the next generation of newcomers.
CAT tools have positive and negative sides for translators. Yes, they can sometimes help us do things faster, but they can also involve extra steps. They also are used by cheap outsourcers to calculate fuzzy word counts and reduce their already cheap rates. And MT definitely involves extra steps and must be used very cautiously. Especially for fields with complex linguistic structures, they shouldn't be used at all.
It's a myth (and I believe nonsense) that a translator can become rich providing poor quality. And if a translator provides good quality, it would be crazy to sell him/herself cheap.
But you put your finger on something: once one cheap translator has gone on to do something else (probably not translating), the next one is ready to take over. That's the crux of the matter.
There will always be newcomers. As long as many of them do a good job and accept inadequate rates, many seasoned professionals might as well pack it up and leave. They won't be needed any longer (extreme future scenario - before the crash).
The need for professional translations/work is out there. So is the willingness on the part of the end clients to pay for it adequately. So is the need to tell newcomers that one must charge certain rates to make a career as a translator. Otherwise, one generation of newcomers will be replaced by another, but the ones being replaced are replaced because they can't make a living doing this anymore. And again, why should I care? Because all this opens our industry up to continuous exploitation. The more projects are done "cheaply" (at a relatively good quality but for inadequate rates), the fewer projects are available to professionals.
B
[Edited at 2014-02-14 21:30 GMT]
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Olga Koepping
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:24
German to English
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| it's late, and I am doing a translation right now that pays me less than a cleaner | Feb 14, 2014 |
I made a really classic, massive mistake today. In a hurry on the way home, I checked my emails, came across one that I thought was from a regular client, and replied accepting the job, without having actually looked properly. Of course when I got home, settled down and opened the file, checked what she had actually written for a rate (it's not 0.03 but it's still bad), and THEN realised it was due for Indian Standard Time "tomorrow morning"... I could have written back to say, lady, who do you ... See more I made a really classic, massive mistake today. In a hurry on the way home, I checked my emails, came across one that I thought was from a regular client, and replied accepting the job, without having actually looked properly. Of course when I got home, settled down and opened the file, checked what she had actually written for a rate (it's not 0.03 but it's still bad), and THEN realised it was due for Indian Standard Time "tomorrow morning"... I could have written back to say, lady, who do you think I am, but I just sat down and did the translation. So I am about to send it off, and have checked, researched, final checked, and now feel like an absolute monkey.
Shortly after sitting down to this job, I got an email with another job, a proper outsourcer with a serious rate, high and justified expectations and an interest in my doing a good job. I could have spent those five hours doing his job, leaving me a day of the weekend to go skiing. Anyway - just to say, I am NEVER doing that again, and I need to find the words to explain to outsourcer no. 1 that this was a relatively complex text... but really, what's the point? Just turn her work down in future. Even time spent marketing / prospecting would have paid me more. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | CAT tool to pull the wool over your eyes | Feb 15, 2014 |
Olga Koepping wrote:
I made a really classic, massive mistake today. In a hurry on the way home, I checked my emails, came across one that I thought was from a regular client, and replied accepting the job, without having actually looked properly. Of course when I got home, settled down and opened the file, checked what she had actually written for a rate (it's not 0.03 but it's still bad), and THEN realised it was due for Indian Standard Time "tomorrow morning"... I could have written back to say, lady, who do you think I am, but I just sat down and did the translation. So I am about to send it off, and have checked, researched, final checked, and now feel like an absolute monkey.
Shortly after sitting down to this job, I got an email with another job, a proper outsourcer with a serious rate, high and justified expectations and an interest in my doing a good job. I could have spent those five hours doing his job, leaving me a day of the weekend to go skiing. Anyway - just to say, I am NEVER doing that again, and I need to find the words to explain to outsourcer no. 1 that this was a relatively complex text... but really, what's the point? Just turn her work down in future. Even time spent marketing / prospecting would have paid me more.
Sorry that this happened to you Olga. It made me think of another way some outsourcers get translators to accept a job based on a CAT tool text analysis with 100% matches, various percentage repetitions and other fuzzy content. A 12,000 word text can easily become a text with only 2000 new words/100% matches. But the rest of the text might have at least one or two changes in almost every sentence involving not just words, but the reworking of whole sentence structures and, additionally, you might be expected to put various different words or phrases in bold, and many other words might need to be underlined differently in various parts of the text. That kind of editing is certainly not included in any text analysis.
So I suggest in case anyone gets a text that seems great because of all these repetitions, you should always take a very close look at it before thinking of accepting it. It can become a working nightmare and you'll definitely also feel like a monkey afterwards. In my experience, things like that are mostly offered by companies that already pay low rates.
B
[Edited at 2014-02-15 00:22 GMT]
| | | | | The reason why MT does not work | Feb 15, 2014 |
is exactly the same as why we don't have robots working in gourmet restaurants as chefs or school bus drivers. When this happens (which I doubt ever will), we can talk.
Right know all the discussion are nothing but speculations. Frankenstein's sort of thing--trying to create something that is against the natural order of things.
And yes--paying low rates by some outsourcers has not that much to do with any crisis or economy, but rather with greed and trying to make 80% or... See more is exactly the same as why we don't have robots working in gourmet restaurants as chefs or school bus drivers. When this happens (which I doubt ever will), we can talk.
Right know all the discussion are nothing but speculations. Frankenstein's sort of thing--trying to create something that is against the natural order of things.
And yes--paying low rates by some outsourcers has not that much to do with any crisis or economy, but rather with greed and trying to make 80% or more profit instead of 40% that used to be customary in the past. (In translation or interpreting, at least. It might be different with selling potatoes.)
As to the repetitions and fuzzy matches--why don't some people who promote this kind of calculations go to a deli and ask for a sandwich with six extra slices of Swiss cheese, with all the holes deducted from the price. (Just an extra charge for two slices).
[Edited at 2014-02-15 06:46 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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