As a translator AND outsourcer at the same time, we face the outsourced translator's demand to get paid well, and the customer's demand to pay as little as possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This leaves us with almost no margin at all, although we still have a lot of work to do if we want to do it right and proof-read what has been translated, manage the project, invoice the client, etc... etc... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Of course would not like to exploit others, and even less be exploited ourselves by others, but each and every task involved takes time and must be rewarded fairly, so we MUST be able to find a fair compromise that suits all involved parties. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Most of us are translators and work as agencies at the same time when needed. Actually, let's face it and be honnest : most of the agencies we see out there on the Internet, even those looking great and big on their webpages, are actually really tiny companies, most of them even operated by a single person and surrounded by a myriad of external collaborators. The "greedy bad guy" behind the project manager is then probably just another translator who cannot cope alone with all the job requests that flood his e-mailbox and who would like to slowly drive his business to the next level and become a "real" company with permanent inhouse staff etc... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In fact, this means we really should rethink the translation business as a whole, at least in the SME arena of those small companies who have not made it yet to the next level : not just as agencies exploiting freelancers but rather as an interwoven community of freelancers working together as a team, a team in which each and every member has his set of speciality fields and gets paid fairly for his work, according to the estimated needed time to spend on each type of task. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In such an ecosystem of independant service providers, be they translators, proofreaders, project managers, DTP specialists, vendor managers, sales representatives, marketers, public relations and/or social media presence managers, etc... etc... and/or part of all that together, what would be the fair revenue sharing model, if we thought of setting up a kind of Fair Trade Community of independant freelancers ?

For eight years in a UK Government department I was an outsourcer of translations and interpreting assignments. Now, as a freelance translator, I continue to be interested in essential outsourcer disciplines: close harmonious relations with customers/agencies/freelances, negotiating rates and deadlines, software and upload/download troubleshooting, budget management and expenditure control, freelance/agency performance assessment models, freelance/agency recruitment models, proofreading rules, order/invoice processing models, good business practice, etc. Sorry I won't make the start of the discussion but hoping to join you mid-stream. The Fair Trade concept is worth developing. BTW, I think there is at least one company in France which purports to embrace FT principles.

Many outsourcers are merely translators who claim to know a certain language but then farm out the job to a translator who is really proficient in that language. I've had a couple of such experiences so now I am wary of taking jobs offered by outsourcers.

I have had excellent experiences working with some brilliant translators, or simply referring the work to them if the work is not in my language pairs.

I agree with you Martin, we need to set up a standard for Fair Trade Community of independant freelancers. We also need to have a policing system somehow. When a code of conduct was broken, who knows what to do, whom to report, how to chase up those offenders... It is a time-consuming work, so if we could share the load and build it up together, it is possible. Someone with very organized head could start the organizing, then spread the idea. In the Japanese translators community, I wonder who would be able to work as a team for this. Is there anyone out there? Recently one of Proz.com's BlueBoard companies contacted me and I got suspicious because of the lack of quality of the message, and the company it self has only a few lines about it in the company profile, being established just recently. So, yes we freelance translators can become outsourcers and at times need to, and can. Even if the individual is not ready to develop to the next stage as a company, and prefers to work individually, still being able to outsource the work is a form of expansion. A Japanese translator once said to me that I shouldn't do so, but why not? Passing away a job to another is OK, but if someone asks for your service, counting on your quality of service, you don't want to lose the connection, and if you pass away, you want to make sure the job is done well. So I did outsource a job to others and I supervised the quality. If there was a need, I proofread it and corrected. I once worked on a film subtitles, and the person who gave me the job was pretty open about the price and share the information on how to divide the money from the big company, as the job involved many languages. However the person was very stressed out and the cross-atlantic communication was difficult. (I found another translator in the same country for him, and I think he is using her after that, which is fine with me.) Fairness, openness, honesty, and credibitily. These are the qualities we need in this business. Hope the discussion is going to be fruitful in many ways.

I've never outsourced and have heard scary stories about it that have put me off doing it. I'd just like to hear other people's views on the subject.

Hi everybody! I've never outsourced, until nowadays I don´t need it, but it´s interesting to hear what other translators are telling about their experience in that because if someday we face a similar situation we know what we could do.