10/21/2010

Highest quality

There is this company in India, Edisense. I have been working for them for a while, but then was found to be "too expensive" and therefore have been dismissed.

I could not help noticing, that they *frequently* put ads of IDENTICAL wording on several major translator sites and ALWAYS are looking
a) URGENTLY for
b) extremely highly qualified translators, who volunteer to
c) work for very little money (peanuts) on
d) extremely large projects.

Like in:
"Subject:
[Urgent] requirement for Japanese to English translators for Medicine. We have served more than 8000 clients, translated over 18000 documents in various languages and are proud to be amongst the top three editing players in Japan.
- We have also successfully partnered with Japan's largest academic publisher, Maruzen, and Dai Nippon Publishing (DNP), the second largest publisher in the world, for their editorial needs.
Our Requirements:
1. Experience in Academic Translation (at least three years)
2. Either native Japanese or native English with proven Japanese skills
3. At least bachelor’s degree (Master’s Degree preferred)
4. Certifications in translation and/or academic translation are preferred
Volume: 100,000 words
Our company is committed to the highest levels of translation quality and we expect our freelance translators to be of the same caliber. If you feel you have the mettle and the translation experience required, come on board!"


If they actually did have these large projects from Japanese companies/universities AND would be paying the doctors/professors/scholars they are looking for a decent amount of money for their work ...the last thing I saw was 5 Yen/Japanese character, which is about 50% of the usual/acceptable rate ...
then they would not have to look all the time so frantically for new(?)
translators.
That seems to be the most natural conclusion that comes to my mind.
Probably not only my, but also the mind of a lot of other people ...

1 comment:

  1. I'm so glad I found this posting - I took their test to see what would happen, but upon passing found out their rates. And it seemed really low to me, even as a "newbie". Have been wondering whether or not I should accept such low pay for medical translating, but wasn't sure what the market value was for such services. Thanks for posting, I'll keep looking!

    ReplyDelete