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Apparently I
submitted a quote on a job offer through Proz.com,
although I really do not recall that one. That company, "mygengo.com"
replied yesterday:
"Thanks for your response to my ProZ ad regarding
Japanese to English translation. It would be great if you could create an
account on our website and begin our
translator qualification process. There's an automated 5-question test and an approx. 300-word
translation test that we require."
They want to check my
"qualification", but then suggest to potential
clients, that it is not necessary to pay
for "a level of expertise". What about me???
So, I checked their website and found the
following:
mygengo.com:
"The question we asked ourselves was
whether or not customers should always be paying for a level of expertise when they don’t
actually need it. The answer we came up
with was absolutely not."
My comment:
THAT is the wrong
question when working with "real" humans, because the level of "expertise"
(experience)
of a translator is what defines him or her and cannot (or at least SHOULD not) be turned ON/OFF. Thus, requiring that a
translator does NOT show any expertise is to my mind AT LEAST degrading to that
translator or rather an outright insult!
mygengo.com:
"When comparing
our services to others in the industry, we rates up to 70% lower AND we offer the same
professional-quality. We also provide a 100% money back
guarantee. Our customers
know that if they’re not satisfied,
we’ll make it right."
My comment:
Should it not be "our rates are"? -> A mistake
that should not occur on a professional
website, where it is actually presented for the entire
world to see.
"Money
back guarantee" -> does that
imply:
"No money
for the translator when the customer
does not feel like paying"? No, thank you. As a professional translator
depending on my translation work for a living THAT is not an acceptable option.
Or will this agency cover any such mood swings of the customer?
mygengo.com:
"Say good-bye to clumsy machine
translations and expensive professional agencies. Welcome to myGengo."
My comment:
"Say good-bye to expensive
professional agencies." This presumably
means for the translator: "Say good-bye to proper/decent pay". As
opposed to machines,
real people (translators) need to eat! But if their work cannot (literally) "put food on their tables" ,
the only resource for the clients left will be those "clumsy machine
translation" … And if the clients are companies that take pride in their products, they should also take pride in the translation of their materials.
mygengo.com:
"Standard translations at myGengo begin at just $0.05/word and $0.03/character (Chinese,
Japanese and Korean). "
My comment:
MAYBE (?) people living in rural
China
or India
can still afford to work for these (slave labor) rates. But not ANYBODY I know
of, who is living in ANY of the developed countries of the world. Definitely I cannot afford to work for this rate here in
Japan.
The result would be STARVATION -> and this is NOT a joke!
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