The other day an accident occurred on a Japanese highway, killing 7 people. The driver of a bus - a driver hired by the day - fell asleep. Apparently, there was no co-driver on the bus, and the entire tour designed to be "first of all cheap", specifically targeting Chinese customers.
The accident is one thing, but what struck me this morning was a TV show where one of the commentators said:
"It is this fierce competitions nowadays for providing cheaper and cheaper services/product, REQUIRING to cut costs where ever possible, to has finally led to poor safety measures, the use of insufficiently qualified personnel etc. that led to the tragedy"
THIS sounds like something that could be applied IDENTICALLY to the translation business:
"lower your rates", "cut costs", "do NOT charge extra for rush jobs etc.", "no special expertise needed (= everybody can do it = makes prices cheap)".
Well, I tried to point this out many times already. Cutting costs to the bone, forcing "real" translators into starvation etc, WILL in the end lead to the use/employment of untrained, unskilled personnel with "no special expertise", whose inadequate translation make even lead to the death of people. Who knows??
Is THAT what clients want? It will certainly give them a few headlines.
Starving the real people in the end will force them to "recruit the crew for a space shuttle from a pool of cheap physical laborers with no special expertise". It will definitely cut costs, but will it benefit the space program?
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