"Big job frenzy" -> Update

The "Big job frenzy" continues! On and on and on and ...
By now everybody is not only in a frenzy, but also desperate.

Every day I am getting messages from all over the world, ALL translator
sites list an unending stream of "job offers" pertaining to this thing,
AND ... everybody is offering peanuts as payment.
Since most of those people are NOT going to meet the deadline, by now everybody is getting desperate and I get phone calls almost everyday also from all over the world.
Again offering peanuts at first, but when I say no, the offer switches to "we pay you whatever you want".
Now, THAT is very fishy!

One of the first messages came from the giant slave market "Transperfect". During one of the many phone calls I received from TP, the person on the other end said: "TransPerfect is the ONLY allowed/authorized to work on this project".
If that is/were true, how come I am getting millions of messages from all sort of companies? Only one of those company mentioned, that is is a "member of the TransPerfect family" (sounds like "mafia").

Most of the companies located in India, China, Arab countries, South America etc. started by offering 0.03 USD/word. Now that they find themselves in trouble meeting the deadline(s), the offer suddenly jumps by 100% to 0.06 USD/word, which is still only 50% of a half-way decent offer for orthodox language combinations like English/German, French/English etc.
The "whatever you want" thing happened through a conversation over the phone. A call from a company in Egypt. They first offered 0.07 USD. I said no. Next offer was 0.08 USD. But when I still said no, the person offered: "we pay you whatever you want".

Maybe I not getting this right, but somebody (everybody?) seems to be not telling the truth. If they are not explicitly "lying, they still apparently are trying to coax translators in doing their work for peanuts and withholding "what is right" as a last resort measure.

I don't know about everybody else, but I have the greatest problems recognizing this as "honest work". To me it looks much more like an attempt at deceiving / cheating the translators ...

frenzy,MILLION,job,rate,RUSH,slave,peanuts,deceiving,cheating,deadline,desperate

Rate? --- No problem!

Patent drawing of flight simulator by Rougerie (France - 1928) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Japanese Language Book (Photo credit: born1945)

The other day I was asked, whether I can translate FOUR related patent specifications, 2 from Japanese and 2 from English, into German. The Italian company (CAESAR SRL) wrote in its mail:
"We evaluated this job as:
- 5055 words from English / - 4000 words from Japanese
approx. qty: 9055 words / fixed price: € 780,00 --> 0.086 Euro/Word"

0.08 Euro/word for a patent specification from Japanese to German???

A few days after I reclined the offer, I got a mail from "wagner-international", asking me, whether I can do PRECISELY the same job (J-G portion only).
That made me celebrate. WONDERFUL!!!
Apparently nobody else is working for so low rates (for material of this complexity). And I told Wagner so.

That company says of itself: "We specialize in cost–effective, expert communication and media solutions ..."
Meaning: we squeeze every last drop of sweat and tear out of the translator to provide clients with CHEAP (the magic word of our time) product.
If it kills a few (thousand) translators ... well, that is their problem.

On the other hand ...
I got an inquiry --- by telephone! --- about a patent translation from France.
Once I had a look at the text, got a better readable PDF file here in Japan and told them my rate (the due date was fixed up front), the person at the other end of the line said: Rate? -- No problem!
That was not a translation agency, it was a patent office:
International Patent-Translation Bureau (IPTB)

On the one hand you have the agencies (sounds like "agent" from the movie "Matrix") that try to cheat and possibly kill translators,
and on the other hand you have companies knowing that some things simply have their price.

Opting for "cheapest is best" will run people/companies into trouble sooner or later. I have seen it many times ... those companies for which I was too expensive receive claims from their customers and then ask me (or anybody else) to have a look at the tranlation and "brush it up a little" ...

Oh, how stupid!

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Transperfect - the rich giant -

Image via Wikipedia

I get in more or less regular intervals "job offers" form the translation giant Transperfect.
However, in the past I had mostly BAD experiences with this company and these experiences also showed, that it does not pay (literally!) to work for Transperfect. The current exchange rate also greatly contributes to this situation.
Transperfect apparently also a bad reputation as a non-payer.
Yet, the responses from the project managers force me to believe, that I am either dealing with DO NOT care (at all) about the people they are dealing with, or else are so rich, that they run this company purely for fun.

Below a few quotes from communications with PMs

Transperfect: (2012/02/24 8:50)
We have a new *English**into **German *Translation and Proofreading job we need your help with!

My response:
My experiences have shown that it does not pay (literally!) to work for Transperfect. But I have to survive too and therefore cannot afford to work for peanuts.

Transperfect: (2012/02/24 10:13)
> Would you be able to do the Proofreading for $25?  It should only take about an hour to do. 

My response:
Well, you should know that the funny payment practices of Transperfect inevitably lead to a situation where I have to PAY the bank -
one way or other - about 30 USD or more in bank fees to get your 25 USD!
I prefer to do work that actually pays ...

Transperfect:
We have a new English into German Translation job we need your help with!
This will be a flatrate of $10 to do this super small job!

My response:
NO thank you.
I believe I explained this before.
10 USD: the bank fees to get this would be about 30 USD!
Even if I would ask for PayPal (which does not give me any money at all; only some virtual nonsense that I can ONLY use to buy useless things on ebay), YOUR COMPANY applies a fine (they call it handling fee) of 10 USD for this "extraordinary difficult" transaction.

Funny, for everybody else on the planet that usually works fine and is free.

So, again and again, you ask me to work for free.
Having a family, I cannot afford to do that.
And I would like to believe that you couldn't afford it either.
Or do I have to assume, that I am dealing with people (Transperfect) that are so rich, they do not need to work at all and are engaged in these activities purely as a pasttime??????

Transperfect:
Sorry about that.  Will keep that in mind


Transperfect: 2/29 (= next day!) 12:07
We have a new Egnlish into German Translation job we need your help with!
Stats are  78 new, 16 fuzzy, and 3 gold words.
DEADLINE: Translation 12pm EST  2/29 Wednesday. This will be a flatrate of $10

Just yesterday this very person said: "Sorry about that.  Will keep that in mind."

Maybe there is not enough mind to hold this information ...

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Transperfect - one of the nonsense giants!

Transperfect - I do not trust them any more ...
(a few pieces from their website ? and my comments)

"TransPerfect is headquartered in New York, with offices in over 50 cities on 4 continents."

"Commitment to Quality

"We have demonstrated our commitment to providing the highest quality language solutions, to achieving client satisfaction, and most important, to working to continually improve our processes and operations to exceed our clients' expectations,"


Well … if that is so, how come I continuously get mails like:

"SUPER URGENT JOB

Please excuse this blast email but this project requires some urgency. I have contacted many of you about this job already but we still have about 4700 words left to place. I am in desperate need of help for this one and I would really appreciate any help at all. Even if you could take a page or two that would be extremely helpful. … Quality is of utmost importance for this project as well as the client has already complained about the quality of previous translations."

→ If quality is of such importance, why then split a 20+ job among several translators. This will by necessity and assuredly result in a mixture of styles and probably also a "quality cocktail".

"For TransPerfect, achieving ISO 9001 certification is an honor: but it is simply not enough. We continue to innovate, to strive for excellence, evolving every day to take advantage of all that the emerging technologies have to offer, streamlining our processes, and meeting our clients' needs in the most effective manner possible."

→ As far as I know, they insist on using an outdated, not very reliable software that many translators DO NOT like. And the require translators to use this tool, which forces the translator to work with equipment s/he may not be familiar/efficient with. How can this then help to produce better results???

While Transperfect ALWAYS tries to cheat the translators and offers a pay that is significantly substandard, there are sometimes desparate situations:

"This job is still available and we need your help!!!?

Please let me know if you can take proofreading or translation and when is the soonest you can deliver the files."

A short while later:

"Hello again,

I can pay whatever is necessary to get this job completed for the deadlines below. Please let me know if you cn help.?

THANK YOU!!!"

In that case I would suggest, that they offer the translator a decent pay up front for work to be completed in reasonable time. THAT would help!


Or,

"I have 560 words of an urgent press release due in 3 hours. A great way to make some extra money for the weekend."

Since Transperfect offers mostly something between 0.04 ? 0.08 USD, assume they will pay 0.07 USD = 40 USD. Fine, but I would have to pay 30-40 USD in bank fees to get that money" = a "great way to make some extra money".


And the other day:

"Hi Thomas, you came highly recommended by my colleagues (==> that is something I doubt VERY much) and I was wondering if you could help me out with a small favor. I have a EN>DE translation that was done, the linguist is now offline but I just wanted to check that the translation of this one word is correct."

Stupid as I am, I DID answer.

"Hi Thomas! Thank you for that! I was actually wondering why the "of" is not translated. Should it be …."

My response (partially):
The choice depends on the clients expectations / preferences
**UNLESS** you leave all the decisions to the translator. But in that case you/the client should not afterwards come and complain about a million
unimportant and annoying details? .....
AND ask people basically NOT involved = me, to provide you with free services.
I would prefer, if you do not bother me with this any further.
=> which the manager did not. Neither did he ever offer **ANY** kind of favor in return for this favor/service he got through me.
A symbolic representation of the exploitation of translators by Transperfect.


My advice to translators: unless you can really good offer from Transperfect (unlikely!) - preferrably in writing! - you should for your own good think twice before working for that company.