Are you a proud professional translator?
There’s a good test. Read this ad:
We need freelance translators for all language pairs. We are willing to pay $0.01-$0.03 for small projects (1-10,000 words) and $0.01-$0.02 for large projects (10,000 and more).You will have to translate a sample text as test translation. You must give the amount of words you can translate in 1 hour for your language pair. A sample text will have to be translated as test. Please note that MACHINE/SOFTWARE TRANSLATIONS will not be paid for.
If you are proud of the job you are doing, then accepting the offer is digging your grave with (or maybe despite?) your neurons.
- Such rates aren’t even minimally acceptable. Forget that you ever invested in learning a language, became a full-fledged professional, gained years of experience, accumulated knowledge of your subject. Even a beginner cannot live on that.
- Beware of sample texts used as free tests, they are often a way of donating perfectly usable translations. I remember a company that would give different chapters of a book to translate as test pieces, to different translators (usually beginners) and they did not pay any of them, because they were test pieces. Not only that, but the result was judged “not acceptable”, so none of the guinea pigs ever got the rest of the project. One translator checked… and found the book on the market, his translated chapter unchanged…
- The amount of words you can translate in 1 hour varies a lot, even between individuals, and has only a limited bearing on the final quality. A “slow” translator might be an excellent translator, whereas someone who doesn’t bother to check anything – grammar, spelling, etc. might deliver with mistakes. Also, if you’re experienced, you can spit something acceptable in no time (and being an interpreter as well I have an advantage here, I do translate fast, at least for the preliminary version). But you still need to do Quality Assurance and that takes a little time.
- “Machine/software translations will not be paid for”. This makes me laugh. No professional translator in his or her right mind would deliver unedited machine-translated documents. But some translators do use machine translation software that has a cost. Translation memories and user dictionaries take time to build up and maintain, and mean knowledge. So yes, it has a cost that the translator should be able to recover.
So, what do you think?
Tags: offers, professional, rates
January 21st, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I completely agree. People who accept rates and conditions like that are definitely not professionals nor are they proud of their profession. I even doubt whether they are real translators.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Percy,
Your comment is a post onto iself. Summarizes exactly what I mean. Thank you.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:48 pm
The rates mentioned in the job post above are so low that it makes me wonder about the authenticity of such a request. However, after a short search I found the source of the posting, which seems to come from here: http://tinyurl.com/a3xyrf
If you go to the website mentioned in the posting, you’ll notice that it ’s a company based in Pakistan and that (if the website counter is correct) their website has only been visited 74 times. So, judging from its web presence, this company has no reputation whatsoever. After all, the rate speaks for itself…
Thank you for submitting the tips above, they make perfect sense.
January 21st, 2009 at 4:53 pm
Thank you for your useful comment. Unfortunately there are many such ads, and they don’t all originate from places like Pakistan. This needs to be brought to the attention of potential users.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Definitely. My point is: always check the background of the company offering the job, no matter at which rate. The internet will help you find information about bad payers and such. One service I have heard being mentioned quite often lately is http://www.paymentpractices.net/, I’m sure at least some readers of this blog already know it.
January 21st, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I agree with my friend Percy, anyone who accepts this is not a professional translator. They are often people with steady jobs, trying to make some extra money on the side. When I get such requests, I usually explain that they can not expect quality translations with these conditions.
January 21st, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Thank you. That happens too, if people do translation as a sideline, first they are not necessarily aware of the real cost of translation, and they consider it as pocket-money.
January 22nd, 2009 at 1:20 am
I completely agree with you. If you’re proud of your profession you din’t accept rates like these…
The pity is that lots of agencies and direct clients in countries supposedly much more “reliable” than Pakistan (namely Spain, which is the case that I know better) too often expect the translators to accept very weird and abusive conditions, such as free long tranlation samples or crazy deadlines… That’s why I began looking for (better) clients abroad.
Experience not only provides professionalism, but also the sense of pride required to teach the others to respect the translation as a serious activity.
January 22nd, 2009 at 8:47 am
Indeed. It’s easy to be smug and think that this is possible or indeed happening, only in faraway places. It happens here too, and even though this particular ad came from Pakistan, I found it in an EU website. Interesting, hm?