This is a guest post by Interpres incognitus, a US-based freelance translator who prefers to remain anonymous.
“The client doesn’t want a translation, he just wants to know what it says.”
This is a direct quote from a project manager at a translation agency and the perfect way to introduce my guest post. We were discussing translator pet peeves at a recent networking lunch of the Colorado Translators Association and Corinne invited me to write a post for her blog. Here are some of the things that drive me crazy about working with agencies:
Remember, I am not on staff at your company.
I was recently asked by an agency to do a translation sample for free because they were trying to win a new client and wanted to provide the sample to them at no charge. I am always amazed at these kinds of requests, the expectation that the translator should bear all the risk. It’s not like the project manager or the sales manager at the agency will be donating the time they spend working on this project, putting fewer hours on their timesheet that day because they are handling a sample job, but they routinely expect the translator to be willing to do so.
Don’t expect me to bear the brunt of fixing your mistakes.
If you have failed to properly assess the scope of the job, it’s not my responsibility to pick up the slack. I was once asked to work on site because no time had been allowed for file conversions from an unusual file format. They decided the solution to their dilemma would be my working from their facility in the original file format, being paid by the hour rather than by the word, and commuting one hour each way to their office, unpaid of course. Thanks, but no thanks.
I don’t give discounts for numbers and common words.
A couple of times in my career I have been challenged about charging for numbers because they are not really words. My response to that is “I’ll leave them out and you can insert them where you think they go.” I have also had agencies complain about ifs, ands or buts being included in the word count. Again, I’ll be happy to leave them out.
Don’t provide misleading information about the scope of the job.
Don’t tell me the document is 140 pages and then expect me not to notice that it is actually 290 when I get it. And no, under these conditions, I can’t be expected to meet the original deadline.
All translators are not created equal.
Sending a query about a job to “Undisclosed recipients” or “Dear vendor” is basically a “first come, first served” approach to assigning a job. This tells me as a translator a lot about how your company operates. If you were hiring a new employee to work in your office would you really hire the first person who answered your ad sight unseen without checking to see if they had the requisite experience?
Common courtesy.
I have received queries about my availability and when I respond, I never hear back again. How hard would it be to give the translator the illusion of respect by sending a quick e-mail that says, “Sorry, we placed the job elsewhere” or “Thanks, but no thanks.” Are you actually so busy that you can’t write back or so sure that you will never need to contact me again in the future?
This list is by no means meant to be comprehensive 😉
In Europe they charge by the line, which is determined by taking the character count with spaces and dividing it by 55 or 50 (depending on the agency). It was common practice for agencies to try to use the character count without spaces to determine a line. Several translators I know generally responded that they would be happy to, but they would of course be leaving the spaces out as well. 🙂 Nice post! I enjoyed it.
Great post, thanks for sharing.
These things are a great help for a starter like me, you are giving me a very good insight to this profession.
I love the idea of leaving words out for customers to insert… That would really give some people an insight to the real worth our work.
Please tell me what the job is about!!
If I receive a query along the lines of “We have a German to English translation; can you do it?”, I will ignore it and carry on working or drinking coffee or whatever. Why should I waste MY time getting back to you, asking for the file(s) or at least some details of subject, number of pages/lines/words etc., and of course the deadline. I can do a good job on IT and telecommunications documents, but you would NOT want to use me for a doctorate on changes in the sex life of plankton due to global warming.
And please don’t think that describing the job as “technical” get’s you off the hook. How am I supposed to know whether “technical” means a 20-page manual for a DVD player or 2000 pages of safety specifications for an atomic reactor?
And another thing: If you want US English or Australian English or some other derivation of real English, please tell me beforehand, rather than sending me lots of corrections from the end customer 2 weeks after I’ve delivered the job.
Another peeve is blind deadline quoting, as in “Please tell us the time you will take to deliver the translation of the enclosed file, but we don’t know when (or if) the client will actually give us the job, so we can’t tell you when (or even if) you can start work on it”. So they want me to block out my time, at my own risk and expense, and not take on any other jobs in the meantime that would stop me from making their deadline.
When asked for this sort of blind deadline, I always hedge my offer with lots of IFs and BUTs.
Very true! I think every translator will recognize each and every item on your list. I also love it when they say: “The text is fairly general, not technical at all” and it turns out to be full of specialized terminology, preferably in a field I am absolutely not familiar with. And of course the e-mail or phone call at 5 pm on Friday asking if you could deliver 20.000 words for Monday morning.
As a translator for *Brazilian* Portuguese, one of my biggest problems with translation agencies is that they often do not know that there is a difference between Brazilian Portuguese and European Portuguese. When I used to bid for jobs on ProZ, too often I simply lost my time, because the agency in question was looking for a European Portuguese translator. And this happens not only with bids, but also with direct approaches from agencies (if they’re ‘direct approaching’ me, it means they have at least seen my website or my profile somewhere, where I always state my target language variant). I told one of such stories on my translation blog (http://fidusinterpres.com/?p=571). But there are those who, even after an explanation about language variants, still want to know if I can translate into ‘neutral’ Portuguese. This is usually the moment when I give up. No time for stupid people. 🙁 I mean, what kind of training, if any, are they getting?
That said, I must also acknowledge that there are wonderful agency people out there: intelligent, knowledgeable, good-humored, polite etc.
Keep groaning, complaining and accusing everyone but yourself…
Are most of the cases done in purpose or of lack of knowledge and understanding of your work?
I can’t say all of these have happened to me, but I’ve experienced a fair few. The answer, as your post outlined, is to have your own clear ground rules as to what is and isn’t acceptable, and to stick to them rigorously. I do get a bit fed up of hearing translators talk of being “forced” into accepting certain conditions, be they related to price, deadlines, use of certain CAT tools, etc. None of us are forced into anything; you just sometimes need to have the courage to turn down a job rather than accepting something which may come back and bite you later.
Send me the text! Your description/guess as to what it is about, especially if it is Finnish and you do not read Finnish, will not do. Let me see it and I will even be nice and tell you what it is about so that you will be able to find someone better able than me to do it if it’s not my subject area.
Re. Victor’s point, I often now reply with “48 hours from when I get the go-ahead” to avoid that “but you said Thursday”, “yes but that was on Monday, it is now Wednesday” problem.
Send me the text and an exact word count in your first query!
I once worked for an agency who sent automatic queries. The info about wordcount was a bracket, with the smallest one being 0-2000 words. Often the tasks turned out to be no more than 200-300 words, but you had to log in to their site to find out. Furthermore, they required you to log in to their web interface and from there to their FTP site to download the files for assessment.
When I pointed out how much time I had to spend on just finding out whether I want to take the job or not and asked if they could send the text, or at least include the exact wordcount and subject field in the automatic query, the response was that all that information was available in the project folder on the FTP.
And they wondered why I never accepted any job offers…
Another pet peeve of mine is when jobs are announced in categories like “web site localization” or “education & teaching”. Well ok, it’s a web site – but it makes a whole lot of difference if it’s a social networking site or a web site marketing industry machinery… Or whether it’s a 4th grade history book or corporate specific training in processes for account controllers…
@jillsommer: Where I’m from we’ve never used the line count (55 characters w spaces usually). They do in Germany and Austria, but that’s hardly all of Europe.
I had a client who didn’t want to pay for spaces xD I never did have to actually take the spaces out for him to realize how ludicrous it was, we decided that my quoted price was fair WITH spaces…
Awesome, Corinne! Should be required reading for Project Managers and Coordinators…
Yet another one: “Could you read these 3 documents containing 20 pages worth of instructions in order to translate about 100 words? This client has very specific requirements…”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Excellent points all of them.
-MT
I really appreciate this posting – and the discussion it has clearly stimulated from our community. I think at times the challenge with some agencies is that the PMs are not necessarily professional linguists, even if they are professionals in the language services industry. ATA publications like “Getting it Right” aim to promote client education for translation purchasers, but at times I feel there should be a similar publication/training course for those who are new to this industry. Perhaps this would be a helpful seminar the ATA (or regional associations) could organize to help educate agency staff on the freelancer perspective – imagine how many times an inexperienced PM “turns off” an experienced freelancer through unrealistic demands (be it price, turn around time, etc), which then results in that translator turning down a future assignment, which is in turn placed with a less experienced translator, resulting in an inferior end product, end client dissatisfaction, need for extensive proofreading/editing – this all adds up to a most costly process.
And before readers take me for another whining freelancer, we have to recognize that as, Rob said above, we freelancers need to be committed to our “ground rules.” I know from personal experience if I take on a project and am not 100% comfortable with the client’s deadline and payment terms, then odds are that not only will I not end up submitting a high quality end product, but I could easily end up both annoyed at myself and resentful of the client. But do I really have any cause to resent the client when I have agreed to do something despite the warning lights going off in my head?
This is especially important for all of us to remember in the current economic climate, where I have heard frequent discussion from other freelancers who are facing a lower volume of work when compared with this time period last year. Of course, for those of us who rely on agencies for the bulk of our work, we need to recognize that agencies are no stranger to the downturn. That does not mean that I am willing to take on a 10,000 word project due within 24 hours (if only!), but neither should it mean that I judge the PM on the other end of the phone.
All that said, venting is a very healthy practice and given that so many of us work in physical isolation from one another, perhaps virtual gathering place such as Corinne’s blog are the best places for it.
PJD
This post really had me nodding my head frequently in agreement. And the posts did too.
My pet peeve is when a job is posted with ‘African’ as the source or target language. And to top it all, my language combination is French, English and my mother tongue, Afrikaans, which many job posters presume must be ‘African’ spelled incorrectly. So off they go and send job posts with English > Afrikaans in the header, when they really need Chironga, Zulu, Swazi, Swahili or even Urdu! (The latter is not even an African language…)
At first I sent these ignoramuses the link for the Ethnologue website, explaining that there are hundreds of African languages, and that most of these languages are region-bound, not country-bound. I think I got one or two thank you’s. And silence from the rest.
These days I don’t even waste my time and ignore these posts. Still sometimes, the job poster gets upset when nobody responds and harasses you with email upon email.
I’d love to translate something into ‘African’ one day and be a fly on the wall when the agency ising explain to their client why the end user can’t understand a word of it.
Finger trouble…
Last paragraph should be:
I’d love to translate something into ‘African’ one day and be a fly on the wall when the agency is explaining to their client why the end user can’t understand a word of it.
Bravo, Corinne. I couldn’t have said it better. Especially the client thinks you’re on staff or the client just wants to know what the text says. Great examples to inform newcomers to the field.
Glad you enjoyed it!