Thoughts on Translation is back from a relaxing camping vacation in the deserts of Western Colorado. This vacation was completely unplugged; I didn’t take my laptop or netbook and only turned my cell phone on once a day to check my office messages. In other words, a real vacation! I highly recommend doing this at least once a year if you’re at the computer the rest of the time. Now on to more substantive issues…
A while back, I wrote a post about sticker shock: dealing with clients who are blindsided about how much professional translation services cost. Recently, I spoke with the owner of a small agency who brought up a different but related topic: how to react when a professional service costs less than you expect. In a nutshell…this agency owner works with clients in a very targeted industry that not many translators specialize in. When she landed a new client in this specialization, she needed to expand her pool of qualified translators quickly, so she posted the job on ProZ. In her words, “Not to save money in particular, but in order to widen the pool of potential translators.” This agency owner pays her current translators very fair rates, what I would consider the high end of the U.S.-based agency market (I’m guessing you can tell where this is headed!), and in her ProZ posting, she did not specify any rate at all, but left it up to the translators to state their rates.
So, the applications started coming in, and because of the way the agency owner worded her posting, the applicants were few in number and very well qualified for the job. However, their rates were generally between 25% and 60% less than what she had planned on paying. For example if she had been planning on paying 30 cents a word (this isn’t the actual figure, just an example), these highly qualified translators generally bid between 12 and 20 cents a word. In the end, the agency owner did not pick the cheapest translators, but also did not suggest to the selected translators that they raise their rates. I realize that this anecdote also brings up the issue of competitive bidding in general, translators who charge less than they are worth, and probably various other issues too. However, specifically related to the under-budget issue, what would you have done? Would you have told these translators that they were bidding half of what you were willing to pay, or would you have accepted the rates that they offered?
Corinne,
A great post, as always.
I would probably have met these translators in the middle. I would have offered (to the qualified ones, of course) them more than what they had bid. But maybe not as much as what I had intended to pay them…or maybe.
I think it is crucial that professional translators, and particularly the ones with a specific qualification/specialty ask and receive what their work is worth.
I have paid qualified legal translators more than what they were asking me because I felt it was worth their work and level of expertise.
Marianne
I would have paid them what I intended to pay them. Without a doubt.
People who bid on proz tend to put their lowest rate to have some chances to get the job so if the money is here and the translator is good, then there are no reasons not to pay them what they deserve.
I’ve paid translators more than they asked for when they bid low and I had more budgeted. I figure that paying more helps reinforce that they don’t need to undersell their talents, and also makes for some very happy translators!
I completely agree with Jean-Christophe Helary who wrote earlier, and Shannon Jimenez.
I would have paid what I had for my budget – maybe not in the first job. Perhaps. Maybe the first job I would use to assess their quality.
If they were really at par with my other providers, I can’t see why I should pay less.
Though I am not an agency owner, mind you.
I’m an example of this – when I bid for translation agencies (especially via ProZ), I bid lower than what I would like to get. And I think that if you want to build up good relationship with your translators, then you should treat them fairly.
I would love to know if this translation agency you talk about is looking for English > Brazilian Portuguese translators in the areas of legal, business, finance, etc.
🙂
Regards
Adriana
Corinne, I had the same problem a few days ago. I received lots of questionnaires filled by translators with their rates. The rates were different as you stated, besides that the translators come from CIS countries, native speakers, so the rates sometimes were very low. Surely that’s not right to judge the quality of the translation by the rate, what I did – I asked the translators for a test translation of 200 words (the text is not an easy one). Among 200 translators I have chosen only 5 persons and offered them our standard rates that we pay to translators.
I would like to say that this is very difficult to find the right freelance translator who is highly qualified and is easy to deal. It does take time and some regular customers prefer the project to be done by the same translator as previously… So we relish good translators as the more good jobs done, the more happy customers we will have.
Freelance Translation Studio
Translation and Localization into CIS languages
http://www.ft-studio.com
I think the agency owner made the correct compromise. Assuming that a more expensive translator is indeed a good one (which has not always been my experience as a PM!), she ended up with a good translator while saving money. No one likes to hear that they could have been paid more, but the agency owner is a business person, too, and she needs to make sure she makes her margin.
@Andie: but the margin was already budgeted. So it was only a case of keeping for the company money that was intended to translators. I don’t think that’s ethical. And it is especially so in cases that translstudio describes.
There is another issue here. In a lot of cases, low(er) rates mean that the agency provides a checker. But if the rate is high, and higher than standard, the translator has a duty to provide a document that’s better than standard. The higher rate allows the translator to hire a checker so that in the end the money is all well spent and everybody is very happy.
We all know that checking takes a lot of time and spending the extra buck there is _never_ a bad thing.
If the client is so flush with money, providing him with superb translations is a recipe for more well paid work ! “Margins first” are what caused the BP spill !!! Don’t forget that.
That is an unusual problem indeed. I am no agency but I would have doubted the professionalism if the translators did not have any idea of what the going rate were, unless this agency paid much more than the standard. If I was sure of the qualifications I would pay the budgeted rate. Hopefully this would encourage the translator to continue charging rates that were not way under standard, and thus support the industry rates.
I am glad you had a relaxing, unplugged vacation btw. I do that about four times a year, and ususally to a place with no cell phone reception either. It puts everything in perspective. 😉
On the principle that it should be the supplier, not the customer, who sets the price, I would pay the selected translators what they asked for. If this was less than I had budgeted for, I would treat the additional margin as a temporary windfall or, if you prefer, as provision for a future rate increase by the translators concerned.
I’m guessing it only gets worse when language barriers come into play as well. It’s rather easy to fall into the trap of exacerbating the pitfalls of the trade itself by trying to get the linguistic side of it handled in-house by staff who aren’t trained linguists.
It might look like an unnecessary cost increase at first glance, but I’d always recommend using language professionals for financial translation, the risk you run without them is sure to cost you much more in the end.