| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7] > | Proz publishing the ads with exploitative rates Thread poster: Sandesh Ghimire
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Phil Hand 
China
Local time: 06:50
Chinese to English
| Navvies of natural language | Apr 21, 2015 |
Gabriele Demuth wrote:
2. Who are these people who do translation for 4 cents or less on diverse sites - why wouldn't you call that a market, for better or worse?
...
NYSE is the New York Stock Exchange.
They are amateurs. It's a market, but I wouldn't call it a market in translation, because I don't think the amateurs achieve the basic standards that you'd expect of a translator.
Earlier in the thread, Diana defined a "cheap and cheerful" type of translation. Her idea is that there are translators out there who get the meaning right, but they don't always provide perfect grammar or formatting. Not fancy, but you can use them, and they're cheap. I don't believe these people exist. Or rather, they do, but they cost 10 cents. The ones who charge significantly less are not just making little grammar or formatting errors. They're making great glaring horrible meaning-mangling errors. They are not succeeding in doing what your man-in-the-street or anyone else thinks of as translation, i.e. conveying the meaning of the source text. (And more ominously, they don't seem to care.)
So I think it's a market in something different ("human text processing with language-style flavouring"?), but it gets called translation. (Same problem with MT - nice software, but it's not translation.)
Michael Wetzel wrote:
...wait around to be picked up in a pick-up truck to be carried off to slave away all day...
I quite like that image: we are the language longshoremen. The text dockers. Unloading the meaning of your word tanker from Panama and packing it into English containers.
Olympic Committee or Mercedes-Benz or McDonald's or the freelancers and SMEs that are the bread-and-butter of freelance translators - none of them are on here trying to get their translation needs taken care of here. Serious agencies don't really post on the job board more than once in a blue moon, do they?
Slightly unfair: the industry is structured client-agency-freelancers, and this site is made to lubricate the agency-freelancer leg. Big clients wouldn't be expected to appear here, and even the SMEs which might hire freelancers directly would not necessarily find a site like this easy to use. And yeah, serious agency posts are rare, but they're there. They're just a bit swamped, unfortunately.
| | | | | Regarding suspicion | Apr 21, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote: Phil Hand wrote:
Though I'm damned if I know what the solution is. That's to your credit. There's no simple cure for what ails the translation market and we should be suspicious of people who offer one. "There is always an easy solution to every human problem - neat, plausible, and wrong." Dan
I hope you're not suspicious of me. I am merely discussing the issue and sharing my point of view.
There are two things that bother me. First, I am unconvinced that all these low jobs posted here simply go to people who do a terrible job. If that were the case, you'd see more complaints of clients about Proz.com.
Secondly, USD .04/word for German>English is not professional in any regard. But many people posting such jobs are certified Proz or simply members of Proz.com. What does all that say to newcomers as well as clients, and doesn't it possibly lend legitimacy to some of these bad practices, resulting in the placement of these jobs with people who try their best to do an accurate job? I surely hope not. But do you see what I mean? How many jobs have been placed again through proz.com (and yes, I know there's the directory. But there are certainly a lot of jobs placed through the job board.) I'd be more suspicious of these ongoings.
[Edited at 2015-04-21 18:11 GMT]
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 23:50
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| I was thinking of regulatory bodies | Apr 21, 2015 |
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
I hope you're not suspicious of me. I am merely discussing the issue and sharing my point of view.
No, I'm not suspicious; I take the view that you are sincere. As you know, I don't agree with your opinions, but I think your intentions are sound.
When I said "we should be suspicious" I was thinking of bodies who might try to unilaterally impose "control" on translation markets and regulate them in some way. The European Commission is fond of expanding its reach with new regulations every year. If anybody were to try and regulate the industry I imagine it would be them.
As for a fair rate... An Indian translating 300 words an hour for ten hours a week at 0.04 euro per word would make 120 euro a week and about 6,000 euros a year. As far as I can out, average annual income in Mumbai is about 2,000 euros (I can't find median income figures). So just 10 hours a week would give that person a very nice living. Location matters.
Regards
Dan
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Dan Lucas wrote: Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
I hope you're not suspicious of me. I am merely discussing the issue and sharing my point of view. No, I'm not suspicious; I take the view that you are sincere. As you know, I don't agree with your opinions, but I think your intentions are sound. When I said "we should be suspicious" I was thinking of bodies who might try to unilaterally impose "control" on translation markets and regulate them in some way. The European Commission is fond of expanding its reach with new regulations every year. If anybody were to try and regulate the industry I imagine it would be them. As for a fair rate... An Indian translating 300 words an hour for ten hours a week at 0.04 euro per word would make 120 euro a week and about 6,000 euros a year. As far as I can out, average annual income in Mumbai is about 2,000 euros (I can't find median income figures). So just 10 hours a week would give that person a very nice living. Location matters. Regards Dan
I agree that location matters to a degree. But I take a rather global view of our profession. I don't consider USD .04/word a professional rate, not even for English>Hindi. See Proz.com's translation rate page.
But who is supposed to do the English>German translations for a company from India for USD 0.04 or USD 0.05/word?
Or for that matter, for a company from Germany or Europe in general - which you can find posted.
Well, yes, no one should. But it happens. I am sure these jobs are not done by experienced translators. Of course not. But newcomers and other people who for whatever reason take these jobs are carrying them out. And no matter who does it, professional it ain't.
I don't see many complaints about it on this site. But that in itself does tell you something as well.
Thanks for replying.
Bernhard
[Edited at 2015-04-21 19:21 GMT]
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Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 04:20
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | May be the job board could be split into three segments | Apr 22, 2015 |
Preventing low-pay jobs from being posted on proz.com is hardly going to make any difference on the ground. We need to remember that proz.com is only reflecting what is there in the real world, it is not the real world of its own.
In the real world, there are premium jobs (40-60 cents per word) the middling jobs (10-12 cents) and the low-end jobs (below 6 cents) as Diana has explained, and there are translators/agencies who cater to these segments. This cannot be denied, as it is a ... See more Preventing low-pay jobs from being posted on proz.com is hardly going to make any difference on the ground. We need to remember that proz.com is only reflecting what is there in the real world, it is not the real world of its own.
In the real world, there are premium jobs (40-60 cents per word) the middling jobs (10-12 cents) and the low-end jobs (below 6 cents) as Diana has explained, and there are translators/agencies who cater to these segments. This cannot be denied, as it is a fact.
Now the problem seems to be, some proz.com members see red when they see the low-end job posts on this site.
A simple solution (it seems to me) is to split the job board into three along these three main segments, and give the option to members to see only those segments of the job board which they want to see.
So, with this option in place, Bernhard, to take an example, can opt to see only the premium job board and not the other two, so that he can restrict his competition or bidding to only premium jobs.
Admittedly, this will only provide cosmetic satisfaction to Bernhard, as the middle and low-end jobs haven't actually disappeared from this site (or from the real world), just that they have been blanketed out for Bernhard (or ostrich-ised out, to use Lincoln's term).
The thing is, no individual translator, nor any site like this, can really change how the translation situation is out there on the ground. No amount of ranting, complaining, or tearing off of hair will make the low-end jobs disappear. But we can choose to ignore them or be complacent about them - it will do good to our psychological health.
And, my advice to Bernhard, and others like him, (wholly unsolicited, of course) is to concentrate on moving up the value chain. My perception is that they are all stuck in the middle segment and are finding it hot and stifling there. Instead of complaining about the low rates and unfair (in their view) competition in their segment, the right approach would be to reskill and move up the chain where the clime is more pleasanter (all air-conditioned, suited, and marbled!).
A couple of centuries ago, the steel industry was cutting edge, and Britain, and later Germany, and other countries of Europe, and later still US, took the lead in this industry and related technologies. Some of the earliest billionaires of America were steel magnates - JP Morgan, Andrew Carneige, etc.
Other dominant industries of those times were oil, railroad, automobiles, etc.
But soon, other parts of the world (starting with Japan, and later South Korea, and now China) mastered these technologies and started producing these much cheaper, so much so that, all these industries declined and even disappeared from the scene in their originator countries.
Did this destroy these countries? No, they moved on to more profitable ventures - computers, software, or simply financing - and became even more richer.
That is the way to go for very industry, country, and every practitioner of every trade. You have to move up the chain to stay relevant and profitable.
A possible career path for translators could be something like this -
1. Make an entry
You are at this stage only clear about one thing - that you want to be a translator and think that you have the required skill-set to become one. The only way to test this is to take the plunge. You will make mistakes, but you will learn along the way. Give yourself a couple of years to make up your mind one way or the other about becoming a professional translator.
Much of the 3 cent per word work is done by this entry-level work force, and it forms the backbone of the umpteen agencies that promise same day turn around of a 10,000 word engineering manual of on a nuclear power plant at a very reasonable price of 500 dollars.
2. Become a top-level translator in the middle segment
Once you have decided, acquire excellent command over source and target language, relevant educational and professional degrees, and acquire specialization in a couple of clearly defined areas. Move to a congenial translation market, if you happen to live in a place where not much translation is happening. This might mean moving to a large city or another country.
You should try to achieve this within a few years of starting your translation career.
At this stage, you are doing rather well as a translator, and many freelance translators opt to continue in this stage. But if you are the ambitious, unhappy type, you should move to the next level.
3. Try to break into the premium segment by getting high-value direct clients
To do this, the freelancer model may prove to be inadequate. You might have to team up with fellow translators, hire staff (including translators) to look after administration, finance, marketing, and related tasks. Leave the comfort of your desktop and travel more to meet clients, negotiate with them, chit-chat with them, and develop and nurture business contacts. In effect, set up a proper business.
At this stage, you are comparable to any successful sole-proprietor professional like a doctor, dentist, lawyer, charted accountant, etc.
4. Become a full-fledged business
Once you have set up a business, you will get less and less time to actually translate, as other activities would take up most of your time, but you will start making much more money than is possible by just being a freelancer.
Your business model can take various forms:
- if you have been lucky enough to find many high-value direct clients, you can continue being a translator serving them, but outsourcing other work such as admin, book-keeping, financing, office management, etc. to your paid staff.
- you could team up with a couple of fellow translators and set up an informal arrangement where you collectively bid and do jobs. This widens your clientele and skill-set and also the time available to you and you can make more money this way, than by working alone.
- set up as a mom-and-pop outsourcer outfit - you and your partner can work together, doing some of the translation yourself but also outsourcing to other tested, trusted, freelance translators.
- set up a niche translation agency working only on specific fields like medicine, legal, IT, etc.
- become an all purpose, all languages, all services (interpretation, DTP, web design, etc. etc., in addition to vanilla translation) mega agencies, like the ones posting some of the 3 cent jobs on proz.com!
5. Just move on to something else
Or finally, just move on to some other more lucrative profession or career.
[Edited at 2015-04-22 05:22 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | If you believe translation is a "global market"... | Apr 22, 2015 |
Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
I agree that location matters to a degree. But I take a rather global view of our profession.
...then why do you expect everyone, everywhere to set their rates in accordance with what is considered "professional" (if there even exists a common opinion on what it means and what price tag it carries) in a certain country or region? I am not sure you are aware of the cost of living in many parts of the world if you believe the income of "professionals" around the world varies only "to a degree" instead of a whole order of magnitude.
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Michael Wetzel wrote:
The ProZ job board is not a reverse-auction platform; it is misused by a lot of stupid translators and agencies to conduct reverse auctions. Most reasonable people are not out to buy cheap crap, although I would tend to agree that there is a disproportionately high number of people looking to buy cheap crap among those posting calls for offers on online job boards.
A reverse auction does not necessarily mean an extreme race to the bottom where only the lowest price matters. A reverse auction is a setting where sellers and not buyers enter competitive bids.
Regarding most people, I think they aren't out there to buy cheap crap, but they are out there to find something affordable. I believe it's quite likely that the average translation buyer actually feels a certain form of pressure to buy more cheaply, i.e. an impulse which says that translation ough to be cheap. A bit like beer as opposed to wine (even though quality ales can command quite high prices, more expensive than the typical acceptable table wine).
To mitigate the reverse auction propensity, quotation system should deemphasize numerical variables such as prices and deadlines, as well as the word 'quote' (as it is exactly the buyer's receiving multiple quotations from potential sellers what defines and constitutes a reverse auction), in favour of making individual qualifications more prominent and reducing the fundamental 'sameness' of all translators that drives prices down even for qualified professionals who do not participate in a race to the bottom and reasonably responsible translation buyers who are not out there to find the cheapest prices at the expense of quality.
This is similar to what German lawyers observed when tackling their marketing situation — the clients' inability to measure the quality of legal advice and other legal services (e.g. drafting, representation etc.) made the quality disappear as a useful variable. Hence there was a shift to client service, which they seemed to approach with characteristic German meticulousness and almost obsessive dedication and perfectionism that they share with the Japanese, for example. That made quality exit the stage except as something taken for granted that had better not be proved to be less than the perfection taken for granted.
And the above is not where we want translation to go, even though it is already quite far gone in that direction — for starters, look at the emphasis translation agencies and Stockholm-Syndrome-afflicted translators put on pure client pleasure and satisfaction, the lenghts gone not to displease even an unreasonable client. The way the agency market sometimes seems to be entirely predicated on subjective satisfaction.
With all this said, we are still in a business setting, and thus quoting and price talk is inevitable.
The ProZ translator directory is actually very similar to what Alistair is describing, except that it requires a lot of clicking and I have my doubts about ranking according to Kudoz-points.
Instead of worrying about the job board, maybe the discussion should center around improving the directory function to make it more attractive and faster. On the rare occasions when I outsource, I generally use it, but it can be time consuming.
By contrast, standardized searches are not as brutally destructive to translators' standing when they need to be physically carried out by a prospective buyer by clicking through all the options, similarly as, let's say, at a social (dating) portal. It still forces some kind of comparison, and you can't really sort the findings by rates or anything like that. Even passingly, but the seeker still has to look at people's faces and postnominals and even biographical entries to some extent.
Without the above, translation becomes a commodity.
| | | | | calls for offers and reverse auctions | Apr 22, 2015 |
I don't want to argue about words (particularly not when I might have chosen the wrong ones), but I would think that the standard procedure for any rational person who is looking to buy a service (and has not received a clear recommendation from someone they strongly trust) is to gather together at least three offers and then compare them and pick the best one. (I would call that "normal" or a "call for offers," but maybe it is properly called a "reverse auction.")
If a lot of peopl... See more I don't want to argue about words (particularly not when I might have chosen the wrong ones), but I would think that the standard procedure for any rational person who is looking to buy a service (and has not received a clear recommendation from someone they strongly trust) is to gather together at least three offers and then compare them and pick the best one. (I would call that "normal" or a "call for offers," but maybe it is properly called a "reverse auction.")
If a lot of people feel that translation ought to be cheap, then that is fine, who cares? There are a lot of people who feel that translations primarily need to be good.
The one time that I submitted a project to the job board (the appendix of a book that I translated contained a relevant court decision), most or all of those interested made a significant effort to present themselves and their qualifications in addition to mentioning their fees and whether they could meet the proposed deadline. This information was also essential for my decision: 3 of around 15 of the applicants met my minimum requirements (UK legal background and native speaker of English), one got rejected for a suspiciously low offer (.06 EUR) and I took the second-most expensive (.10 EUR), because I couldn't see any substantial difference between my chances with him and the most expensive (.12 EUR, which I would also have been perfectly willing to pay and who I will probably try out at the next opportunity). I think that is more or less how things ought to work and the job board does not represent an obstacle to their working that way.
In looking for a translator, I primarily care about their qualifications in the relevant field. I speciallize in the field of art and, unfortunately, every third translator throws "Art/literary" (usually with 5+ other entirely unrelated fields) into their profile, although they are mostly mind-numbingly incompetent and don't take the texts seriously anyway. It takes a long time to search through people's descriptions in the directory and find what I am looking for. ▲ Collapse
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Call me 'provider-centric' or whatever, but I just think buyers should not be able to just name the parameters and have a number of competitive tailored quotes thrown back at them. They should have to come to the providers, not the providers to them.
Unfortunately, public procurement habits are rubbing down on corporations, small biz and even consumers eventually.
| | | | Lincoln Hui
Hong Kong
Local time: 06:50
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
| They can coexist | Apr 22, 2015 |
Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz wrote:
Call me 'provider-centric' or whatever, but I just think buyers should not be able to just name the parameters and have a number of competitive tailored quotes thrown back at them. They should have to come to the providers, not the providers to them.
Unfortunately, public procurement habits are rubbing down on corporations, small biz and even consumers eventually.
Both methods exist to some extent in all industries (at least where it's possible for such models to exist). The job board is such a miniscule part of business and of ProZ that I find any hand-wringing over it to be a waste of time. It's something that ProZ has that other directory services may not have and that's all.
| | | | | But who makes rates go down? | Apr 22, 2015 |
Certainly not the market itself. The translation market today is overcrowded by pseudo-professionals who think that they can translate because they "know" how to say a few words in a different language, not to mention unscrupulous people trying to make the most of something they don't master. Those who are familiar with the notion of "interlanguage" will understand.
This demeaning concept of translation today has turned our PROFESSION into an undervalued activity. Then who sets the... See more Certainly not the market itself. The translation market today is overcrowded by pseudo-professionals who think that they can translate because they "know" how to say a few words in a different language, not to mention unscrupulous people trying to make the most of something they don't master. Those who are familiar with the notion of "interlanguage" will understand.
This demeaning concept of translation today has turned our PROFESSION into an undervalued activity. Then who sets the standards and, therefore, the rates? I think that witnessing what I mentioned above without doing anything to change it makes you part of the problem, not the solution - including sites and people invoking the "today market" argument.
If the outcome of my work is as professional as that carried out in a "developed country", why shouldn't I charge accordingly? Personally, I do not charge peanuts.
[Edited at 2015-04-22 20:43 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Ours is a free market and I like it that way. I do not think Proz.com is in a position or under any obligation to impose a certain minimum rate level.
Promoting healthy rate levels is our duty as professionals: never accept abusive job proposals, and if you so wish, report your rate to low-pay posters so that they know what the market rates are really like.
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Ours is a free market and I like it that way. I do not think Proz.com is in a position or under any obligation to impose a certain minimum rate level.
Promoting healthy rate levels is our duty as professionals: never accept abusive job proposals, and if you so wish, report your rate to low-pay posters so that they know what the market rates are really like.
In the free market there is something called dumping, which is a practice against the competition law.
[Editado a las 2015-04-27 15:30 GMT]
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Ours is a free market and I like it that way. I do not think Proz.com is in a position or under any obligation to impose a certain minimum rate level.
Promoting healthy rate levels is our duty as professionals: never accept abusive job proposals, and if you so wish, report your rate to low-pay posters so that they know what the market rates are really like.
In the free market there is something called dumping, which is a practice against the competition law.
[Editado a las 2015-04-27 15:30 GMT]
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 04:20
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | Would the moderators clear up? | May 11, 2015 |
Ana Sánchez Maragoto wrote: Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Ours is a free market and I like it that way. I do not think Proz.com is in a position or under any obligation to impose a certain minimum rate level.
Promoting healthy rate levels is our duty as professionals: never accept abusive job proposals, and if you so wish, report your rate to low-pay posters so that they know what the market rates are really like. In the free market there is something called dumping, which is a practice against the competition law. [Editado a las 2015-04-27 15:30 GMT]
You certainly have done a lot of dumping on this thread. Would the moderators step in and do the needful and clear the clutter?
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