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Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Dan Lucas wrote:
I have no free time today, so I counteroffer with Friday. We'll see how that goes.
"Of course, Friday is fine" says the client expansively.
"Of course"?? Well. Would have helped if you'd have included that option in the offer...
Problem resolved, anyway.
Dan
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | This wheel's on fire | Mar 14 |
Everything is starting to spin just slightly out of control.
Yesterday I worked late into the night, but I was a couple of thousand characters short on my interim submission on the long-term project. As the project manager said, it's only a guide. Yes, but I will still need to make it up to hit the overall deadline.
One of my regular clients responds to my ema... See more Everything is starting to spin just slightly out of control.
Yesterday I worked late into the night, but I was a couple of thousand characters short on my interim submission on the long-term project. As the project manager said, it's only a guide. Yes, but I will still need to make it up to hit the overall deadline.
One of my regular clients responds to my email underlining the likely shortfall in the aggregate volume for the dozens of jobs they want me to put into my schedule for earnings season. Her tone is conciliatory and she accepts that variations occur, but points out that there is a lot that is simply not under their control. Which is fair. I thank her.
Another client, the one I mentioned a couple of posts ago, who only ever wants a couple of jobs done, and those always in the middle of the busy season (繁忙期), has sent an email asking me to do just a couple of jobs, in the middle of the busy season.
I haven't yet responded, but I need to. The dates they have requested in mid-May are already quite crowded. I don't really want to refuse, given that I did these documents last year for the same client and end client, and the year before, so I'm feeling a bit of "supply responsibility" (供給責任). But I might gently point out that given the very limited business we do together, she cannot expect me to prioritize such projects in future.
Out of the blue I have had an inquiry from an agency in Japan about financial translation. I have therefore had two inquiries from prospective clients in the course of as many weeks, which is unusual. I can find out almost nothing about this agency (nothing on the Blue Board, or in Payment Practices) other than that they have been in business for a long time. That in itself means very little, of course. They want a free trial, which is not normally a problem for me, but 800 characters is longer than I would normally like. I will respond, but when I tell them my standard rate they usually go away. We shall see, but anyway I'm too busy at the moment.
Finally, the smallish job requested by a different client as a follow-up to the large project I submitted back in the autumn of 2023 turns out to be nearly 6000 characters instead of 2000, and the PM is suggesting a fairly tight deadline. If I had nothing else on I would agree, but that isn't the case. I will ask for another couple of days. I'm sure they can find that given that there has been a four-month gap...
The new prospective client who wants me to do the daily job for them has not yet got back to me on the nitty-gritty of timings and so on. That's fine, I have enough on my plate. Maybe it won't go ahead.
How many characters today? As many as I can unreasonably handle.
And for the next day, and for the day after that.
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Today is White Day, when men "repay" their women for Valentine's Day, so I have left a box of chocolates and a card on the kitchen counter for my wife. Her favourites are Leonidas and Pierre Marcolini, but she's getting something chic and local instead this year.
Dan ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Dan Lucas wrote:
Finally, the smallish job requested by a different client as a follow-up to the large project I submitted back in the autumn of 2023 turns out to be nearly 6000 characters instead of 2000, and the PM is suggesting a fairly tight deadline.
The new prospective client who wants me to do the daily job for them has not yet got back to me on the nitty-gritty of timings and so on.
First client got back to me mid-morning with a much more relaxed deadline at the end of next week, a gesture which I appreciated.
The prospective new client contacted me around lunchtime to let me know that they want me to do a paid trial next week. She says they are talking to multiple translators, which would make sense.
I'm still under the gun, though.
Dan
| | | | Michael Hughes
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2022)
Japanese to English
+ ...
| The idea that Dan Lucas should have to do a trial... | Mar 14 |
... paid or not, for a financial translation gig, would probably seem bizarre to translators of most other language pairs. Yet it seems to be a thing for the majority of translation agencies in Japan (though not without some exceptions). I guess it's just to cover themselves or something.
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | To be fair, I think testing is an issue that goes beyond Japanese to English translation | Mar 15 |
Michael Hughes wrote:
I guess it's just to cover themselves or something.
Well, the whole trials thing is a vexed question, isn't it.
From the prospective client's perspective, I'm just another freelancer. I believe that I have a certain level of competence in my field, and that I am reliable and conscientious, but they don't know that.
As for trials, I see them as an inevitable consequence of there not being an obvious international benchmark for translation quality. National standards might in theory mitigate the problem, but one can understand why a client in Japan might not accept without verification a translation credential originating from, say, an organization based in France.
To go back to your point, in terms of our pair I do consider the risk-averse nature of Japanese society to be a specific factor that exacerbates this general tendency to rely on trials.
Eurocentricism
This lack of international standards is the main reason I have not bothered to get any further qualifications beyond the JLPT N1. I find a lot of the discussion about things like the DipTrans and MITI so parochial in its focus on European and nearby languages that it's hard to take it seriously.
Clients on the other side of the world do not necessarily respect either the DipTrans or MITI certification, to name two UK credentials. I doubt if any of my clients have even heard of either organization. What does a client in Indonesia care for CIOL? European translators may roll their eyes, but Indonesia is the 16th largest economy in the world, growing rapidly, and comprising a market of nearly 300 million people.
You'd think from discussions on ProZ.com that, for example, tiny Finland is more important. Maybe strictly in terms of GDP per capita today that is the case, but where do people think the growth opportunities are going to be over the next 20 years? Take Thailand as another example. We have a forum member working in the Thai-English pair who seems to be making an excellent living, certainly better than most freelancers in European languages (and that's not because he lives in a low-cost country).
But anyway.
The other issue is that finance is a broad church. While I deal with things like kessan tanshin, presentation materials, and integrated reports almost every day, there is a lot more to finance than corporate filings, IR, ESG and corporate governance. I know nothing about the insurance industry, for example, while one of our peers in J-NET actually worked in that market for years. I don't know whether they do any business in it now.
Finance: there's a lot of it
By the same token, I would certainly know how to translate an analyst's report (having written many myself), but a derivatives contract is a different thing altogether, even though it still finance and is associated with the same market/jurisdiction. As it happens I have translated such contracts, and it certainly didn't flow as smoothly as my usual work. To frame it differently, while a secondary school teacher of chemistry and an admissions officer at a Russell Group university are both involved in education, those are very different roles. So one's experience and knowledge are not necessarily fungible assets within finance itself.
This particular trial seeks to test my competence in an area that is slightly outside my usual patch, and it is precisely because it is a little bit different to my usual fare that I'm interested. It's a chance to learn something new. From the client's perspective, they probably have two or three candidates and they want to see whether they all perform similarly in real-world circumstances.
That will of course include an evaluation of the translation itself, but I imagine it will also involve an assessment of whether the freelancer is actually following the instructions, whether they deliver things in the right format, and whether they deliver on time, and so on. In a recent thread somebody noted that about a third of people submitting trials don't even use a spellchecker, so those go straight into the bin. If true, that is astonishing, and I imagine clients are fed up of being astonished like that.
Anyway, I will be up with the lark on the specified day next week, get the job turned round as quickly and as carefully as I can, and hope to grab the gig. If some other person gets the job then congratulations to them, and I hope that the client's project is successful.
EDIT I have just received some banking-related forms to fill in from this client...
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As for the here and now, I am planning to refuse all new work until I complete this long-term project, which needs to be submitted in the middle of next week. It is doable but it is going to be a hard slog. From what I can see, most of the repetitions and fuzzy matches are in the final third of the file so that should help.
The client to whom I submitted a small job yesterday has responded and asked me to translate the captions of the chart that was included in the Word file but that they did not specify as being required. It's only a few characters, so I type it out in an email and send it off before 7 a.m. GMT. Done.
I have had a commendably swift response from the prospective client who approached me yesterday about financial translation. They have come back with the usual queries, but I notice they haven't explicitly accepted my rate, which I was careful to state up front.
I will have to insist that they do so before I undertake the trial. I predict that they will try and fudge it and say "Oh, we don't know how good you are, so we can't agree just yet". I will not accept that given that they want a free trial from me. It was they who approached me, not vice versa, and they are under no obligation to put business my way even if I do pass the trial.
Dan
| | | | | Is Japan really so different? | Mar 15 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
To go back to your point, in terms of our pair I do consider the risk-averse nature of Japanese society to be a specific factor that exacerbates this general tendency to rely on trials.
That may be true, but the first job for any serious customer anywhere is going to be a test, whether or not it is presented as such.
Clients on the other side of the world do not necessarily respect either the DipTrans or MITI certification, to name two UK credentials. I doubt if any of my clients have even heard of either organization.
Nor mine.
You'd think from discussions on ProZ.com that, for example, tiny Finland is more important. Maybe strictly in terms of GDP per capita today that is the case, but where do people think the growth opportunities are going to be over the next 20 years?
Translators don't generally choose their languages though. It tends to be the other way around.
We have a forum member working in the Thai-English pair who seems to be making an excellent living, certainly better than most freelancers in European languages (and that's not because he lives in a low-cost country).
That's because he proudly churns out 10,000+ words a day...
Most people here are European so it's only natural that we work in European languages and focus on Europe. That's partly why your posts here are interesting. Your world is slightly different - but it doesn't seem to be massively different.
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | Not easy to test the assertion that Japan is different, or quantify any such difference | Mar 15 |
Christopher Schröder wrote:
That may be true, but the first job for any serious customer anywhere is going to be a test, whether or not it is presented as such.
An excellent point... Something for me to keep in mind over the next few days.
Translators don't generally choose their languages though. It tends to be the other way around.
Yes and no. I would argue that we choose our languages, but not necessarily thinking that we will end up translating them!
That's because he proudly churns out 10,000+ words a day...
I don't know whether that is the case or not, but I don't think it matters, provided that he has a fulfilling life - and he certainly seems happy enough.
Success in this business is not easy to achieve, even if you're translating the language of a wealthy and well-established country (which describes Japanese), supported by copious resources and written in a script that most of the world already knows how to write (which describes most European languages, including English).
Given that the translator in question has taken on a minor, under-resourced, non-romanized Asian language spoken only in a single developing country that has been roiled by political instability, and made a roaring success of it against the odds, I think he's justified in feeling a little pride...
Regards,
Dan
[Edited at 2024-03-15 18:40 GMT]
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
The client that wants the daily project doing, for which I have a trial next week, is moving with unexpected speed and organization. I have been sent an electronic contract to sign (in English!), which contained no nasty surprises, have been granted access to the online drive where the documents will be stored, and have been asked about payment preferences and so on.
... See more
The client that wants the daily project doing, for which I have a trial next week, is moving with unexpected speed and organization. I have been sent an electronic contract to sign (in English!), which contained no nasty surprises, have been granted access to the online drive where the documents will be stored, and have been asked about payment preferences and so on.
I have so far interacted with three staff directly, all of whom are Japanese, but they are showing a celerity that in my experience (subjective though it doubtless is; pace Chris) is atypical of a Japanese company. Maybe the fact that the firm is domiciled in Asia reflects a certain startup-like urgency among management that would not be typical of a larger outfit headquartered in Tokyo. Evidently they decided that they did not want to establish a corporation back home but whether, as I infer, that is due to the bureaucracy and cost of such procedures in Japan I do not know. Nor, at this stage, would it be politic to ask...
Anyway, I have downloaded a dozen or so previous daily documents and had a look at the content to get a sense of what they require. I have also set up a project in my CAT tool to ensure that I can process the trial efficiently.
Let's see how it goes. Maybe I don't get the gig. Maybe I get it, but the client discontinues it after a couple of weeks. Maybe I get it and it continues but I find that I don't like the work. Either way, the amounts involved are not large, so we're not talking about life-changing sums of money. It's the experience more than the cash that is the lure.
A pretty dawn here today, after several rainy mornings.
Lots of work for me to do on the long-term project. I'm starting to get back up to a reasonable speed, but today and tomorrow will be key.
Regards,
Dan ▲ Collapse
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER
Dan Lucas wrote:
The client that wants the daily project doing, for which I have a trial next week, is moving with unexpected speed and organization.
Client has answered email over the weekend. Not sure if that's good or bad.
After some thought about the nature of what this client does, it has occurred to me that this is a direct client (there are actually a number of entities involved in the project and it is not entirely clear how they interact, hence my confusion) and if so, my first. Of course, it may go no further than this one trial job.
In theory I might have under-quoted them by using my standard rate but I don't think its status as a direct client actually affects the nature of what I'm doing, at least so far. They only want one pair of eyes on the job, with any additional checking performed in-house by themselves.
We shall see.
Dan
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | The Legend of Badger Hollow | Mar 17 |
A short one today, because I have a lot to do. I completed a fair amount of the long-term project yesterday and today I need to be equally disciplined.
One of the things I do is keep a very simple journal every day. Sometimes I have a lot to say, sometimes (when I'm very busy at work, for example) I have almost nothing to say, but when I see something interesting or new on my morning walks, I make an entry in my daily journal.
As an example, you may have noticed that i... See more A short one today, because I have a lot to do. I completed a fair amount of the long-term project yesterday and today I need to be equally disciplined.
One of the things I do is keep a very simple journal every day. Sometimes I have a lot to say, sometimes (when I'm very busy at work, for example) I have almost nothing to say, but when I see something interesting or new on my morning walks, I make an entry in my daily journal.
As an example, you may have noticed that in this thread I have mentioned "badger hollow" once or twice. This is a part of the path at the eastern end of the woodland that dips down before rising up. In mid-June last year I was walking through that part of the path, and the dog was sniffing something in the undergrowth, when something moved on the path ahead of us.
It was a smallish badger, clearly not fully grown, which was ambling down the path towards me with the morning light behind it. It took me a second to fully realize what it was. The badger stopped and looked at me, probably not even five yards away. I whipped the lead out of my pocket, got it around the neck of the dog before he noticed our stripey little friend, and hung on.
Predictably, once he did notice he roared and yelled and shouted horrible threats at the little badger, but I made sure he didn't get any closer. The badger stood there for a few seconds and then understandably decided that there were better places to be, turned round and trotted off unhurriedly with that distinctive badger gait.
According to my journal, I saw it several times over the next two weeks, then once again in August. I guess it survived. Badgers are sturdy things with no natural predators in the UK.
From that time on that part of the path has been labelled Badger Hollow in my mind.
I wonder if I will see it again this year?
Dan ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | Unacceptable translation rates (mine, apparently) | Mar 18 |
As I start writing this it is 07:04 and I have already begun, completed, and submitted my first job of the day. In one sense this is rather sad, in another it is simply a realistic aspect of having a client in Asia who wants a daily turnaround. The trial is done, and whether this particular client decides to make it a regular thing, and whether they choose me to do it, is not for me to decide.
So that is one prospective new client out of the way for now.
I have had a commendably swift response from the prospective client who approached me yesterday about financial translation. They have come back with the usual queries, but I notice they haven't explicitly accepted my rate, which I was careful to state up front.
I will have to insist that they do so before I undertake the trial.
This quote above is from last Friday's post. Over the weekend I responded to the email sent by the other prospective client, asking them to explicitly accept the rate I had quoted them. I pointed out that there is no point going forward if there is no agreement on rates. I also outlined a few other issues - payment to my UK bank account and so on - to ensure that we were on the same page.
As it turned out, we were not. The person involved got back to me this morning telling me that their current business would not be able to support my rate, but saying that they would contact me in future if that changed. That's very definitely a polite "don't call us, we'll call you" response.
I don't blame them. The person with whom I was corresponding actually CC'ed a person who appears, looking at the website, to be the owner of the company. If you are including the president in conversations, it must be a fairly small outfit. I would imagine that in Japanese to English financial translation (which tends to involve complex documents and many people) it is difficult for them to compete head-on with the larger firms with which I already do business, and the figure I quoted was not a low rate. From my perspective it was, as they say in Japanese, a "dame-moto" (駄目元) call i.e. I made it in the knowledge that I would be no worse off even if it did not succeed.
I could have dropped the rate slightly for them, but even then they may not have been able to accept, and the fact is that I can get a decent amount of work at the rate I proposed to them. This new client would have competed directly for capacity with existing clients, and it would be economically irrational to make myself so busy that I cannot respond clients to whom I charge a higher rate. I would have liked to diversify my client base further, but it was not to be.
I made good progress with the long-term project over the weekend, and am confident that I will hit the Thursday morning (JST) deadline. The client has got back to me with details of the other three files in the sequence. It looks to me as if they will total a bit more than 15,000 characters, which will be a solid ending to the month. Delivery dates on Monday and Wednesday of next week.
With distractions like trials for prospective clients out of the way, I can also start preparing on the 6000 character-job I received last week as an extension to the huge project I submitted back in October, which is due on Friday.
Onwards and upwards.
Dan
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | White, gold and black against the blue | Mar 18 |
I got a reasonable amount of work done today, despite a rather rocky start. Initially it was easy going, but then I ran into a sticky part of the translation and my head is now full of retirement benefit obligations, hedging policies, and actuarial gains and losses. Still, I can see the end of the file in the distance. Another big push tomorrow and it should be more or less done.
Away from my desk, it was a mostly sunny and bright day here, and somebody was spotted mowing the lawn a... See more I got a reasonable amount of work done today, despite a rather rocky start. Initially it was easy going, but then I ran into a sticky part of the translation and my head is now full of retirement benefit obligations, hedging policies, and actuarial gains and losses. Still, I can see the end of the file in the distance. Another big push tomorrow and it should be more or less done.
Away from my desk, it was a mostly sunny and bright day here, and somebody was spotted mowing the lawn at a neighboring property. The grass never sleeps for long in this part of the UK, and our own lawn is starting to look a bit bushy. It will soon be time to get it cut.
Within a week or so I expect the flowering of the first blackthorn, depicted beautifully here by the late but reliably excellent Robert Gillmor. There are no guarantees of blue skies...
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | The lure of the known | Mar 19 |
(EDIT Forgot to say that when taking this photograph I was looking at the contrails in the sky and thinking that some of the trees visible at the bottom of the picture were probably planted before aeroplanes had even been invented - that's a different kind of stability.)
More work on the long-term project today. I have no explicit goal for the number of charact... See more
(EDIT Forgot to say that when taking this photograph I was looking at the contrails in the sky and thinking that some of the trees visible at the bottom of the picture were probably planted before aeroplanes had even been invented - that's a different kind of stability.)
More work on the long-term project today. I have no explicit goal for the number of characters, but hope to get within spitting distance of the end by this evening. However, a different project manager has pinged me with an inquiry about capacity next week for a different client, basically internal materials for a financial company.
I have translated earlier incarnations of these documents in the past, which is why the PM has come to me. I would like to take the whole thing on, but it is very large and I simply don't have the capacity before the end of the month. The PM is aware of that and simply asks me how many characters I can handle. I give them a figure.
Probably they will split it between at least two translators. It may be that another freelancer can offer them the whole thing (although I doubt it), so I may get none. If I do get a slice of this I would be unpleasantly busy between now and the middle of next week, but it would be a useful fillip to monthly revenues.
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Return business
On this morning's walk I was ruminating on the subject of stability. One of my clients is translation agency X, and they tend to send me work for the same end clients, which is a feature of all my Japanese agency clients. Although I have not seen it explicitly stated as such, they seem to value the consistency and the gradual accumulation of know-how and experience with a particular end client. I think this is more an issue with financial translation than, say, technical, but maybe others in my pair can comment on that.
Looking at my records, I see that the first time I translated a document for the end client for which I am currently translating the securities report (often shortened to 有報, "yuho" in Japanese), was 2017. The next occurrence was a couple of projects in 2019. Given that back then the end client didn't translate much of anything into English, I suspect that they were fumbling their way towards working out what they needed to get translated and at what level of frequency.
In 2020 I got four projects, and again in 2021, then around twice that in 2022 and 2023. My best guess is that the company is now up to cruising speed, and has committed to translating the kessan tanshin (決算短信) and the presentation materials (決算説明会資料) for the earnings briefing on a quarterly basis.
What is interesting is that although I translated those documents for them in 2020 and 2021, they were not released publicly. If you go to their website, those documents that I painstakingly translated do not exist. Maybe they were only distributed on a limited basis to visiting investors? That would certainly not be unexpected for the presentation materials.
"I don't know you"
Back in the 1990s, in the Bad Old Days of Japanese so-called IR, many companies simply had no materials for investors, other than the kessan tanshin. A significant fraction of companies wouldn't even let you visit them if they didn't already know you. But how can you get to know the company if they don't let you visit? The answer was that the investment banking or corporate sales people (法人部) would introduce you, but if you didn't work for a securities company or bank that had relationships with the company, you were right out of luck. I was more than once flatly told that the company in question only spoke to analysts from their main underwriter (主幹事証券会社). And that was that.
[To be fair, there were always companies who did make an effort, and would see analysts and investors. I initially worked in the Kitahama financial district of Osaka, and there was a steady trickle of investors wanting to see Fast Retailing, which was based further west in Yamaguchi. Although the company had existed for a few decades, the new young president was taking it places and it was basically viewed by the market as an exciting startup. I never visited them, because retail was not my sector, but investors were clearly impressed by this rapidly growing company. These days you may know it through what has become a global brand: Uniqlo.]
Anyway, I digress. At some point the end client of which I was speaking earlier began to make these translations available on their website, which is what one would expect. This latest project represents an expansion of their initiative. The introduction of Japan's corporate governance code has (finally!) forced even those Japanese companies that paid little attention to investor relations to get more serious, and given that foreign investors account for so much of the market, that means at least some translation into English.
Stocks that do not fulfill certain minimum requirements as regards liquidity and IR activities can be demoted from the Prime section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, even if they had until a couple of years ago felt quite secure squatting on the First Section of the TSE and ignoring the wishes of investors and shareholders.
This is important, because as I have said in the past, hostile takeovers of listed companies are effectively impossible in Japan, so shareholders have traditionally had very little leverage over management. The corporate governance code has changed that, and emphatically for the better. You still can't effect a hostile takeover of a listed company in Japan, but being demoted to a lower section of the TSE would be a significant blow to the prestige of a company.
A shortage of people
Labor shortages are already a real issue in Japan, and this is driving various changes, not only in places visible to the average person, such as chain restaurants, where use of automated order-taking and robots is now widespread, but also in white-collar jobs. Falling birth rates mean fewer new graduates, and more competition for them.
A company’s reputation and history (stability, basically) have always been extremely important for the average Japanese undergraduate deciding on a future place to work, and a company’s perceived position in the stock market does affect that perception.
Access to such talent is one of the major reasons that companies opt to be listed in the first place, even if they already have significant financial reserves and don't actually need the funding that would be provided by an IPO. It is not a hard-and-fast rule that a Japanese student in their final year of university will always choose the larger and more prestigious company, but that is the way to bet.
Things are changing, and I see companies explicitly committing to more active use of mid-career hires, for example. Nevertheless, the point is not that Japan doesn't change, because it does, but that the rest of the world is also changing - and usually far more rapidly.
Dan
[Edited at 2024-03-19 08:50 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | National security, personal insecurity | Mar 20 |
My life is busy enough without borrowing problems from elsewhere. So when I received a poorly written email yesterday from a representative of a UK agency with a miserable reputation, staffed mostly by people living outside the UK, I was immediately on my guard. I have seen this agency hawking a particular JA-EN project for at least the past six weeks, which suggests to me that they are having difficulty finding people.
I'm not surprised. The firm has a mixed score (manipulated?) on... See more My life is busy enough without borrowing problems from elsewhere. So when I received a poorly written email yesterday from a representative of a UK agency with a miserable reputation, staffed mostly by people living outside the UK, I was immediately on my guard. I have seen this agency hawking a particular JA-EN project for at least the past six weeks, which suggests to me that they are having difficulty finding people.
I'm not surprised. The firm has a mixed score (manipulated?) on the Blue Board and also on Payment Practices. It is notorious for imposing unilateral cuts on rates during difficult times. I see some of the older freelancers nodding their heads wisely. Yes, that one.
This agency has a project or series of projects requiring knowledge of a particular industry. It also requires a DBS and a security clearance. "We will sponsor the security clearance" they said. Well yes, I should jolly well think so. The agency representative gave an example, in the form of the document name, of the kind of document I would be required to translate. I looked up the file in the original Japanese and found that it was publicly available. The content for this particular (non-editable PDF) seemed within my capabilities. So far, so good.
Stop and think
Nevertheless, there was a lot to unpack here and far too many worrying elements, not least the agency itself. I don't think I have ever been accused of being shy and retiring in a professional context, so I plunged straight in.
I replied to the email by pointing out that the agency has a bad reputation, which is an immediate risk to the freelancer; that both the time spent applying for the DBS and security clearance would have to be paid for on an hourly basis; that I would need editable PDFs or would need to be paid by the hour for OCR and editing; that I would need to be able to use my own off-line tools; that no fuzzy matrix discounts would be offered; and that I would need to be paid within 30 days of submitting the invoice.
I also quoted a high rate, because this particular outfit is well-known for giving its suppliers problems of one kind or another. I would need a significant premium to work with such a company rather than with my impeccably well-behaved regular clients.
Will this get me the job? I hope not. I don't expect this person to come back with any kind of sensible response. I expect them to either ignore it, or to come up with a lot of bluster about how they are a reputable agency and how all those conditions are impossible, and then try to negotiate me down.
That's not a problem. I can fight my own corner. I have plenty of work and I don't need to worry about taking on this project or series of projects. If the conditions are right, I might consider it. Almost certainly the conditions will not be right.
What worries me is that some freelancer, and there really cannot be that many potential candidates, given that they must be able to translate highly technical Japanese and have lived continuously in the UK for at least five years, is going to look at all the above with concern, but allow themselves to be bullied into accepting the project.
Not only that, but they might well give a quote at some laughably low rate that the agency will accept with barely disguised glee.
Don't let them make their problem your problem
The translator will then spend the next several months going back and forth with the UK government trying to get a DBS and security clearance, while being hounded by the agency, and subsequently being coerced into accepting completely unrealistic deadlines to try and catch up on the time lost by having to deal with governmental bureaucracy. If you are a JA-EN translator based in the UK and you're considering taking this on, I strongly recommend that you think very carefully about what you're getting into.
Dear translator, I get that you want to be a nice person, that you want to help others, and that you like to be pleasant in your professional interactions. So do I. This is all laudable stuff. What you must not do is let those instincts be exploited by other people who will have absolutely no compunction about transferring all their problems to you.
This agency has taken on a project that they probably didn't want, at a price that probably is not going to allow them to make a profit unless they absolutely screw the translator involved in terms of rates and deadlines (for all we know, their agreement with the government may include penalties for late submission of the project). If they have a choice between profits for themselves and no profits for the translator, they will choose profits for themselves. This kind of agency doesn't give a fig about nurturing long-term relationships with freelancers.
Don't make this your problem. As I and many other more experienced people on this forum have repeatedly said, saying "No" is perhaps the single most important thing that a freelancer can do to raise their income over the medium to long term, and thus establish a modicum of security. Taking on jobs like this without imposing cast-iron conditions, in advance, is going to have the opposite effect.
Dan ▲ Collapse
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:07
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
TOPIC STARTER | Equinox done, another milestone past | Mar 21 |
Yesterday was a national holiday Japan (Vernal Equinox Day, 春分の日, "shunbun no hi"), so when I came downstairs I had no emails from any of my clients in Japan, and was able to get straight down to work. Last night I submitted the final tranche of the file on which I have been working since the beginning of the month. Due to an evening engagement in a nearby town that took l... See more Yesterday was a national holiday Japan (Vernal Equinox Day, 春分の日, "shunbun no hi"), so when I came downstairs I had no emails from any of my clients in Japan, and was able to get straight down to work. Last night I submitted the final tranche of the file on which I have been working since the beginning of the month. Due to an evening engagement in a nearby town that took longer than I expected, it was a bit of a scramble to get the final thousand characters done on time.
In the end I translated a bit over 80,000 characters of financial Japanese into English over the course of 20 days. I also tackled various projects from other clients over that period, so I estimate I have been averaging roughly 5000 characters a day. That's not a huge amount for a single day of work, but having to sustain that level has been quite an effort.
Today I must complete roughly 6000 characters of a separate job for a different client, which represents a few final (hopefully) revisions to the Japanese of a project I originally submitted back in October. Tomorrow I will be shifting my attention back to the end client for whom I submitted the large job yesterday. There are few other files for them that need translating (also so-called "yuho" or 有価証券報告書). That will probably keep me busy until the middle of next week.
I have had no further word from the Asian client for whom I did that trial for the recurring daily job earlier in the week. I imagine they are going through a few other candidates and seeing who suits them, and making a decision about whether to go ahead or not. Patience.
A few days ago I said that the blackthorn would be flowering soon, but on the way to our destination in the car yesterday I saw that the hedges are already white with blossom in places. The cherry in our garden is also flowering. The lawn could do with a cut. Some trees are unfolding tiny wrinkled leaves. Spring comes on apace, but so do client orders, and I must get back to my desk.
Dan ▲ Collapse
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