| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4 5 6 7] > | Pitiful-rate job offers on Proz Thread poster: Simon Bruni
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Abba Storgen (X)
United States
Local time: 22:24
Greek to English
+ ...
...have nothing to do with today's realities, where prices are determined by perceptions ("I live in a cheap country, therefore..." - that's a perception based on an irrelevant fact, and disguised as criterion). The translation industry was an industry even 15 years ago, and was never a Guild. What happened? People with lower ambitions than before, entered the industry, and they accepted lower rates. That's all.
Buying a house is not the goal anymore. Now the goal is to buy an iPhon... See more ...have nothing to do with today's realities, where prices are determined by perceptions ("I live in a cheap country, therefore..." - that's a perception based on an irrelevant fact, and disguised as criterion). The translation industry was an industry even 15 years ago, and was never a Guild. What happened? People with lower ambitions than before, entered the industry, and they accepted lower rates. That's all.
Buying a house is not the goal anymore. Now the goal is to buy an iPhone. Much cheaper and glows in the dark. And don't get me started with the ambitions of the new generation. They are educated to feel guilty about any ambitions. The agencies can have ambitions - not the translators.
Yes - there is an industry (the large agencies mostly). The translators are neither a Guild, nor an industry themselves.
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[On another note, since you mentioned it, a "guild" on a State scale, becomes a Confederation. Such as the European Union. Not a union yet, but a confederacy, a "Guild" of some sort. And the Eurozone. They avoided that mistake when they formed NAFTA. But the Eurozone issues a currency that does not belong to any individual country (and they do enforce strict "Guild style" rules over their members). Now, we all know what happens to confederate money... (and I hope it doesn't this time, by some divine intervention)].
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If translators stop shooting themselves in the foot, they will maybe form the characteristics of an industry as well.
And as a final note, 15 years ago the agencies were "our friends". Lately, I have seen lots of competition and hostility against the translator. Back then, we were on the same side of the river. Now the agency takes the side of the end client and adds 100%. It's the "anti-Occupy wall street": Take the money from the sole proprietor and give it to the large corporation... that's not good. A discouraged/dissapointed translator produces an inferior product. Good psychology and satisfaction are very important for this product.
What happened to the dissapointed translator: he migrated to smaller agencies that could pay him more. Thus, increasing the competition against the larger agencies, and motivating the creation of thousands of smaller ones. Market-wise it sounds good, but what happened then? The large ones reacted by reducing their prices to get their clients back. Which made things worse for all (end clients never pushed too much for lower prices, only very few of them). So... keep dissapointing the translators, who will react in unpredictable ways, and you' re just going to have a lot more unpredictable factors... the price wars did not benefit most agencies either, and among them, many that started it and lost about double from what they initially calculated as a healthy reduction to attract clients.
[Edited at 2012-01-30 10:00 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Part-timers supported by spouses or parents ??!! | Jan 30, 2012 |
Hello Eleftherios,
What is the basis for your assertion that (and I quote you) "most translators are part-timers, supported by spouses or parents"?
How on earth can you know that?
I am closely acquainted with five full-time translators who all earn decent livings from freelance translating, have done so for decades and are their families' main breadwinner. And I suspect that "most" translators who go to the trouble and expense of joining Proz are full-time professionals - altho... See more Hello Eleftherios,
What is the basis for your assertion that (and I quote you) "most translators are part-timers, supported by spouses or parents"?
How on earth can you know that?
I am closely acquainted with five full-time translators who all earn decent livings from freelance translating, have done so for decades and are their families' main breadwinner. And I suspect that "most" translators who go to the trouble and expense of joining Proz are full-time professionals - although I can't prove it.
As to pitiful-rate job offers, I agree. There are many such offers, some on this site and many more on others, but *no-one is obliged to accept them*.
Although we full-time professionals may not like such offers, I don't think outsourcers can be blamed for seeking the "best" (i.e. lowest) price.
Isn't it normal, when buying goods or services, to get several quotes or estimates? I had to have my roof repaired recently and didn't think it reprehensible of me to seek quotes from several builders. It was then up to me to choose the builder who made me the best offer - based not only on price but also on quality, reputation, special skills, etc. I could bargain with the builder and he could accept or reject my offer.
And when renewing my car insurance, I always shop around for the "best" price to suit my circumstances. Don't most people? The insurance company is free to accept or refuse my offer. Is that wrong?
It's just business.
Jenny ▲ Collapse
| | | | Simon Bruni 
United Kingdom
Local time: 04:24
Member (2009)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | It is just business, but we're bad at it | Jan 30, 2012 |
Jenny Forbes wrote:
Isn't it normal, when buying goods or services, to get several quotes or estimates?
It's just business.
Jenny
But do the services you mention have marketplace websites that purport to be a platform for professionals and yet drive prices down to unsustainable, unprofessional levels? I don't think dentists, lawyers or chartered accountants have this problem so why should we lie back and accept it?
| | | | Simon Bruni
United Kingdom
Local time: 04:24
Member (2009)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | Why can't there be a minimum level? | Jan 30, 2012 |
Continuing with the dentist/lawyer analogy... If you search around for a cheaper dentist or lawyer (or even a roofing company), you might find one that is more reasonably priced than another, but you will never find one that is willing to accept anything less than a sum that will ultimately mean a decent return. The roofing company may exploit its employees, but a freelancer is not an employee - we can choose not to be exploited and as paying customers of Proz.com I don't see why we shouldn't de... See more Continuing with the dentist/lawyer analogy... If you search around for a cheaper dentist or lawyer (or even a roofing company), you might find one that is more reasonably priced than another, but you will never find one that is willing to accept anything less than a sum that will ultimately mean a decent return. The roofing company may exploit its employees, but a freelancer is not an employee - we can choose not to be exploited and as paying customers of Proz.com I don't see why we shouldn't demand that they avoid encouraging exploitative practices. ▲ Collapse
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Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 05:24
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
..this is a profession anyone feels entitled to get into (without formal qualifications or training). It's just the sense of entitlement that is bizarre. They love it, it's fantastic, it's exciting, it's everything a typical hobbyst feels and experiences.
Say a doctor decides to earn some extra cash through translation. On the other hand, if I, as a professional linguist, decided to just land into the field of medical practice, because I simply "love" or "enjoy" it, I would probably... See more ..this is a profession anyone feels entitled to get into (without formal qualifications or training). It's just the sense of entitlement that is bizarre. They love it, it's fantastic, it's exciting, it's everything a typical hobbyst feels and experiences.
Say a doctor decides to earn some extra cash through translation. On the other hand, if I, as a professional linguist, decided to just land into the field of medical practice, because I simply "love" or "enjoy" it, I would probably be pronounced crazy.
Clients, translation agencies or job websites such as ProZ could never drag the rates down if the people providing the service did not support them by accepting to work at such rates and/or by offering such shameful rates.
You wouldn't believe what prices people offer in my language pair. $0.01 is O.K. for them.
Fortunately, there are some linguistic fields where amateurs are completely lost, and I am focusing and relying on those for my income (and translation is certainly not one of them). ▲ Collapse
| | | | Bunyan Chang
China
Local time: 11:24
English to Chinese
+ ...
| fair or unfair, it is a question | Jan 30, 2012 |
Bernhard Sulzer wrote: José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
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This whole situation is bound to disappear as more and more bottom-feeding outsourcers discover that if low quality translation is acceptable, free online machine translation will provide it. I am afraid it's more complicated than that. The issue is that many good services are rendered at unacceptable rates. As Iulia has pointed out, she seems to think EUR 0.02/word is a fair price. Bernhard
Of course it is a unfair rate as EUR 0.02/word to the developed countries such as USA, UK, Germany, Japan ect. However, it is a very fair price for most undeveloped countries, there are many translators accept a rate of 50RMB/1000 words, which means 0.05RMB per word; if you see from this rate, you will know that EUR 0.02/word that eqauls to RMB0.17 per word is actually a good one from those low-level Chinese translators.
| | | | Simon Bruni
United Kingdom
Local time: 04:24
Member (2009)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | The language pair is Spanish-English | Jan 30, 2012 |
Bunyan Chang wrote:
Of course it is a unfair rate as EUR 0.02/word to the developed countries such as USA, UK, Germany, Japan ect. However, it is a very fair price for most undeveloped countries, there are many translators accept a rate of 50RMB/1000 words, which means 0.05RMB per word; if you see from this rate, you will know that EUR 0.02/word that eqauls to RMB0.17 per word is actually a good one from those low-level Chinese translators.
The rate of 0.02 dollars in this forum post refers specifically to a Spanish-English job, a language pair in which 0.02 dollars is always an unfair price, no matter where you live. The same discussion could be had about very low Chinese translation prices, whatever they may be (I have no idea).
| | | | | Pricing issues | Jan 30, 2012 |
Reading the exchanges here, I wonder (again) if a lot of the genuine, full-time professionals haven't already migrated to the genuine professional association associations in their respective countries (most of which also run discussion groups and so on). That would explain why Proz has so many beginners who are actively asking for advice (which is very good -- asking for advice that is).
I've included a link below for some interesting input on factors that translators and other pro... See more Reading the exchanges here, I wonder (again) if a lot of the genuine, full-time professionals haven't already migrated to the genuine professional association associations in their respective countries (most of which also run discussion groups and so on). That would explain why Proz has so many beginners who are actively asking for advice (which is very good -- asking for advice that is).
I've included a link below for some interesting input on factors that translators and other providers of intellectual services should take into account for decisions on pricing and selecting market segments to focus on.
IMO, these are decisions that we should *all* be thinking about and addressing, regardless of language combination and subject-matter specialisms.
Note that the blogpost itself is very confused; the author misunderstands both pricing strategy and the translation market, I figure. But the comments are very good.
http://globaltolocallanguagesolutions.com/2012/01/23/an-unpopular-view-of-translation-pricing-for-todays-prosperous-translators/ ▲ Collapse
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Jessica Noyes
United States
Local time: 23:24
Member
Spanish to English
+ ...
| It happens to dentists as well | Jan 30, 2012 |
Simon Bruni wrote:
I don't think dentists, lawyers or chartered accountants have this problem so why should we lie back and accept it?
One of my neighbors paid one quarter of the cost of his tooth implants by having the procedure done in a pleasant Latin American country, and he and his wife had a beautiful holiday to boot. "Medical tourism" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_tourism) is becoming more and more common as prices for medical services rise sky high in the U.S. (and Canada for dentistry).
I am not sure that it would be logical for these medical professionals to charge U.S. rates in their countries merely because some of their patients are taking advantage of their country's lower cost of living.
| | | | Abba Storgen (X)
United States
Local time: 22:24
Greek to English
+ ...
| Medical tourism | Jan 30, 2012 |
"One of my neighbors paid one quarter of the cost of his tooth implants by having the procedure done in a pleasant Latin American country"
Alright - next time ask a client to go find a Greek translator in a small village in China.
My point is that of course you can find a dentist in China. However, translations are a monopoly of the people who know both languages very well.
Translators are so bad in business, that despite the fact they have a... See more "One of my neighbors paid one quarter of the cost of his tooth implants by having the procedure done in a pleasant Latin American country"
Alright - next time ask a client to go find a Greek translator in a small village in China.
My point is that of course you can find a dentist in China. However, translations are a monopoly of the people who know both languages very well.
Translators are so bad in business, that despite the fact they have an almost monopoly status (you can't ask from a Norwegian guy to translate a document in French if he doesn't speak the language very well), they manage to screw this up too!
Associations can't help.
"What is the basis for your assertion that (and I quote you) "most translators are part-timers, supported by spouses or parents"?
How on earth can you know that?"
a) Personal testimony (I know many of them)
b) Take a look at 100 profiles, randomly, and judge for yourself
c) There is no way for full timers with obligations to drive the overal prices down
d) In almost all cases where I participated in large groups (multiple language projects in which we exchanged messages with terminology etc and got to know each other), I was the older one by far.
e) Ask others who know more than 20-30 translators from associations, groups, meetings, interpretation assingment in international conferences, etc.
You can accumulate info from multiple sources.
Your question on "how on earth can you know that" proves another point: there is no statistic about us - because people come and go so rapidly and so many are part timers you can't really get a reliable statistic. However, proz could help, they have the database with their subscribers, paid and unpaid. It would only take them 15 minutes to get us some results: average age per language group or average age of all subscribers would be a good one. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Which sample? | Jan 30, 2012 |
Don't mean to butt in here, Elef, but where are you pulling your various "profiles" from?
My point was that there are silos in the industry -- and that people who congregate around watering hole A often don't have much to do with those at watering hole B.
Probably I wasn't clear about that; sorry!
In the case of statistics, you should be aware that even something as basic as *pricing* shows Proz figures well below those of professionals whose primary reference is a prof... See more Don't mean to butt in here, Elef, but where are you pulling your various "profiles" from?
My point was that there are silos in the industry -- and that people who congregate around watering hole A often don't have much to do with those at watering hole B.
Probably I wasn't clear about that; sorry!
In the case of statistics, you should be aware that even something as basic as *pricing* shows Proz figures well below those of professionals whose primary reference is a professional association. (See the annuals stats published by SFT, to take only that example.)
All that being said, I figure that translators ultimately work out their own comfort zone, their own goals and their own perception of where they want to be in the market. And I can fully understand why it may be less hassle for some to focus on Proz. No problem there.
There are also some very good non-professional-association-sponsored specialized discussion lists, which are another option.
So many options; makes the head spin, doesn't it? (Although it is good to keep one's eye on the bottom line, no?)
Chris ▲ Collapse
| | | | Abba Storgen (X)
United States
Local time: 22:24
Greek to English
+ ...
| One Solution for a 20% raise | Jan 30, 2012 |
One thing to give us 20% more:
There is a new category of agencies lately, they are small but many, the "intermediate agencies". These take the jobs from the end client and sell them to translation agencies or to other intermediate agencies. Purely parasitic role and mostly in the last 5-6 years (you all noticed it 5 yrs ago, didn't you... it hit your payment).
If we can find a way to work together with our agencies (our clients) to eliminate these "intermediate ... See more One thing to give us 20% more:
There is a new category of agencies lately, they are small but many, the "intermediate agencies". These take the jobs from the end client and sell them to translation agencies or to other intermediate agencies. Purely parasitic role and mostly in the last 5-6 years (you all noticed it 5 yrs ago, didn't you... it hit your payment).
If we can find a way to work together with our agencies (our clients) to eliminate these "intermediate brokers", we would all have saved 20% at least.
Educating end clients is a method. End clients are very interested on where their money goes - they would prefer that their money goes to people who work, that is, the actual translation agencies and the translators. ▲ Collapse
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Bunyan Chang wrote: Bernhard Sulzer wrote: José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
...
This whole situation is bound to disappear as more and more bottom-feeding outsourcers discover that if low quality translation is acceptable, free online machine translation will provide it. I am afraid it's more complicated than that. The issue is that many good services are rendered at unacceptable rates. As Iulia has pointed out, she seems to think EUR 0.02/word is a fair price. Bernhard Of course it is a unfair rate as EUR 0.02/word to the developed countries such as USA, UK, Germany, Japan ect. However, it is a very fair price for most undeveloped countries, there are many translators accept a rate of 50RMB/1000 words, which means 0.05RMB per word; if you see from this rate, you will know that EUR 0.02/word that eqauls to RMB0.17 per word is actually a good one from those low-level Chinese translators.
I was about to touch this very point, thanks, Chang, for preparing the scenario.
All right, EUR 2¢/w seems a fair price to translate from any language into good, current Romanian. What are the chances of finding an adequate professional to do it? Much higher within Romania than anywhere else. The same point applies to translation into Chinese inside China. So any translation into RO, CN, and possibly other languages would have lower average market rates than, for instance, FR/DE, regardless of the translator into RO or CN being physically located in Bucharest, Beijing, New York, Zurich, etc.
Now I'm definitely not an advocate of native translators only. My views on that are available at http://www.lamensdorf.com.br/native.html . However I'd add that experience counts: it took 27 years of professional experience translating into my native language, plus a governmental endorsement that I was deemed capable of doing it for official purposes, before I dared to translate into what is technically my non-native language. This happened some 12 years ago.
Luis Arri Cibils wrote:
Translation in Argentina is a well-developed profession, at least re the translators ‘education. Many universities and post-secondary institutions have 4-year programs in T&I. Just one of the associations of sworn translators, the CTPBA, the Colegio de Traductores de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, has almost as many members as ATA’s total membership (associate and active/certified members). And most of them work on the English-Spanish pair. In that pair, whatever happens in Argentina affects us all, wherever we are based.
Incidentally, two weeks ago I went to Buenos Aires on vacation, and had direct contact with the results. I am familiar with the oversupplied translation market in Argentina. I used the Buenos Aires bus service. Their buses cover a closed loop circuit, tourists buy a ticket for a certain period of time, during which they may board or step down from any of them at any os the 20 specified stops, and the buses come by every 20 minutes. I recall using a similar service in Boston, and many other cities have them.
The Bs. As. bus offers earphones to all passengers, who may select any from 10 languages and listen to a narration on what they are seeing at any time on the way. So I selected Portuguese, of course. A few things soon became obvious...
1) The narrator was a competent Brazilian professional.
2) The translation had been done by an Argentinean, who fell for several false cognates here and there. For instance, s/he translated inversión (= "investment") into PT as inversão (= "reversal"), instead of investimento (correct), and many others.
3) Whoever directed that recording did not speak Portuguese, as several scattered slips by the narrator - which would have been redone otherwise - were left in the final work.
On a certain stretch of the circuit, that Brazilian woman was replaced by an Argentinean man, who spoke a very amusing "Portuñol" (a pidgin mix of PT+ES), and the translation moved much closer to Spanish than the intended target, Portuguese. Possibly a new segment, added later.
No criticism on the job itself, however I can imagine how hard it was to find professionals to do it in Argentina, as dong this job in Brazil would have been much more expensive. I took a peek at the recording in English, and they managed to find better translators, as well as an unquestionably British speaker to record that. I've had to hire dubbers in English and Spanish here in Sao Paulo, and I know how hard it can be to find exotic talent.
On the other hand, I saw a group of Brazilian tourists in the famous Recoleta Cemetery, led by a guide who spoke flawless, accent-free Portuguese. Were it not for her quick and perfect pronunciation of names in Spanish, as well as her peculiar Porteño intonation, that guide could easily be taken for a Brazilian in Brazil. Yet how many of them can do it?
So availability sets the rate for each pair. Of course, as translators availability increases sharply in a country where the national language is the target, the rates for translation into that language are strongly influenced worldwide by the cost of living there. This makes translators outside their target language's homeland suffer or gain from that country's monetary standards, as the Internet makes them ubiquitous for translation purposes.
| | | | | | Claudio LR
Local time: 05:24
English to Italian
+ ...
| A different view... | Jan 30, 2012 |
Simon Bruni wrote:
Why can't there be a minimum level?
Some professions have minimum rates and other ways to restrict competition. Translation has no barriers to entry at all. So anyone can come, with no qualifications, no skills, they just have to lie on their CV and try to get a job at a low or not so low rate.
The downside of this is that some companies can have a poor image of the translation industry, thinking is full of unprofessional people. Which is probably true, nobody has exact statistics, not even proz can, but just look at KudoZ questions and answers (instead, as someone said, if you look at the forum you seem to have a majority of professional people here).
While this could lead to adverse selection, I don't think it's the main problem, as I have said before here on the forums. The real problem is the lack of transparency due to clients not being able to assess the quality of their translations (or maybe not for every language combination). In theory with translation you don't even need excellent websites, excellent CVs etc. You just need to be able to test quality. I have done a lot of test reviews in the past and I never needed to see the CV, diplomas or whatever other evidence of how good they are. The only thing I trust is their translations (in tests and subsequently in regular translations). But this is the problem, clients (including agencies) often don't have those skills to assess the quality. The result is that some translators get paid more than they should and other less, even if in the long run in general pricing should be more aligned with reality.
Personally I don't mind those rates, because there are translators that simply don't deserve more than 2 cents per word... I don't see them as competitors, it’s a different market, as I don't see as competitors generalist translators (or generalists who pretend they are specialists, as many do on proz…), again another segment of the market with different rates and generally different clients.
To forbid offers with a specified rate/budget on proz would simply mean that outsourcers would just not give the same rate/budget upfront (waste of time for those who apply and have higher rates) but later... When you see the rate (2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents etc. depending on your rate you can just ignore it).
Personally therefore I believe in competition and I don't mind an open market (both downwards and upwards), what I regret is just that not all clients can assess the quality of their translations. This should be (fortunately sometimes is) the real barrier to entry, as it would allow clients to know the value of what their are paying for...
@Chris: thanks for the link, I'll have a look (and nice to have you here every now and then, see you at some other financial translation congress... )
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