Translation Journal

Back to TJ Translation Journal Blog Blog of the Translation Journal, an on-line publication for translators by translators about translators and translation. Google WWW TJ Blog TJ Blog Welcome to the TJ Blog! Click here for instructions to participate in the discussions of this blog. Wednesday, April 18, 2012 How to Make More $$ without Really Trying Have you noticed how different businesses are constantly inventing new ways to nickel and dime their customers? Airlines have first stopped offering free in-flight meals; then introduced a fee for checked-in luggage; they reduced the leg space of their seats and are now charging for "special" (exit row and bulkhead) seats that leave you less cramped at the end of a two-hour flight. At the same time, they tacked a host of fees to their ticket prices, so that now the amount of these fees (and government taxes) exceeds the nominal price of the ticket itself. Other businesses are not bashful either in inventing sneaky ways to separate you from your money. A carton of orange juice, which used to contain half a gallon (64 oz) of juice now contains only 59 oz. A can of coffee, which at one time contained a pound (16 oz) now contains 12, 11, or 10.5 oz. And don't expect the price to go down for these shrinking quantities of products. Gas stations are now adding a separate fee, in addition to their already sky-high prices, for credit card payments. Some physicians are charging thousands of dollars in yearly fees just to keep you as a patient (no specific service included). The list may go on and on. Many of these and other businesses count on their customers being stupid or at least not paying attention to what they are being charged for and how much they are getting. Of course, they're also trying to compensate for their own rising costs (in part due to similar tactics by other businesses) and shrinking revenues due to the recession. So, why don't we, translators, get imaginative and enhance our incomes by adding a few items to our rates? I envision my future bill to my clients to look something like this: Translation 50.00 Availability fee 2.50 Keyboarding fee 3.00 Administrative fee 2.00 Billing fee 1.50 Software usage fee 1.75 Hardware usage fee 1.80 e-mailing fee 1.65 Alertness fee* 1.60 Innovation fee ** 2.50 Bundling fee*** 2.00 Total payable 70.30 * That's for the espresso to keep me awake while I'm translating. ** That's for inventing all these possible and impossible fees. *** Let them figure out what this means (you can use any random word from the dictionary here). Feel free to add your own bright ideas to this list. posted by Gabe Bokor at 8:41 AM 8 comments links to this post Sunday, June 12, 2011 Who Goes First? The other day I needed a gallon of milk, so I stopped by my favorite convenience store, picked up a gallon of low-fat, and headed toward the cashier. When it came to my turn, I told the cashier: "I'll pay $1.20 for this." She pretended not to hear me, but answered, in a polite but firm voice: "Two-ninety, please." I could describe the exchange that followed (the whole story is imaginary, anyway), but it should suffice to say that I ended up paying the price asked for by the cashier. If it sounds unusual that the customer proposes a price he or she is willing to pay in a store, why is it accepted without discussion if a translation client tells the translator up front what rate is to be paid for a translation job. We see announcements even in "translation portals" looking for a translator to do a job in a certain language combination at a certain rate. And many of those rates are at or below the level that prevailed in the U.S. in the 50s or 60s. Of course, the price of any merchandise is determined by mutual consent between vendor and buyer. In principle, it doesn't matter who "goes first" naming a price. The practice becomes questionable when the buyer attempts to give the impression that the price he is offering is immutable, non-negotiable, as if handed down by God as the eleventh Commandment. Translators should not accept any condition imposed by their clients, and that includes the rate to be paid for their work. A client's offer should be considered a first bid in a negotiation that is ultimately to result in a rate that is acceptable and advantageous to both parties. Even if the client is offering a rate that is a fraction of our normal rate, we shouldn't be afraid to make a counteroffer: "Sorry, but my rate for this kind of work is $XX.00." If the conversation stops here, the translator has lost nothing (compared with the alternative of shutting up in disgust), and the client has received a piece of information that he could use in his offer to the next translator. And if there is a sufficient number of translators unwilling to accept an unreasonable offer, but the client needs the translation badly enough, the scenario at the cashier's counter in the convenience store may repeat itself: The buyer may ultimately accept the vendor's price. posted by Gabe Bokor at 5:34 PM 15 comments links to this post Thursday, October 14, 2010 Translation Industry Survey The final results of this survey can be viewed at http://translationjournal.net/journal/MySurvey_Responses_final.aspx.htm. Thanks to all who responded. posted by Gabe Bokor at 11:56 AM 0 comments links to this post Friday, September 17, 2010 Communication Is Power Few of the current generation of translators remember the times when translation was a lonely profession and the translator had the opportunity to meet other translators only in person or over the phone. Then came FLEFO, which allowed us to communicate with our colleagues instantly and across oceans and national borders, the mailing list of Lantra-L, and the newsgroup sci.lang.translation. Today we are all linked via hundreds of websites, mailing lists, and social networking utilities. These tools allow us not only to consult fellow translators all over the world about a technical term or an idiom, but also to exchange information and experiences about specific clients. We can also ask for and receive advice from experienced colleagues on how to handle certain business situations. In the old days we were almost powerless against a client who refused to pay for work performed. Today, in addition to the dozens of mailing lists that cater to translators working in certain languages or certain areas of expertise (patents, law, medicine), we have sites and facilities dedicated to defending our business interests regardless of our language combination or specialization. Payment practices and client rating sites such as ProZ, Ted Wozniak's Payment Practices, or the Translator Client Review List can be used both for obtaining information about potential clients before accepting a job and for denouncing a client who has reneged on his obligation to pay for a translation done. It is difficult to overestimate the power of tens of thousands of translators in permanent contact with each other, exchanging information and acting on it by deciding on how to deal with a certain client or whether to do business with that client at all. It is perfectly conceivable that a translator in Thailand is offered a job from France but, after consulting one of the payment practices lists, refuses to accept it because a colleague living in Argentina once had a bad experience with that French client. Today, an individual or company who fails to pay or otherwise mistreats translators cannot expect to stay in business for long. Deadbeats are no longer dealing with individual translators, but with the entire global translator community, electronically interlinked and exchanging information at the speed of light. And those translators who fail to make use of this novel opportunity put themselves at a disadvantage in a business world that ignores national borders and physical distances. posted by Gabe Bokor at 12:24 PM 4 comments links to this post Monday, March 29, 2010 Brave New World of Translation No one disputes the fact that the translation industry is undergoing fundamental changes, which are affecting what we translate, the way do it, and the compensation we receive for our work. The basic (interrelated) factors in these changes are Technology, Globalization, and Concentration of the Industry. Technology—computers, CAT tools, and the Internet—has dramatically increased our productivity in the past decades, and this trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. In a recent conference I attended in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Renato Beninatto, CEO of the consulting firm milengo, predicted that, while the income of translators will remain unchanged or will slightly increase in the coming years, the compensation per translated word will drop substantially. He foresees translators' productivity to rise to 30,000 - 40,000 words a day thanks to CAT tools, which will be free of charge. Beninatto also foresees that the traditional model of translator-reviser will be replaced by machine translations edited by often monolingual experts. Since the technologies needed for advanced machine translation can only be afforded by large multinational companies, individual translators and mom-and-pop translation companies will be increasingly marginalized and left with the crumbs of the market and with highly specialized translations such as literature and advertising, which are not susceptible to machine translation. While no one expects Shakespeare to be machine-translated into Quechua in our lifetime, most technical documents (which includes almost all non-literary texts) can already be successfully "gisted" by corpus-based machine translation. In many cases such "gisting" is adequate for the purpose; this is why quality will continue to be trumped by price for all but the most specialized translations where both accuracy and style are critical or where cultural adaptation, rather than straightforward translation, is required. Do you agree with these predictions? How do you see our industry's future in the next few years and decades? How do you see your own role in this "brave new world of translation"? posted by Gabe Bokor at 2:45 PM 19 comments links to this post Monday, August 17, 2009 Translators and the Recession For us translators recession means not only that fewer translations are being done, but also that clients are making an extra effort to cut costs, usually at our expense. You can almost measure the severity of the recession by the delays with which invoices are getting paid. This means our clients are using us as a source of interest-free loans. Clients are also becoming quite imaginative in requesting (or outright demanding) discounts for a variety of reasons or for no reason at all. Quantity discounts have been discussed in several translators' mailing lists. Although a quantity discount may sometimes be justified if a large technical translation job with repetitive terminology saves the translator research time, most translators refuse to give quantity discounts requested just because of the size of the job. The situation is similar in the case of discounts expected for total or partial matches when the translator uses a translation memory tool. We buy and learn to use TM tools to save ourselves time and money. If the client provides us with a reliable TM, which will save us research time, it's only fair that the savings be shared. But no one should ask us to give away the product of our investment in time and money. Then there are clients who don't want to pay for numbers (they don't have to be translated, do they?). A colleague of mine replied to such a request by offering to deliver the job without the numbers, to be inserted by the client himself. I've even heard of a case where the client wanted to deduct all the occurrences, except the first one, of the word "the." There are clients who want to save money by requesting just a "quick and dirty" translation. Of course, they don't specify whether "uncompromising quality" translated as "calidad sin compromiso" (quality without commitment) would be acceptable for the discounted price. Another way of clients attempting to get more for their translation dollar is asking the translator to provide, for free, services that should be paid for: extra formatting, even DTP, glossary (compiled by the translator), or rush job without a rush surcharge. What can the translator do when faced with unreasonable demands for discount or for extra unpaid work? There are basically three ways to handle such demands: 1) accept them without discussion; 2) state your own terms and refuse to make any concession; and 3) negotiate. Of course, the success of any negotiation depends on the strength of the translator's position vis-à-vis the client. If you're the only legal translator into Inuit, your chances of gettihg the job on your terms are better than if you have to compete with dozens of colleagues, some of whom are willing to work for peanuts. But even in the common language combinations, your relationship with the client will largely determine your negotiating power. Have you found any creative and successful strategies to deal with unreasonable clients or to discourage your client from delaying payment due to you? How can translators best face the challenges posed by economic recession? posted by Gabe Bokor at 7:59 PM 9 comments links to this post Sunday, July 12, 2009 Contracts First, a disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, and this blog should not be construed as legal advice, which can be given only by attorneys authorized to practice in the relevant jurisdiction. Contract law is an extensive and complex subset of the law of obligations, and it would be pretentious on my part to offer advice applicable to specific situations in a specific jurisdiction. This said, there are certain concepts that are almost universally accepted and with which businesspeople, including translators, should be familiar. According to Wikipedia, "[a] contract is an exchange of promises between two or more parties to do, or refrain from doing, an act which is enforceable in a court of law." A contract is sometimes also referred to as the verbal expression of a "meeting of minds," but this definition suffers from the disadvantage that courts cannot expect to guess what the contracting parties were thinking at the time they entered the contract. Contrary to what many people think, oral agreements may be valid contracts; however, they have the disadvantage of lack of evidence if it comes to enforcement in a court of law. This is why ATA's Code of Professional Conduct and Business Practices recommends that translation buyers "put [their] contractual relationship with translators and interpreters in writing." Complying with this recommendation is actually in the interest of both parties, as it helps avoid misunderstandings or relying on the parties' recollection of what was agreed on. A contract offered by one of the parties may be accepted by the other party either explicitly by signing it or, sometimes, by simply performing the service offered by the contract. This is why, if a translator is offered a job accompanied by a contract, it is important that the translator should not simply do the translation, but also read the contract, sign it, reject it, or offer amendments to specific clauses. A suggestion of amendment does not constitute acceptance of the contract until the other party has agreed to it. What translators should remember is that contracts are often written by lawyers who know little or nothing about translation, use templates written for use in other industries, and often include terms and conditions that are simply not applicable to the translation vendor/buyer relationship or are unfair to one of the parties (usually the translator). The translator shouldn't be afraid of rejecting clauses he or she finds unacceptable by simple crossing them out or offering an alternative and returning the contract unsigned with an explanation and a request for an amended contract. One important aspect of contract law is that the contract is effective only between (or among) the parties that have signed it. So if a client claims that he cannot pay you because his client hasn't paid him, he's attempting to involve a third party who is not a party to the contract between the translator and his client. A contract may also be "implied" and still enforceable if there are good reasons for assuming its terms. Thus, if you have done English to Quechua translations, and nothing else, for a client for the past ten years and you receive an English text from the same client, it's reasonable to assume that the client will want that text translated into Quechua. An e-mail from an existing client requesting translation may be considered a contract (if accepted), provided the terms are known from previous practice. Striking the proper balance between excessive formality and sufficient protection is the challenge we all face in our business relationships. posted by Gabe Bokor at 10:29 AM 3 comments links to this post Table of Contents Entering the Translation Market Translation Industry Survey Communication is Power Translators and the Recession Quality Contracts Edit or Not to Edit Specialist or Generalist Certification Machine Translation The Goalie Liability Insurance for Translators Translator Licensing Brave New World of Translation Globalization Professor Camayd-Freixas and the Postville, Iowa Raid Who Pays for Technology? Test Translations Globalization Good Translations from Poor Originals? Simple comme bonjour How to Predict Translator Performance Holidays and Missed Calls Late Payments and Non-Payments On-Line Job Mediation Services: Are They Worth It? The Role of Translation "Agencies" Native Language The Internet and the Translation Profession Powered by Blogger Site Meter http://translationjournal.blogspot.com/