| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Highly elitist translation agencies Thread poster: Inge Schumacher
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| The Resume black hole | Jan 10 |
Inge Schumacher wrote:
...and when I naively asked the PM if he/she did some translation as well from time to time, the answer was: CERTAINLY NOT!! ...
[Bearbeitet am 2024-01-10 15:32 GMT]
Why would they enter a business where their names do not appear in any project, and they cannot prove in their resumes that they ever worked?
Go ahead and write fancy salad in your resume, but your future employer will want solid employment history and solid references.
Currently you are an anonymous remote worker, your name appears nowhere in any project outside the agency's files, and "translating from home" is not something you can even prove. The only thing you can get from an agency 10 years from now, is an acknowledgment that you were a freelance contractor with them, nothing more (if the agency still exists).
Project Managers are career people, who aim at promotions, they won't get involved in positions that stay the same all their lives and that they can't even prove.
| | | | Dan Lucas 
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:43
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Christopher Schröder wrote:
But thanks Lefteris for letting us "ordinary translators" know the score. I had literally no idea that the big agencies might be money-grabbing sharks.
You know, his style (lots of bolded text and ALL CAPS, maximal use of hyperbole, minimal use of confirmable fact) seems familiar to me. Didn't we used to have some volatile Greek chap on the forum before? Spent lots of time shouting and gesticulating wildly on that thread about California AB5. Could it be the same person?
Dan
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Dan Lucas wrote:
Please point us to a translation agency or LSP with these fabulous margins. I think RWS recorded an adjusted pretax margin of 14.9% in the first half of 2023, more like 8% at the operating level. That's what you call a "gigantic" profit margin?
Dan
If I pay myself $1,000,000 salary, then the profit of my business decreases by $1,000,000 (but I still got the money). Or establish an entire department in the company, of which I am the only member, and which doesn't have to prove that it's doing anything. Tell me you didn't know that. It's not the exception here - in large private LSPs, it's common.
Also, unless a company is listed in the stock market (public), their publicized financial announcements may or may not be true, and they won't be penalized if they're not true (as long as they are not the same they file with the IRS). A private company in the US (such as all LSPs except one), can publicize 1 billion in profits (or only 1 dollar) in some unofficial advertisement, and then file a different one with the IRS (the unofficial can be made by any accounting method you can imagine, it doesn't have to be audited, and can be EBITDA-adjusted to show anything you want, and that's not illegal at all, as a matter of fact it's common practice). Tell me you didn't know that.
Now tell me how many projects you have completed by knowing the entire pricing structure and the client's contract. Or tell me how many times you have been a customer of one of the major LSPs. Zero times? Less than 10? More than 40?
I have watched you guys for years in these Proz.com forums misleading hundreds (or thousands) of translators in terms of prices and practices. You are not telling them what actual prices are for 90% of the market (currently, unfortunately: 0.03 - 0.04/word PMTE, 0.06-0.09 translation, $25/hour, most have abandoned paying even that, mid-size agencies send mass emails shopping around for each project, new single-person agencies pop-up on an almost daily basis because they know of the enormous earnings potential, given the passivity of translators, etc.), and some of you keep praising this job which has lost earnings/per hour by more than 50% in the last 10 years alone. And you say "I want data". If you had real knowledge and practice in the market (other than typing translations in your computer), you wouldn't need any "data". You would have had them.
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Lefteris Kritikakis wrote:
Yet, you all refuse to just pick up the phone (or the computer) and ask any agency directly to translate something for you, formally as a client. As if you're afraid. There's no other industry in which so many participants have no idea about the prices of their own products in the market, it's astonishing!
On what basis do you feel you can claim that we are all afraid/blind/ignorant? What do you actually know about me?
And if we're such mugs, why are you still among us?
They prefer to remain strictly private businesses and pay the tax penalty for it, than disclosing their enormous profit margin.
I'm so glad you "did your research" and were able to expose the big secret that companies like to make money.
PS I wouldn't get out of bed for 12 cents a word. That's my data.
[Edited at 2024-01-10 17:46 GMT]
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Christopher Schröder wrote:
On what basis do you feel you can claim that we are all afraid/blind/ignorant? What do you actually know about me?
And if we're such mugs, why are you still among us?
On the lack of basic pricing knowledge of your own market (not yours, personally).
And the lack of knowledge of recent past pricing for translators, even though many in here claim to have been in the market for sooooo long.
All professionals know the retail price of their product or service in the market, except translators! And you guys think this is normal?
They claim in here to be knowledgeable professionals, giving "ChatGTP-like" instructions to the new ones, and they don't even know how much a customer would pay for a legal translation of 5,000 words at an agency. It's like someone saying "I'm working in the car market but I don't know how much a car costs".
Most people here don't understand what's at stake. They're giving the impression that this is a career! (a career without promotions, without benefits, without creating a business that you can sell in the future, without any record of employment anywhere, without resume building, it's only remote labor, but they call it "your own business", when it's nothing like that!).
Every month they spend in this job is a black hole in their resume, with no proof of employment and no solid references or even proof of production. Their names appear nowhere in any projects!
This is just a reminder.
| | | | | Thank you and good night | Jan 10 |
Lefteris Kritikakis wrote:
This is just a reminder.
Again, it’s so kind of you to enlighten us with your superior insights into the market that we all operate in, but I suggest you start your own thread for further ranting, perhaps on another forum, as nothing you have said here has any bearing on the OP’s question.
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Dan Lucas wrote:
Didn't we used to have some volatile Greek chap on the forum before?
There was once an Eleftherios Kritikakis who would expound dogmatically on matters relating to the commerce/trade of translation. Other than when quoted, his posts seem to have vanished (as in, I can see quotes but not the original post higher up a given thread).
But the same broad sweeps (I just saw one that said most translators still live with their parents) and implication he feels that none of us can wipe our own arses without adult supervision are as present then as they are on this thread now.
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Dan Lucas wrote:
You know, his style (lots of bolded text and ALL CAPS, maximal use of hyperbole, minimal use of confirmable fact) seems familiar to me. Didn't we used to have some volatile Greek chap on the forum before? Spent lots of time shouting and gesticulating wildly on that thread about California AB5. Could it be the same person?
Dan
And I was also on the online meeting with the regulator afterwards (which had been announced by the ATA back then). About 15 translators were there if I remember well, I don't remember anyone from proz forums.
And I was the only one who explained to the regulator that a translator is not an interpreter (the regulator's rep, a nice lady, didn't know that - the Government assumed that translators are interpreters).
In every opportunity I had, I was there to talk to translators about what's going on, and the only ones who don't like it, are the permanent proz crowd (many of them have admitted that they have other significant sources of income... so no sweat waltzing here everyday like big roosters giving vague advice to anyone who appears to be in a weak position).
You guys are like the Apple fans who always try to blame the user. Some of you talk as if you're billionaires.
There's a certain word that describes the forums here, starts with "circlej....". And it's the only explanation why proz translators are the only professionals in the world who don't even know the retail prices of their products/services in the market! Astounding!
You want "confirmable" facts? Send me an email, I'll send you part of one PM screenshot. Unless you want a federal investigation and a court ruling and sworn admissions by agency owners (which I cannot provide), to believe what you should already know, if you say you're a "pro".
[Edited at 2024-01-10 19:15 GMT]
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| Among the cheaper... | Jan 10 |
Inge Schumacher wrote:
which seems rather unbelievable, to be quite honest!
[Bearbeitet am 2024-01-10 15:32 GMT]
This one is supposed to be a cheap agency (the image is not from the screenshots I have from insiders from large agencies, which show much higher prices, but this one at least is public, to get a taste). Look at the Proofreading/Editing fee, and the Minimum.
These prices are not "premium packages" (multiple-stage), they are for basic service.
They are pretty much the same as they were 20 years ago "on average", but back then it was assumed that the translator gets paid at least 50% (normal agencies representing talents are getting only 20% of the talent's fee).
How much are you getting paid nowadays for editing/proofreading? And where does your name appear as being the translator for any project?
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:43
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Charlie Bavington wrote:
There was once an Eleftherios Kritikakis who would expound dogmatically on matters relating to the commerce/trade of translation.
Awww, he missed us and he's come back!
How sweet.
Dan
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:43
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Well, ranting and insulting on Proz like an irrational wild man is probably cheaper than therapy. Handy, given the low translation rates these days. Let us all hope he will be better soon.
| | | | | and the oppostie worked pretty well... | Jan 11 |
Lieven Malaise wrote:
Well, ranting and insulting on Proz like an irrational wild man
The same irrational man who was warning some 12 years ago about forced trends of unreasonably low rates (despite end-clients paying the same or higher prices), and rapid adoption of MT. Small posts were not noticed, so he had to write large. He was also saying that this job is not an ordinary "career" or "owning a business", it's just anonymous labor. The forums dismissed him.
Now we have people in the industry in their 40s and 50s with the same resume they started 15 years ago, but half the salary for double the work. Chained on their computers to claim projects before anyone else does, from the vast armies of translators who were hired during Covid with a 300-word test. And MT adoption exceeds 80% of market volume (the largest agency proudly claims 90%, and some end-clients have started experimenting with MT on their own).
IBM announced it will "stop hiring for roles that can be replaced by AI", and "Duolingo, maker of language-learning software, is cutting 10% of contracted workers while using generative AI to create more content" (Bloomberg), and Goldman-Sachs says "some 300 million non-menial, highly paid workers could be made redundant thanks to AI".
I'll be back with more irrational stuff in 5 years to check how everybody's doing; maybe rates will go up by then
Sorry for the disturbance.
Cheers
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 11:43
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
Lefteris Kritikakis wrote:
Now we have people in the industry in their 40s and 50s with the same resume they started 15 years ago, but half the salary for double the work.
I'm in my mid 40's and my fulltime freelancing income more than doubled from an already viable income 18 years ago. Furthermore my translation rates only increased over the years, so what am I then ? An exception ? I'm pretty sure I'm not.
Perhaps you could stop talking like someone who knows what he is talking about. You are full of black and white generalizations, while reality is always grey.
| | | | | Remember the 30% "weekend work" charge? | Jan 11 |
Lieven Malaise wrote:
I'm in my mid 40's and my fulltime freelancing income more than doubled from an already viable income 18 years ago. Furthermore my translation rates only increased over the years
If you started for a low point, of course.
From my point (and I'm not alone), we started from 0.12/word as standard, $30 for min (even to add one sentence), and another colleague reminded me over email that in medical report PDFs, we were getting paid $45/hour for "research",
and that half the US agencies were paying us 30% more for "weekend work" if they assigned work on Fridays.
How 'bout that...
Cheers.
| | | | | So what went wrong? | Jan 11 |
Lefteris Kritikakis wrote:
From my point (and I'm not alone), we started from 0.12/word as standard, $30 for min (even to add one sentence), and another colleague reminded me over email that in medical report PDFs, we were getting paid $45/hour for "research",
and that half the US agencies were paying us 30% more for "weekend work" if they assigned work on Fridays.
So why aren’t you paid the equivalent rates now? Have you made some bad choices and ended up at the bottom of the market? Because the picture you paint is not typical. Maybe you should try to get some new clients, or just move on.
I don’t work with agencies much but one of the world’s three largest agencies regularly pays me a $55 minimum for odd sentences. I charge double for weekend work. I haven’t worked at 12 cents a word since the 90s. Today I worked at twice that. While I wouldn’t try to claim that everybody else’s situation is the same as mine, or that there aren’t problems in the market, or that our future is particularly rosy, please stop making out that your troubles are universal.
Instead, why not take inspiration from other translators’ success? What are they doing better? How could you learn from them? Your extreme negativity is just annoying.
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