Let's start a revolution, serfs!

Why people fail to understand this is beyond me. Everyone, even the most established of translators/businesses, have started from pretty much nothing; and no, in the past not everything was fine and dandy with legions of clients who offered one unlimited budget knocking on the door twice an hour.

Secondly, Proz is not the face of the marketplace, it is only one avenue.

Getting established as a business is not an easy task, some even argue that it should not be easy. Too many independent translators, who are business people first and foremost like John and Łukasz have said, just declare themselves translators one day, register to a website or too, and that's it. Then they sit passively by expecting to magically get established overnight and for an influx of quality work to just drop in their inbox. Well, the business world doesn't work quite like that.

If you are just starting out and don't have any experience, you might want to consider finding a part time job to pay the bills while you gain experience, specialty, and develop your business and career.

. I fail to understand why you chose to dismiss them by claiming what seems to be as "oh, it takes too much hard work and time to get established, you guys had it easy in the past, and I much prefer to have some kind of union that will take care of everything for me".

blahdibla wrote:
If you're young and a newcomer, you know what happens if you ''show a bit of self-respect''?

Riccardo Schiaffino wrote:

Yes, there are those that would insist that you retranslate the job for a pittance - a very good indication that is not a desirable customer.

blahdibla wrote:
A union isn't a spoon-feeding machine, it's a group that enables people involved in the same line of work to join forces and demand rights.

blahdibla wrote:
I'm not trying to get your backs up, I'm trying to say that it's all very well dismissing the idea when you're already nice and settled with a solid pen of clients.

I'm curious about these "rights". "Rights" for me are the right to have the agreement I have made with my client respected, from both sides. It means the right to accept a job that's within my capabilities and price range and the right to walk away from those that aren't. It's the right to negotiate a mutually acceptable agreement with my client that might have absolutely no relationship with the agreement I negotiated with another client. For one client I may agree to a lower price, and to another I might agree to a much higher price. It's the right to market my services to anyone who will listen (because it takes many prospective clients to make a business).

Union "rights" are about things like seniority (I have a right to the job because of my seniority, not because I have any clue about the job), job security (no work? Doesn't matter, I'll get paid anyway), ever increasing pay (despite the fact that the job is sold to the end client at lower than what I'm paid), etc. I've worked in a large unionised company in the past and seen all this and much more. And, by the way, that company doesn't exist any more - the market didn't allow it.

I'm not saying that there aren't places for unions. Perhaps textile plants in Bangledash could be a place to start. But there we're talking about rights relating to health and safety, not the operation of a free market.

[Edited at 2013-06-12 03:26 GMT]

But do you honestly believe that a union would change the fact that newcomers have to fight for good customers? That would not change a thing. Union regulations cannot make all customers good customers just by sheer magic.

A union would simply make the market far less flexible and more cumbersome for our customers who, faced with a widespread increase of the rates and opinionated translators, would embrace machine translation ever so happily.

The thought of having a translator organisation fiddling around with my freedom to do business the way I like gives me shivers. My view about all this is that each of us must contribute to improving the market, with good quality in translation, a good service, and gradual exclusion of bottom feeders.

Jane Proctor wrote:
But don't hold your breath for a revolution as I seem to remember he got short change here!

blahdibla wrote:
A union isn't a spoon-feeding machine, it's a group that enables people involved in the same line of work to join forces and demand rights.

Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:


Rights? When people start to talk about rights, I always check whether my wallet is still in my pocket. Unfortunately, in recent decades rights in Europe means that someone gets something with no effort, while others work hard to pay for things they do not believe in.

I think you fail to see the main point here: we are independent professionals, and as such, we are not employees faced with employers in a position of force (either we do what they say, or our kids go hungry). As independent professionals, we are free not to work for people who offer absurd conditions, which should always be coupled with sensible marketing and business practices we have to learn in order to succeed.

The main translator associations, like ATA, BDÜ, IOL, ITI, etc. are already promoting best practices in translation and in the business around translation, and yet they do not alter our freedom to deal as we deem best or decide our working conditions. This is what professional organisations should do.