Job posted offering less than $0.02 per word!!!!

Eleftherios Kritikakis wrote:

"Fair" is a word that is associated with mentalities/cultures. What's fair for a certain mentality/culture, is not fair for another. In the US, WalMart is fair, in Greece it could be considered by many locals as something like a Mafia invasion... anyway... even inside the US, WalMart is perceived differently, depending on one's political/social "inner" culture.

In the so-called "capitalism" (at least the US-based one), the general mentality is:
"I will sell my product at the highest price the market can accept".

In Europe, the general mentality is:
"I will sell as cheaply as possible, because this way I will be "accepted and loved", and if I'm not making any money, I will blame the general and global economic conditions".
Someone has to tell the Europeans (especially the Eastern ones), that the agency will not marry them or "adore" them if they give low prices. Unless they think that their lives and jobs are cheap too. Who will respect his/her own job, if they think it's "cheap"?

If European translators wanted to be competitive and cheaper than the Americans, they would be selling 1 cent per word cheaper than the Americans. What was the reason to sell 10 cents per word cheaper?

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The other issue, is the quality. Yes, most translations coming from very cheap translators are not of great quality, especially the technical/legal ones. Some even plug the text in "machine translation" software, and then the editor will be laughing with it, but what can he do anyway...


So, let's not "theorize" on globalization, etc. The cost of living in Greece nowadays is the same with Chicago, Illinois (yes, I made the research appropriately as a financial planner, which I used to be for 14 years). However, Greeks will sell much cheaper. Why? I asked them. They were basically "shy" when it came to asking for a reasonable price and they never thought that "translating" is an actual profession (more like a part-time hobby to pay for cigarettes and coffee). If the prevailing price was 10 cents per word, they would NOT offer "9", no. They would immediately offer "5 cents", maybe to drive away the evil spirits or something... that's not competition: That's suicide. That's why they miss most deadlines, that's why they use illegal software copies to do their work, computers full of spam and viruses (who's got the money to buy decent protection?), and as soon as they find an office job in the public sector, they run (leaving the project managers wondering...). Ah, Europe. Good-old beautiful and ineffective Europe... where daddy buys the house, and the spouse (or daddy again) pays the bills... needless to say, from all cheap translators I have had experience in the past 14 years (more than 30), only two (2) delivered a solid product to me, and then they dissapeared when they got married or found a "real job" (by the way, what's the average age of the proz.com members, and how many of them have family obligations?... and how many are writing on their web pages "25 years of experience" when they are not even 40 years old? Hmmm... anyone ever checked that? Is that affecting the reliability of the site? Mr. Henry, please?).

Lefteris


[Edited at 2006-01-21 00:28]

[Edited at 2006-01-21 00:31]