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late for deadline - payment?
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Thread poster: Marina Varouta

late for deadline - payment?

Roman Bulkiewicz

Ukraine
Local time: 04:16

Member
English to Ukrainian
+ ...

Scarry business approach

Oct 31, 2006

They sent me this translation and they have right, the quality is much better.

So what? Shall we get paid only if no translation is better than ours?

Marina Varouta wrote:

Of course they are not paying.

Did they SAY so, or are you assuming?

Marina Varouta

Germany
Local time: 03:16
German to Greek
+ ...

TOPIC STARTER

thanks

Oct 31, 2006

Roman, they did not say they are not paying, but I am assuming it from their reaction.

Nadia, thank you for your advises. You are completely right, I should have discussed quality issues before having confirmed.

Darin, Alison, yes, perhaps they hired more than one translator and chose the best translation or merged the texts, but the agency seems to be serious and I cannot verify this anyway...

[Edited at 2006-11-01 11:34]

MariusV

Lithuania
Local time: 04:16
English to Lithuanian
+ ...

a gap of simple logics

Nov 1, 2006

"They said they have nothing at all in mind, because another translator did the job within two hours and delivered a far better quality. Of course they are not pay".

So, that job was so urgent, that it became a "tragedy" when you was a dozen of minutes late doing a double volume above the real physical capacity, but they had ANOTHER two hours to spend with another translator when in your case several minutes was like the matter of life and death?

My conclusion would be:

1) the agency is not professional - who will give 1000 words in 2 hours having in mind that even the fastest translator can make it in 3-4 hours at the best? no serious agency does that.

2) the agency is cheating - I think they want to fool around and find the reason not to pay. was the agency fair, and if it was really the matter of poor quality as they maintained, later on you can clarify that issue (where are the mistakes, what are the mistakes, why they are mistakes, etc.) and if it is really so, OK, let it be. but if they do not give any explanation or reason, I will treat it as a simple way of cheating - they handled the translation to the client (maybe corrected something), got the cash and "good by for you". I never accept any claims for quality if these are not substantiated (at least in a couple of general remarks by a competent person) or if the claims "appear" after the date of payment settlement (except for some rare special cases).

3) would issue an invoice on a full scale, if they do not pay, will make them a "charity", but before forgetting about such a client (for the future work) will put a "1" to the BB.

My advice - always avoid such crazy jobs as these might often result in similar situations. Maybe it is better to refuse such jobs (and have no money) instead of accepting, working like crazy these hours and have the same result at the end, i.e. no money. I'd spend that time for serious clients or simply watching TV

Better TV than working for no money?

Best regards,
Marius

[Edited at 2006-11-01 23:39]

Joon Oh
Brazil
Local time: 00:16

Member (2006)
Portuguese to Korean
+ ...

Impunity Will Mess Our Freelance Translation Community

Nov 3, 2006

Marina, Sorry to hear your sad story!
It would be happening with me or anyone of us.
In summary of all conversations we had, I agree with Marius.
And if I were you, I would put the name of the agency as a bad and unfair agency in every site you could announce, because it could a just efficient way to avoid more unfair agencies like them. I think Proz.com also can help you to put them close to wall. And I think there should be some organization to warn it.
About quality, I had just one Brazilian agency showing me a contract about quality evaluation procedure and payment. For the worst quality, they wanted just 30% of discount from total quoted rate. When there's no contract, everything is valid, but they should always pay exactly what they agreed before.
Have a very nice day.
Tschuss!

Joon