Steve Kerry wrote:
Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz wrote:
Out of curiosity, did they accept your rates?.
The rates were not a problem, Lukasz. They repeatedly said I was exactly the kind of translator they needed.
... But I'd probably sooner win the presidential election than hear more than $0.06 a word from a local agency for a non-rush job. It's useful to know that they're prepared to cough up 'international' rates when working with someone from a first-world country.
But I didn't want to deal with their incredibly time-consuming admin, so I turned them down. "Life's too short", as we say in the UK.
Can't blame you. I'm becoming more and more reluctant myself to jump through their hoops without any assurance of work at good rates. The worst thing ever is the silly expectation of page count statistics throughout various fields documents to support them. I tell them in very clear terms that I don't have any such statistics and will not provide any such documents, so they have the option to work with me without that part of their questionnaire or forget it, implicitly. If they use the broken record strategy and repeat the request (e.g. 'just fill in what you can'), then I forget them.
Simon Chiassai wrote:
Where I worked, when we were given a project, we were given a budget, that had been negotiated by the sales department directly with the client. Out of that budget, we needed to make a margin of at least 40%, preferably 50%.
Doesn't look as bad as some of the differences I've seen.
It did not matter to the agency how much I was paying whom, as long as the job was done properly, in time, and the margin was 40 or over.
Yup, along with a standard tariff that has a ceiling that should never be crossed, while figures below only really matter when the budget gets even lower than normal.
The margin could be lowered in extreme cases though : the typical issue would be the ever-feared weekend project with a low budget that comes in on Friday at 16.30 due Monday morning that nobody wants.
I always wonder why those projects are accepted. My chief gripe with agencies is that I tend to imagine them as some kind of soft people who can't resit a corporate lawyer or other hardball negotiator handing down a 50-page weekend job with no additional rates. Or, worse still, a wannabe shark whom I could probably talk down in a matter of seconds (without enjoying the process) if he tried that on me.
There are agencies out-there where PMs are also sales, and handle budget negotiations with the client, sales stepping in in difficult situations. The more it goes, the better I think it is, because it gives the PM more control over his or her work. But I think these are still very rare cases.
Yeah, translators seem to think that end clients get quotes based on translators' quotes, while the reality tends to be more like you say, at least where I live.
We also have to keep in mind that project managers, despite their fancy job titles (project executives, project directors, coordinators and the like), are seldom trained or experience in the actual management of projects (no critical path analysis for instance). Most of the time, they have a BA or and MA in translation or not even that. As such, they have little to nothing to say when their manager tells them how to run things. Also, as it has been mentioned, I don't think project managers are willing to bite the bullet to stand up for their suppliers, or try to make a change in the industry.
Sometimes I wish they had that translation degree so that they could understand what I'm talking about to them when there's a problem in the source or the client's instructions aren't feasible or a DIY client or some other amateur reviser enters the picture.
Most of the time, I feel like I should put together a free negotiation webinar for translation agency staff throughout this country. Then, I guess, I'd probably have to run another one for translators. But I just can't clear my head of the image of a bunch of timid twenty-somethings negotiating with a business shark and bowing down leaving the virtual room backwards as they accept those Friday evening jobs.
Nicole Schnell wrote:
And those boutique translation offices are the people who know precisely what is involved in quality translation and why top-notch translators can be considered a life insurance. High rates are standard.
If they have the cash. But most of the time they don't. And they don't have the stomach to stand up to the client.
Steffen Walter wrote:
Depends on the type of small agencies you are looking at. Some of them are true (highly specialised) "boutiques"/translation offices (I wouldn't want to use the term "agency" to refer to them) operating in a secure and comfortable niche market, so this situation eliminates their dependency on the "rat race" for ever-lower rates. (I work for some of these outfits; most of them are based in Germany in my case.)
Yeah, Steffen, I know what kind of small business you're talking about. Unfortunately, they seem to be rather cash-strapped here, which probably means they just don't have that secure and comfortable niche, after all. The lack of any serious opposition to clients' otrageous and ever increasing demands seems to be the problem here.
[Edited at 2013-08-31 21:03 GMT]
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