| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] > | Are these agencies joking? Thread poster: Helena Grahn
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| not so simple | Dec 11, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
I suspect many translators on ProZ lack the experience of Natalie and others who have worked in different markets. If you want the job badly enough, just say yes and take any old price. If you're not desperate, just say no. Simple enough!
It's not so simple when you have to do this 99 times a day (exchange emails, download files, send a quote, etc.) only to find out that your regular rate (which has already been "approved" by the agency) needs to be reduced in half for whatever reason. It ends up being a huge waste of time.
And no, it hasn't always been like this. I haven't had to haggle for many years. Agencies would only contact me when they could afford my rates. Now most agencies think they are entitled to a discount and in their mind wasting everyone's time is justified.
We are not manufacturers, we are not selling goods. We are selling our time and there are only 24 hours in a day. Unfortunately we cannot stretch it, not even by one minute, so in general no discounts apply.
Anyway, now that haggling became a widespread practice in the translation world, there isn't much we can do about it. It isn't personal, of course, but I find it inconsiderate, to say the least, to waste someone else'a time every single day. Some will call me rude, but I've started using the delete button a lot and I also keep setting up filters for agencies and even specific PMs that I call time wasters. They don't receive any reply. On the other hand, I always respond promptly to those PMs who don't play games. Too bad they are a dying breed.
| | | | | Simply adjust your quality | Dec 11, 2015 |
Helena Grahn wrote:
Have been doing this for 10 years and never increased my fees. Lately, I have noticed that they keep on asking for discounts. What is going on?
Quality should be comparable to the price:
Low rate - low quality, high rate - high quality.
Since decrease in quality-sensitive market, I offer 2 options:
a) Best service at high rate in moderate time span. => High-mid to high quality
b) "Pocket-friendly" service at low rate in short time span. => Low to low-mid quality.
Simply adjust your quality to the rate. Accept the project and give him/ her discount as demanded. What you need to do is to adjust your quality to the rate.
Best client accepts best service => Fair
Worse client accepts worse service => Fair
Best client accepts worse service => UNFAIR, Big problem
Worse client accepts Best service => UNFAIR
And, do not be dependent on any agency (broker, middle men, and the like). You can utilize them to increase your income, but never make them your primary source.
[Edited at 2015-12-12 07:46 GMT]
| | | | Helena Grahn 
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:14
English to Portuguese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | That would be in the ideal world but I do not think it always works that way. | Dec 11, 2015 |
Dani Karuniawan wrote: Helena Grahn wrote:
Have been doing this for 10 years and never increased my fees. Lately, I have noticed that they keep on asking for discounts. What is going on? Quality should be comparable to the price: Low rate - low quality, high rate - high quality. Since decrease in quality-sensitive market, I make 2 options: a) Best service at high rate in moderate time span. => High-mid to high quality b) "Pocket-friendly" service at low rate in short time span. => Low to low-mid quality. Simply adjust your quality to the rate. Accept the project and give him/ her discount as demanded. What you need to do is to adjust your quality to the rate. Best client accepts best service => Fair Worse client accepts worse service => Fair Best client accepts worse service => UNFAIR, Big problem Worse client accepts Best service => UNFAIR And, do not be dependent on any agency (broker, middle men, and the like). You can utilize them to increase your income, but never make them your primary source. [Edited at 2015-12-11 20:37 GMT]
[Edited at 2015-12-11 21:06 GMT]
| | | | | Native speaker living in your own native country | Dec 11, 2015 |
Sheila Wilson wrote:
We have to find ways to convince clients we have some sort of added value, or we have to find clients (normally but not always in our own parts of the world) willing to pay our rates.
One sort of added value would be that you are a native speaker living permanently in your native country and therefore are not perhaps gradually loosing the skills (or at least the nuances) of your own mother tongue necessary when translating into your own language. I think this is a point a lot of our emigrating colleagues neglect when they plan to live in or already have left to a country where the living costs are cheaper (and where you have a more comfortable climate, too).
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 10:14
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
| Straightforward doesn't mean it isn't difficult | Dec 12, 2015 |
TranslateThis wrote:
It's not so simple when you have to do this 99 times a day
It is very simple. It may not be easy, or pleasant, but it's simple. The answer is the one you have already provided:
Some will call me rude, but I've started using the delete button a lot and I also keep setting up filters for agencies and even specific PMs that I call time wasters. They don't receive any reply.
There's nothing rude about this. Nobody has a right to a freelancer's time or money.
And no, it hasn't always been like this. I haven't had to haggle for many years.
Then I suspect you've been almost freakishly fortunate. My experience as a freelancer doesn't go back that far, but I imagine most freelancers have actually had to negotiate on pricing over that time, if only to say "no thanks" to requests for lower rates.
On the other hand, I always respond promptly to those PMs who don't play games. Too bad they are a dying breed.
There's always a market for quality. It may not be large, but it's there. Markets are not monolithic, they are heterogenous, segmented, varied, diverse - whatever you want to call it. We need to find our niches at the high end.
Regards
Dan
| | | | | Reducing the quality to match the price?? | Dec 12, 2015 |
In an earlier post here, Dani suggests simply reducing the quality of one's work to match the reduced price.
I don't think I COULD do that - I just have to do my best. I couldn't deliberately do a job badly and I doubt whether many other translators could either.
Even if I did, I don't see how it would improve the situation. I'd still be working for considerably less than my normal rate and possibly missing other jobs which would pay decently.
| | | | | Rates not related to volumes | Dec 12, 2015 |
Alvaro Espantaleon wrote: TranslateThis wrote:
BTW, some of our colleagues claim that anyone with decent skills should be able to translate 2,000 words per hour. I am afraid such claims only make things worse. In a thread I opened some time ago, so-called colleagues were quoting impressive daily outputs. They seemed very proud of it. However, as I see it, they are working more and more for less and less. The idea behind this is: ok, I will accept your low rate but in exchange I will work much faster (with the same quality as before, of course).
Alvaro, you might be very wrong in this sense. Each translator decides their rate level and it has nothing to do with daily volumes: translators who accept ridiculous rates also accept them when they produce 500 words a day, and translators who keep sustainable rates charge them all the time, even if they translate 7 or 8 thousand words a day. In the latter case, they simply use the results of their expertise or ability to improve their service, invest in their continuous training, and save for the future. All high-volume translators I have met in 20 years in the profession had high rates, not low rates.
Kind of off-the-record: I am interested in your opinion as to what makes a good professional, i. e. someone you would call your colleague, and not your "so-called colleague". Please share!
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Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote: Alvaro Espantaleon wrote: TranslateThis wrote:
BTW, some of our colleagues claim that anyone with decent skills should be able to translate 2,000 words per hour. I am afraid such claims only make things worse. In a thread I opened some time ago, so-called colleagues were quoting impressive daily outputs. They seemed very proud of it. However, as I see it, they are working more and more for less and less. The idea behind this is: ok, I will accept your low rate but in exchange I will work much faster (with the same quality as before, of course). Alvaro, you might be very wrong in this sense. Each translator decides their rate level and it has nothing to do with daily volumes: translators who accept ridiculous rates also accept them when they produce 500 words a day, and translators who keep sustainable rates charge them all the time, even if they translate 7 or 8 thousand words a day. In the latter case, they simply use the results of their expertise or ability to improve their service, invest in their continuous training, and save for the future. All high-volume translators I have met in 20 years in the profession had high rates, not low rates. Kind of off-the-record: I am interested in your opinion as to what makes a good professional, i. e. someone you would call your colleague, and not your "so-called colleague". Please share!
 Nothing to do with being professional or not. Just hostility in general towards other translators or competing for ridiculous reasons.
Yes, some texts are easier and you can translate many more words each hour/day.
That's not really what I'm talking about, what I'm talking about is the tendency towards accepting lower rates and to compensate that with more speed, so that your income won't be affected, and if that scenario will affect quality or not and, finally, in case it does, if we should care or not about quality.
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| A wrong approach | Dec 12, 2015 |
Dani Karuniawan wrote:
Quality should be comparable to the price:
Low rate - low quality, high rate - high quality.
To me, this is a completely wrong approach. We should always provide the maximum quality we are capable of, or sneaky customers will exploit that "weakness" of ours against us. On another hand, those customers who hire you for bad quality will drop you instantly as soon as they feel that you can be replaced by machine translation... something that will happen sooner than you expect.
[Edited at 2015-12-12 10:56 GMT]
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Dani Karuniawan wrote:
And, do not be dependent on any agency (broker, middle men, and the like). You can utilize them to increase your income, but never make them your primary source.
Agencies are not bad per se. Most of my work is for agencies in several parts of the word. There are good and bad agencies, and good agencies are beneficial for us as they give us access to interesting customers who are never interested in individual providers and want a multilingual solution.
If agencies are your kind of fish as in my case, what you want is to work for good agencies and let bad agencies gently fade away (or be ruthlessly digested by a big fish), which is what happens to them when they hire cheap translators.
| | | | | No "quality adjustments", ever! | Dec 12, 2015 |
Offering lower quality than one is capable of is grossly unprofessional, and also a surefire way to kill one's reputation if anyone learns about it.
| | | | | Offering Low Quality Translation? | Dec 12, 2015 |
This seems a strange sentiment to me.
As far as I can tell those agencies just want cheap translations, not low quality? Unfortunately, there always seems someone to give in to this and low quality is probably a by-product.
[Edited at 2015-12-12 12:19 GMT]
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Darmali
Indonesia
Local time: 16:14
English to Indonesian
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| Low quality because of low rates? Never!! | Dec 12, 2015 |
Dani Karuniawan wrote:
Quality should be comparable to the price:
Low rate - low quality, high rate - high quality.
I agree with Tomas, Anton, and Gabrielle. This approach is totally wrong. We should only provide the best quality possible. in other industries, like the fashion industry, designers often offer a second line, which is lower priced, but they do this by using lower priced materials, or different models,but the craftsmanship is still the same. This ... See more Dani Karuniawan wrote:
Quality should be comparable to the price:
Low rate - low quality, high rate - high quality.
I agree with Tomas, Anton, and Gabrielle. This approach is totally wrong. We should only provide the best quality possible. in other industries, like the fashion industry, designers often offer a second line, which is lower priced, but they do this by using lower priced materials, or different models,but the craftsmanship is still the same. This is not possible in our profession. You cannot deliver work that is only 50% correct because you accepted a rate that is 50% of the normal rate.
Just a question, Dani, what if someone was injured, got sick, or died because you accepted a low rate and delivered low quality work? ▲ Collapse
| | | | Patrick Porter
United States
Local time: 05:14
Spanish to English
+ ...
TranslateThis wrote: Dan Lucas wrote:
I suspect many translators on ProZ lack the experience of Natalie and others who have worked in different markets. If you want the job badly enough, just say yes and take any old price. If you're not desperate, just say no. Simple enough!
It's not so simple when you have to do this 99 times a day (exchange emails, download files, send a quote, etc.) only to find out that your regular rate (which has already been "approved" by the agency) needs to be reduced in half for whatever reason. It ends up being a huge waste of time. And no, it hasn't always been like this. I haven't had to haggle for many years. Agencies would only contact me when they could afford my rates. Now most agencies think they are entitled to a discount and in their mind wasting everyone's time is justified. We are not manufacturers, we are not selling goods. We are selling our time and there are only 24 hours in a day. Unfortunately we cannot stretch it, not even by one minute, so in general no discounts apply. Anyway, now that haggling became a widespread practice in the translation world, there isn't much we can do about it. It isn't personal, of course, but I find it inconsiderate, to say the least, to waste someone else'a time every single day. Some will call me rude, but I've started using the delete button a lot and I also keep setting up filters for agencies and even specific PMs that I call time wasters. They don't receive any reply. On the other hand, I always respond promptly to those PMs who don't play games. Too bad they are a dying breed.
Good point there...I also use email filters for certain agencies/PMs and with some I've stopped collaborating altogether. Also a few years back I raised my rates a bit and lost some clients who couldn't accept it. But nevertheless I'm still here and still have as much work as needed to keep me busy.
Without wanting to sound complacent or worse, Panglossian, my belief is that if you stick to your rates and produce high quality work there will continue to be a market for your service. My experience is purely anecdotal of course, but there is plenty of work for me even though I refuse to negotiate my rates. Some of my clients are agencies, too, and although even the good ones will still ask for a discount now and then, they still give me work at my specified fees and they don't push the issue too often. And I simply stop replying to the ones who become a nuisance by trying to negotiate with every single job they seek to assign.
My advice is to stick to your rates and remind clients that you are already offering the best rate possible to stay competitive while staying profitable. Be confident in your skills and authoritative about your expertise in your language pairs and fields. Believe that you are offering your clients real value for your fees charged and believe that they are misguided if they cannot see that value.
| | | | | Old versus new | Dec 12, 2015 |
Dan Lucas wrote:
Then I suspect you've been almost freakishly fortunate. My experience as a freelancer doesn't go back that far, but I imagine most freelancers have actually had to negotiate on pricing over that time, if only to say "no thanks" to requests for lower rates.
I don't think I've been very fortunate. As far as I know, this phenomenon is relatively new. Translation suddenly became an 'industry' so we are now working on what could be compared to an assembly line; we now have metrics, sweatshop rates, complicated quality assurance procedures that do not actually improve anything and, of course, volume-based discounts and all this nonsense.
The translation agencies I am used to working with do not operate like this. They pick their linguists very carefully. Once your information and rates are in their database, they only send you jobs in your areas of specialization at the agreed rate. They are always courteous and professional. They treat you like a partner, not like a sweatshop worker. They don't send mass emails and they never waste your time; on the contrary, they are there to support you and help you as much as they can. This is the way it should be. You see, this way, instead of wasting your time, you can focus on what you really need to be doing, which is .... translating!
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