| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Bidding should not be based on price (staff: it is not) Thread poster: Francis Icaza
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| Just to be clear | Aug 26, 2015 |
I can't tell Proz.com what to do. My comments are suggestions from my point of view.
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Bernhard Sulzer wrote:
I can't tell Proz.com what to do. My comments are suggestions from my point of view.
Proz is a commercial enterprise. We are clients here. They are entitled to listen to our views (or not), weigh them, and adopt the strategy they consider most adequate for their own business goals, not ours.
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 19:03
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote: Samuel Murray wrote:
Where... where are they published? Under Budget and payment details: , which I just realized that is only visible to paying members.
Aah, yes, I remember now. If a client wishes to enter budget information, he can do so in that section. But I'm not sure if that information is accessible to everyone or only to people who qualify for the job. If you can send me one or two URLs of jobs with such a section, I can tell you whether I (as paying non-PT member) have access to it.
| | | | | Regarding budget/rate entries | Aug 26, 2015 |
Posters have the option to publish their rate/price suggestions. If you meet the criteria for quoting on the job, you can get that info. That means your language pair, fields of expertise, and often you have to be a paying member to see that info.
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[Edited at 2015-08-26 21:01 GMT]
| | | | | Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member for the following reason: User asked to have this empty message deleted/hidden. | | It took less than a day | Aug 27, 2015 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
Where... where are they published? AFAIK, job posts are not allowed to contain rate information (and if you see any job post with rate information, you should report it, by clicking the link at the bottom of the job post).
Here is a snippet from a post on the Proz job board today:
Nameless job poster wrote (my emphasis) on a Job Description:
We are looking for a Technical translator (Car mechanics) for a big technical project we got, that includes three books, about 40,000 words, from English to Brazilian Portuguese .
We haven't decieded whether we will hire one translator or more for this project, we prefer to work with one translator that will give us a fair cost for quantity, not more than 0.03 $ per word, the price will be set as a global price.
I won't make a fuss about it, not sure whether this is forbidden, however my suggestion would be to have the jobs moderator either delete this phrase or, preferably, hold it until the job poster does so.
Of course, I won't give this job poster the time of the day. The problem - as I see it - is that many unadvised translation outsourcers may say, "Aha! So I don't have to go on paying at least 10-12¢/word for technical translation! If these folks are getting it for less than 3¢/word, I'll do the same."
IMO this is what drives rates down. Little do these outsourcers know that, from what I saw while redoing (at my full rate) jobs like this done for 5¢/word, they can get the same overall quality (though the nature of the flaws will be different) for free, using Google Translate.
My expectation was that state-of-the-art machine translation would wipe out the 5¢/word-or-less low quality translation marketplace completely, but this is taking too long to happen.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 19:03
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Abuse must be reported, but will always happen | Aug 27, 2015 |
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote: Here is a snippet from a post on the Proz job board today: We haven't decieded whether we will hire one translator or more for this project, we prefer to work with one translator that will give us a fair cost for quantity, not more than 0.03 $ per word, the price will be set as a global price.
If I understand correctly, this is simply site abuse (i.e. the job poster violated the site rules), and abuse will always happen. One can, of course, avoid abuse by removing the feature where the abuse occurs. But then ProZ.com will be a much emptier place. When abuse happens, report it. There is a link at the bottom of the job post for that.
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Samuel Murray wrote:
If I understand correctly, this is simply site abuse (i.e. the job poster violated the site rules), and abuse will always happen. One can, of course, avoid abuse by removing the feature where the abuse occurs. But then ProZ.com will be a much emptier place. When abuse happens, report it. There is a link at the bottom of the job post for that.
Noncompliance to #3 at http://www.proz.com/about/ipetition/changes
| | | | | For a moment I thought "oh, old times are back! | Aug 27, 2015 |
Henry personally is answering our concerns and issues!"
Only later I realised that the thread had started in 2002 and nothing has changed since then, alas...
Of course, bidding is price-driven, albeit not officially, otherwise the outsourcer would choose a translator from the directory and write to them directly which would be surely less hassle. There might be exceptions though, but normally it works like ... See more Henry personally is answering our concerns and issues!"
Only later I realised that the thread had started in 2002 and nothing has changed since then, alas...
Of course, bidding is price-driven, albeit not officially, otherwise the outsourcer would choose a translator from the directory and write to them directly which would be surely less hassle. There might be exceptions though, but normally it works like an inverse auction. This is made clear already by the term "bid", I think. But I'm no native and my knowledge of the subtleties of the English language is rather limited, so I could well be wrong here.
Little provocation: for those who are reliant upon the Job Board, it could be useful to see how low the rate has gone by others' "bidding", so they could refrain from quoting further.
I don't think however ProZ is to be blamed for this evolution: it's a child of the globalisation. Whitout the internet, rates that many customers expect nowadays to pay would not have dropped dramatically and this is only "reflected" by ProZ, not originated nor encouraged.
But maybe it could put in place some action that might possibly limit further damages, mainly "educating" those translators that believe that 4 cent is a "normal" rate, because they don't know better.
(N. B.: I have been registered here since 2001.) ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Just to be clear on rate versus rate/budget range | Aug 27, 2015 |
Samuel Murray wrote: José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote: Here is a snippet from a post on the Proz job board today: We haven't decieded whether we will hire one translator or more for this project, we prefer to work with one translator that will give us a fair cost for quantity, not more than 0.03 $ per word, the price will be set as a global price. If I understand correctly, this is simply site abuse (i.e. the job poster violated the site rules), and abuse will always happen. One can, of course, avoid abuse by removing the feature where the abuse occurs. But then ProZ.com will be a much emptier place. When abuse happens, report it. There is a link at the bottom of the job post for that.
Job posters are allowed to post this:
Example: (nice range):
$119.00 USD to $120.00 USD per hour
Further payment details: 2USD per audio minute.
Payment 30 days after date of order.
(You can see this because you meet the requirements for this job)
Example (again, nice range):
The budget entered for this job is below the rates charged by at least 80% of ProZ.com members for this pair and currency.
€0.05 EUR to €0.06 EUR per word
Payment method: Online .........
Payment 45 days after date of invoice.
Estimation in your preferred currency (using today's conversion rate):
$0.057 USD to $0.069 USD per word
(You can see this because you meet the requirements for this job)
and:
Example:
Should you be interested, please e-mail me your resume and best rate for a word of translation.
See for all policies with regard to budget posting and job board:
http://www.proz.com/about/ipetition/changes
On here, you will also find this:
"
7. The prominence of the job posting system will be reduced overall, with higher priority given to the directory.
The directory has proven to be a much better source of new clients for professional translators."
>>My suggestions:
a) Do away with the job board. It doesn't matter if a rate or budget range is posted, to get these jobs you need to be in a special kind of category. I am not in that category. Are there exceptions as far as job posts are concerned? Maybe. But when you want someone to bid, you tell them to go as low as you can go.
b) Revamp the platform in a way that appeals to professionals. The current directory search doesn't yield anything much better for me than the job board (my experience).
[Edited at 2015-08-27 15:40 GMT]
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