ProZ.com Translation Forums

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Several points, some are maybe not known to anybody here

Berthold Kynast — Sun, 02 Jul 2017 14:55:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Berthold Kynast
Post title: Several points, some are maybe not known to anybody here

First of all, I had enough and moved to the south of Bulgaria from Germany because it wasn't possible to survive the high costs with the always lowering income over the years - my best decision ever.

My reasons which I experience:

1. Rates since years are only lowering, never rising, but prices do, this alone is in fact lowering the income. Some posted here that translators who work for too low prices are a risk of lowering the income, let me say something, when you work for agencies, they determine the prices, and you as a freelancer have nothing to say. The highest which I receive is 0.10 USD per word, most are only paying 0.06 to 0.08 USD per word. This is the reality, and for this you can't even propose to get more, they will give it to the masses of others who are already standing in the queue, and I am speaking about high tech patent translations, which I do for almost 100%.

2. Increasing use of Machine Translation which requires postediting. This means, for postediting I receive only the half of what I receive for pure translation, but in my case, I am at least as fast with pure translation as the 800 words per hour they assume for postediting, this means from the moment a translation is replaced by postediting, I earn around 70% less per word.

3. Agencies abusing translators as free of charge layouters and 2nd-time reviewers! One of my agency customer have a very strange collection of habits which all decrease my income by stealing my time: - I have to do the layout of the text documents so that they fit in their template, - even worse, they expect from me also to do the layout of the drawings which I receive in pdf or want me to make a list with the terms, while I am saying I am not a layouter, I am translator and I am neither paid for this nor I am educated for this (they simply don't get it that it would be less work even for them to provide a clean Word drawing with the English terms inside from the onset, - and now comes the unique step, the cream on top: After review they send the reviewed text back to the translator and the translator is "allowed" to look into all the remarks and corrections the reviewer made, and has also to adapt all the text when the reviewer has only read the title and maybe the claims for free, not even a coin, this is thrown into no matter when some days after the translation and you have to squeeze it in like a normal translation even if you have no time at all! Did anyone have experience with such practice?

4. Delayed payment and excessive bank transfer processing fees: One of my agency customers has 45 days of payment delay, this is bad enough to wait for, but in at least 50% of the cases the just give themselves another 4 or 6, sometimes 8 weeks, which made me to set up a detailed list of all invoices sent with data and everything. When I ask there is coming often the remark that there are "internal billing problems, and I should contact the respective project manager". More than once this forced me to lend money from friends because I could not sleep any more in fear from what to pay the next bill the next day!

Bank transfer fees from the US to Europe, they always deduct 20 USD for that from any of my invoices, when they send only the transfer for 1 invoice, the deduct 20 USD and when they send a bunch at once, it is also 20 USD one time. They don't get it that in Europe to receive a check is much more disadvantageous than to transfer the money by bank.

Had I stayed in Germany, I would be bankrupt by now, here at least I can live very well from what I am earning. It is like increasing the income by 3 or 4 times.

[Bearbeitet am 2017-07-02 16:07 GMT]

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Agencies getting too big for their britches

Félicien Sirois — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 07:21:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Félicien Sirois
Post title: Agencies getting too big for their britches

What has affected me most in recent years are once-stable, awesome clients suddenly deciding that they need to get bigger. They begin opening foreign offices (the number one company ruiner IMO), or start instituting onerous paperwork requirements (often solely for the sake of fulfilling some nebulous "ISO certification" requirement), or simply start cutting rates or streamlining workflow in a way that compromises quality for the sake of better yearly returns.

Or all three of the above. The trifecta of trouble.

In two cases now I've had clients go from being suppliers of 60-75% of my income, to my having to leave them entirely because their new policies are no longer congruent with my professional standards.

It's really been sad to watch, but it's also forced me to open up my eyes and branch out and diversify.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Biggist to my business is instability in the Middle-East

Sami Khamou — Sat, 01 Jul 2017 02:14:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Sami Khamou
Post title: Biggist to my business is instability in the Middle-East

In addition to all threats mentioned by my colleagues above, there are other specific threats to translation business depending on orders created by development projects in the Middle-East. Orders I used to receive for English/Arabic translation have disappeared also because of instability in the Middle-East. On-going wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen are factors for the disappearance of development projects in those countries. Now, we have the rift between Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt on one side and Qatar on the other side which adds to the problem. Fluctuations in the oil prices is another adverse factor. Resources are mostly spent on weapons of war rather than job creating development projects.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Sickness

Alexandra Villeminey — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 07:42:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Alexandra Villeminey
Post title: Sickness

The risk I won't be able to work for some reason.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | A combination, but one thing above all else

Robert Forstag — Tue, 20 Jun 2017 00:36:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Robert Forstag
Post title: A combination, but one thing above all else

Machine translation, CAT tools, too many translators, debased quality standards: I see all of these as threats to anyone who would hope to earn a viable living as a freelance translator.

But most of all it is, as Jessica and others have said, the big agencies and not just because they often buy out their smaller competitors, but because they really set the standard for what is acceptable, and thus exercise pressure on smaller companies to adopt some of their own practices that so many of us find odious.

In this regard, I tend to think that agencies are the problem. Period. Not big agencies, not small agencies, but agencies. Period. Translators who rely solely on agency work to make a living are in trouble unless they are among the relatively lucky few who can confidently expect a regular flow of work involving reasonable deadlines and good rates, and/or work in combinations for which there is high demand and relatively scarce supply. Most others will likely often find themselves working for lower rates than they are comfortable with, doing work they don't especially like, accepting rush work that requires long nights and sacrificed weekends because those are the only jobs that pay decently, and dealing with intense anxiety over long periods of down time. The other alternative for agency-dependent translators is to accept very low rates to ensure their steady flow of work, thus effectively transforming themselves into the equivalent of sweatshop drudges required to meet a certain daily quota of piecework before they are allowed to stop and enjoy the rest of the few waking hours they might have at their disposal.

Not a pretty picture, I know. Certainly not a vision of the translation industry that this site and the manufacturers of the big CAT tools would officially endorse. But there it is.

And the situation doesn't look to get better any time soon.

[Edited at 2017-06-20 00:48 GMT]

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Shareholder activism

The Shredder — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 22:21:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: The Shredder
Post title: Shareholder activism

[quote]Jessica Noyes wrote:

I am concerned about the way large perfect felines and the rest are buying out many of the boutique agencies that were once so pleasant to work with. I am very glad to help an outsourcer make a good living by doing the detail work that allows me just to translate; however, it makes my skin crawl to know that profits in the billions are being made by the individuals who own these mega-companies. Meanwhile, I have to arm-wrestle the PMs just to keep my rates as they are. Under the traditional capitalist system, these profits are supposed to be reinvested into the business, creating more jobs and wealth all around, but as far as I can tell, these people are simply salting away these funds in tax havens. [/quote]

The big boys are all publicly quoted companies. Why don't all their disgruntled vendors simply buy some shares in them and take over their annual meeting?

And if that doesn't work out at least you get paid a bit more in the form of dividends.

P.S. I agree that their taking over the world is bad news. I've lost so many good customers to them over the years. But I've also seen plenty of disillusioned end-customers jumping back off.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Not exactly...

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 21:51:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Post title: Not exactly...

[quote]Ana Vozone wrote:

Needless to say their own salaries are updated every year... and many (if not all) have a fantastic package of perks... it's their "fundamental right", I suppose.

[url removed]

Of course, this is just an example!

[Edited at 2017-06-19 09:02 GMT] [/quote]

If I remember correctly in 2011 there was no adjustment of the remuneration and pensions of officials and other servants of the European Union and from 2012 all remunerations were frozen as part of the package for the Multiannual Financial Perspectives 2014-2020. A limited adjustment only took place in July 2016.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Finally an intelligent and useful post!

Mario Freitas — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:29:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Mario Freitas
Post title: Finally an intelligent and useful post!

Congrats, Muriel!

I think several factors are already affecting our market.

1. Translators accepting low rates are certainly affecting the market, because the agencies are profitting from the opportunity to lower the rates based on that.
However, it's not really our market in most cases, as the translators who work for peanuts would probably not be accepted by our clients, due to low quality. But many people are desperate and accepting lower rates, due to the bad period of the economy as a whole, and a shortage of jobs.

2. Changing client practices: The worst ones are the adoption of online/cloud platforms, which is becoming more common and are usually terrible as compared to our own CATs. They make us waste time and don't allow us to feed our own TMs.
But another horrible practice is the so-called post-editing, a total disaster in our market. I don't accept either clouds or post-editing, but I may be forced to do so soon if we don't fight together against these practices. And I'm not seeing this fight, unfortunately. People tend to accept the market trends without questioning them.

3. Machine translation: A threat only to the peanut and low-quality transltors. It may start affecting the good translators in about 50 years. Our grandchildren may have issues with that, not us.

[Edited at 2017-06-19 18:32 GMT]

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Not necessarily machine translation

Muriel Vasconcellos (X) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 18:15:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Muriel Vasconcellos (X)
Post title: Not necessarily machine translation

Personally, I have yet to believe that machine translation has a major effect on our freelance businesses, though I do recognize that a lot of people are using it for free. A couple of years ago a museologist approached me about translating a book she needed for her research. When I quoted my rate, she got sticker shock. I suspect she ended up using MT, and I see nothing wrong with that.

I see MT being used more for casual purposes and as an information tool--people learning about subjects on the Internet that they could not have accessed before. I use it myself to learn what my Facebook friends are saying in Norwegian, Arabic, and other languages I will never understand.

It is also being used by researchers accessing background literature for their studies--material they would not have attempted to translate in the past. When I wrote my thesis back in the 1980s, I would have been able to expand my research in important ways if f had been able to read Czech. Today I would have used MT.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Thank you for your responses!

Muriel Vasconcellos (X) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 17:57:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Muriel Vasconcellos (X)
Post title: Thank you for your responses!

I was hoping to see if others are experiencing the same pressures.

My business took a huge hit in early 2016 when I lost three of my favored direct clients due to retirement/departure of my contact in the organization. However, I have recovered from that and am nearly back to my former work flow.

More insidious, I find, is the steady lowering of rates paid by agencies. Instead of going up to keep pace with economic indexes, they are actually gong down. My friends have confirmed this trend, and now I see it confirmed here. I was shocked to see from Ana that the EU, by negotiating bulk contracts, is now down to half what it was paying 25 years ago.

What cements this trend is people willing to work for the low rates.

As freelancers, we should be making enough to get by, but we can't do that anymore and still keep up with the cost of living in a major Western city. Which means that many good translators can't stay in the business and bottom feeders are taking their place. The profession is changing for the worse and we have ourselves to blame.

[Edited at 2017-06-19 18:06 GMT]

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Agencies that delay payments

Nina Khmielnitzky — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 16:30:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Nina Khmielnitzky
Post title: Agencies that delay payments

I work mainly with 2 Montreal agencies. One has a defined payment system: I submit invoices twice a month and get paid 60 days after. The wait is long, but they pay on time.
The other has never specified any deadline for payment, so on each invoice, I write the date by which payment is expected. It's been a year, and I ALWAYS have to remind them that they are overdue. Sometimes, I simply tell them I'll go pick up my payment (they are located near my place) or tell them I will not accept new assignments until they have paid me.
I really have to work on getting new direct clients with better rates and payment practices, but that's a whole other story.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Corporate overlords

Jessica Noyes — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 14:12:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Jessica Noyes
Post title: Corporate overlords

I am concerned about the way large perfect felines and the rest are buying out many of the boutique agencies that were once so pleasant to work with. I am very glad to help an outsourcer make a good living by doing the detail work that allows me just to translate; however, it makes my skin crawl to know that profits in the billions are being made by the individuals who own these mega-companies. Meanwhile, I have to arm-wrestle the PMs just to keep my rates as they are. Under the traditional capitalist system, these profits are supposed to be reinvested into the business, creating more jobs and wealth all around, but as far as I can tell, these people are simply salting away these funds in tax havens.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Other

Anne Schulz — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 13:44:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Anne Schulz
Post title: Other

Not so much the colleagues offering translations for low rates, but the clients accepting the poor quality which is almost invariably associated with low rates (and frequently not even noticing the difference, as José and Giovanni confirmed).

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Although...

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 11:38:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL
Post title: Although...

I voted a "combination of the above", but to me the real threat and a fairly new development is the multiplying number of agencies competing solely on price... this drives the rates down. We know that there always be translators accepting low rates, but agencies that know how to do their job properly - promoting quality and awareness of the translation process and the associated costs - are a must in our profession, IMO.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Translators working for low rates

José Henrique Lamensdorf — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 11:07:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: José Henrique Lamensdorf
Post title: Translators working for low rates

Now and then an e-mail inadvertently slips with a cost estimate or an invoice, and I see that someone I had every reason to consider as a high-rating qualified, competent, and zealous professional is charging despicable rates.

Now and then clients use my services to rate the translation tests they get from online applicants. About one out of every five is acceptable. The remaining 80% are actually worse than free online machine translation. About 5% of the total dares to submit the raw output from Google Translate, perhaps to check on whether anyone is looking.

Translation is - or should be - a services-providing business like any other. The provider supposedly has invested in his/her qualification to do it, as well as in equipment and services. It's a matter of ROI, like any other business: how much one should get in return for whatever they've invested.

A translator is essentially selling his/her [i]time[/i] to do a certain amount of work performed, and their composite investment (knowledge, experience, computer hardware and software) has some direct influence on how much work they can deliver per time unit. The investment is composite, because a fledgling translator using state-of-the-art computer hardware and software will probably yield less production that a seasoned one with pencil and paper. So, for general convenience, the price is stated in terms of results, the quantity of words translated.

The first question that arises is: Am I charging/expecting/demanding too much?

Considering a number of colleagues whose qualification I consider equivalent to mine, who work in the same language pair I do, and who live in the same country where I am, with whom I team up now and then, and who team up with me now and then, NO. We all charge about the same, when not exactly the same. Considering the Proz Community Rates, NO again.

Is the quality I deliver adequate to the price I charge? My recurring clients say yes.

So the biggest threat to my income is from:
a) translators who are selling their services for less than they are worth in the marketplace;
b) translators offering cheap low quality services to clients who either don't know the difference or simply don't care about it.

I expected FREE online machine translation to rid the market from cheap lo-grade translators, but this failed to happen. Apparently clients are willing to pay - no matter how miserably - for the privilege of having a human being they can blame for inadequate quality.

Assuming the rate I and the aforementioned colleagues have adopted is right, and considering the intel I have from scoring translation tests, I'd say that the overall quality delivered by the free Google Translate is equivalent to human translation done at HALF the proper rates (though the flaws will differ in their nature). In a nutshell:[list][*] Pay 100% for high quality human translation;
[*] Pay 75% for so-so barely acceptable human translation;
[*] Pay 50% for low quality translation and have someone to blame;
[*] Pay 25% and waste money; or
[*] Pay nothing for machine translation; if you get complaints, blame yourself![/list]

Staying on the top of the heap when the entire heap widens with globalization is not easy.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Low rate translations from agencies in development countries

Toni Faisal — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:58:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Toni Faisal
Post title: Low rate translations from agencies in development countries

May be some of you guys found that low rate translations come from agencies in development country... Is it okay because they are in development countries then the rate becomes low?

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Procrastination on my own part

Gitte Hoveds (X) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 10:33:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Gitte Hoveds (X)
Post title: Procrastination on my own part

It would be so easy to blame somebody else when business is slow, but to be honest, I am aware that there is an obvious correlation between the amount of work I dedicate to cultivating clients, and the amount of work I get, and consequently, the amount of money I make.

The type of clients I prefer to work with wouldn't look for machine translation, nor would they look for the lowest price, but for the best quality.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | My own laziness

EvaVer (X) — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 09:37:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: EvaVer (X)
Post title: My own laziness

and everything that has been mentioned, of course.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | I don't see any real threats

Elena Aleksandrova — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 09:30:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Elena Aleksandrova
Post title: I don't see any real threats

Every business is dynamic. No business stays still for too long. If we don't adapt, we accept every change as a threat so I believe we all have to be flexible and to accept any threat as an opportunity.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | A combination

Ana Vozone — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 09:01:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Ana Vozone
Post title: A combination

... but mostly translators offering and agreeing to work for low (ridiculous) rates.

Somebody once said that there will always be someone in the middle of the desert, on the top of a mountain, on another continent, willing to work for less. And the internet certain makes this possible...

Over a decade ago, at a meeting arranged by the European Commission delegation in Lisbon, a EU official said: "It's the market..." Through regular tenders, EU Bodies have managed to successively bring down the prices they pay for their translations. If they paid around 40 euros per page (40 ecus then) over 25 years ago, through their competitions they have brough the prices down to nearly half that amount. Needless to say their own salaries are updated every year... and many (if not all) have a fantastic package of perks... it's their "fundamental right", I suppose.

[url removed]

Of course, this is just an example!

[Edited at 2017-06-19 09:02 GMT]

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Insistence on CAT tools

Jennifer Forbes — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 08:49:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Jennifer Forbes
Post title: Insistence on CAT tools

Well, like others, I face a combination of the threats listed but, in my particular case, I dislike CAT tools and the increasing insistence on their use is probably what affects my translating income the most.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | A combination

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 08:42:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Post title: A combination

1. Favored clients leaving the business: Only this year, I have lost two of my long-standing clients, one went bankrupt and the other one died suddenly on vacation.
2. Translators working for low rates, low agency rates and machine translation: Aren’t these intertwined? I must say that when I started translating some 40 years ago no one paid peanuts rates, and most freelancers would not work for minimum wage as they knew they were worth much more.

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income? | Combo

neilmac — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 08:25:00 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: neilmac
Post title: Combo

But people offering low rates is probably the main driver.

PS: Perhaps not the "biggest threat", but for me the most irksome intrusion, would be translation by non-natives. For example, I wouldn't translate into Catalan, and I expect the same respect from my peers.

[Edited at 2017-06-20 06:45 GMT]

Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?

ProZ.com Staff — Mon, 19 Jun 2017 08:10:02 +0000

Forum: Poll Discussion
Topic: Poll: What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?
Poster: ProZ.com Staff

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "What to you see as the biggest threat to your business income?".

This poll was originally submitted by Muriel Vasconcellos. View the poll results »