Spotlight on the Israeli Translation Market

A few months ago I published here a guest post: “Spotlight on the Israeli Translation Market”. I was recently made aware that the author of that post, in a separate article published elsewhere, advised new translators “Depending on your language, you may start as low as $0.01/word and aim to increase that ten-fold to $0.10 . . .”.

Since I completely disagree with such an approach to professional translation, I apologize for publishing the previous post, and will replace it with this same message. 

How to increase your chances when contacting translation companies - from a translation agency’s point of view

This is a guest post by Aniello Attianese, in response to my post 15 tips on how to increase your chances when contacting translation companies. Aniello Attaniese is a Project Manager at Translation Services 24, a translation company in London specialized in legal and marketing translation services which works with a variety of clients, from UK SMEs to Large multinational organisations.

Reading one of Riccardo’s articles published back in 2014 about "15 tips on how to increase your chances when contacting translation companies", I simply couldn’t help but agree that some of the points he had made sound awfully familiar and accurate. Working for a translation agency myself (Translation Services 24), every day I personally come across translators who wish to join our team, and so they approach our agency in a number of different ways.

Certainly, our agency receives a number of well written and professional emails and those are the applications we pay close attention to. Nevertheless, we also receive applications which, simply put, do not meet our agency’s standards. Sadly, because the translator behind the email could be very talented and professional at what their actual job is, still, due to the number of applications we receive, it is simply impossible to contact each person and so naturally we need to eliminate some.

Referring to Riccardo’s post again, I’d like to talk about some of the tips he has mentioned and look at them from our agency’s point of view.

1. Running an in-depth research and finding out more about who you’re about to email is definitely an important point and perhaps something that can influence your success rate greatly. As an agency, we clearly state on our website that the preferred way to contact us regarding any job opportunities is by filling out our online application form or emailing our HR department directly. Instead, we receive countless generic emails to our accounts’ email address. Although we sometimes review these applications anyway, they might not be prioritised over someone who actually took their time to find out more about our company and followed our guidelines. Therefore, it’s always important to, for example, visit agency’s website or social media profiles to gather more information prior to initial contact.
    
2. When receiving applications from translators, it is always extremely helpful to us, as a translation agency, when any specific sector and relevant information beyond languages covered are mentioned in the application. Due to the number of applications we receive, we simply cannot contact each and every person who gets in touch with us. Including such information not only allows our project managers to update their databases regularly, but also increases translator’s chances of being contacted by us if a project within their niche of expertise arises.
    
3. Creating straightforward and self-explanatory subjects for emails is really important. This can be especially true when emailing agency’s generic email address so that it is not treated it as spam. Nevertheless, our HR department opens every application email regardless.
    
4. Perhaps similarly to any translation agency, we prefer to work with native speakers of the target language. We do however work with possibly 10-15 translators who translate not only into their mother tongue but also cover other languages pairs. This, nevertheless, is very rare and each of these translators has been working with us for at least 5 years, proving their accuracy time after time and started working with us as native language only translators too.
    
5. When it comes to the CV itself, Riccardo was quite right advising to keep it simple and straight to the point. From talking to our HR managers, I know they prefer résumés that focus on languages, experience and specialities, rather than rates and irrelevant details. Also, it is extremely important to make sure your CV flawlessly written, without any errors, grammar mistakes etc. If there are mistakes in your CV, which you could proof read a number of times without a deadline and stress before sending it to us, what guarantees do we have that you won’t make even bigger mistakes working with us, which often can be to a tight deadline and under pressure?
    
6. Of course, all the information you include in your CV must be true. In our translation agency, we do have a small team within our HR department whose main job is to strictly check references, qualifications etc. of any translator with whom we are potentially interested working with.
    
7. Also, as Riccardo mentioned in his post, it is quite important to mention any relative and industry specific tools and software you can use as well as any professional organisations/institutes you are part of. This really helps us paint a picture of you and will allow our managers to contact you regarding jobs that are more suitable for you and your skill set. A great example of this can be the knowledge of Illustrator/Photoshop. If you also provide DTP services together with your translations, make sure to mention it!
    

I hope this article has given you a little more insight into what translation agencies similar to ours expect from their applicants and what is it that makes a real difference and can help you stand out from the crowd, and believe me, it’s crowded out there!

Translation company or freelance translator?

I’ve recently received the following e-mail from a translation company that is fishing for customers. In doing so, it makes claims based on dubious arguments, doing a disservice both to translators and to its own prospects:

In this globalization era, translation requests can come from any part of the world in any languages. In order to satisfy that demand, a translation agency must be prepared for a wide range of languages and subjects. A solution is to assign jobs to freelancers. 

However, there can be drawbacks from their temporary nature:

• No long-term commitment;
• Inability to handle large, rush work load;
• Require different linguists for TEP =Complicated, time-consuming management process.

So how do you overcome these obstacles? The answer is [Name of this translation company redacted, as I don't want to provide the with free advertising]:

• We commit a long-term cooperation through signed contracts and agreements;
• Large, rush requests are not a challenge with our abundant resources;
• One contact for all TEP process.

The arguments that this company makes are flimsy but, nonetheless, they are potentially harmful for translators. I’ll examine them in turn:

No long-term commitment. I am not even sure what they mean here: why wouldn’t interested parties be able to reach a long-term commitment with a freelancer? It’s just a question of negotiating and agreeing on terms.

Inability to handle large, rush work load. This very much depends on how large is “large”, and how much of a rush is “rush”. It is true that an individual freelancer is likely not going to be able to do as much work in a given time as a group of translators - but many professional freelancers are able to take on larger projects by teaming up with trusted colleagues. Also, there is always a trade-off between speed and quality: a large project that needs to be completed quickly may need to be assigned to a team of translators, but a project of similar size that needs the best possible quality and consistency is better handled by a single translator and a single editor.

Require different linguists for TEP (Translation, Editing and Proofreading) => Complicated, time-consuming management process. Same as above: many professional freelancers are able to do so by teaming up with trusted colleagues. The process needed is not particularly complicated for most projects, and is probably less time-consuming when undertaken by a team of translators than when handled by a translation company (fewer steps involved).

We commit a long-term cooperation through signed contracts and agreements. Freelance translators or teams of translators are as able to sign contracts and agreements as a translation company. Saying or implying otherwise is casting a slur on the professionalism of freelance translators. This translation company is unwittingly insulting the very same freelancers it then needs to translate the jobs it receives from its clients.

Large, rush requests are not a challenge with our abundant resources. The elephant in the room here is that any translation company ultimately will pass on these “large, rush projects” to freelancers: no translation company - not even the largest - has more than a few translators on staff (if that). So the “abundant” resources they boast of come from the same pool of resources used by all other translation companies: freelance translators. What a good translation company can offer is project management and searching ad selecting the necessary resources. Depending on the size of the project (and on the skill of the translation company) this can be a valuable service.

One contact for all TEP process. This can be an advantage offered by translation companies, but more often than not clients will find themselves in a situation in which they still have to deal with multiple people: the translation company may have an account manager as principal point of contact with a client, but then the actual work is handled by project managers, and often the projects from a single client are handled by multiple project managers, who, in turn, also handle projects for other clients.

There certainly are situation in which clients are best served by a well-organized and reliable translation company. And, yes, these situations are usually large projects translated into multiple languages, But there are also many scenarios in which clients would be better served by relying on a small group of trusted translators. Clients that want the best possible quality in their translations, in fact, should choose this route: it is only when a client establishes a real long-term relationship with professionals committed to learn all that the client requires, wants and needs, that translations of the best quality are possible.

The dread "Hi All"

Some large translation companies seem to make an habit of sending their messages not to you, but to all and sundry:

Hi All,

Could you please confirm ASAP if you would be available for this request. 

Regards,

I normally no longer answer such "Hi All" messages, but since this guy was so insistent (this was the third or fourth message I received from him in the last couple of days, all about the same project), I made an exception:

Hi [Name of PM],

I am sorry, but we are not available.

The reason I have not answered sooner is that I no longer answer messages that are broadcast (“Hi All”), since they normally just signify a waste of time (usually, when you confirm you availability you then get a message back along the lines of “sorry, but the project has already been assigned to someone else”).

If, in the future, you need me to confirm my availability or the availability of my team, please note that I only will answer to messages that begin “Hi Riccardo”, “Dear Aliquantum team”, or the like.

Best regards,

Translation companies, please note: messages addressed to a group are fine, if the entire group is working on the same project.

In exceptional circumstances you can use them, if you really need an answer in a hurry, and you don't know who is currently available - in those instances I would suggest prefacing your message with an apology: "Hi All, Please excuse the mass e-mail, but ...".

But if you make an habit of always sending your messages to all, please consider the likelihood that they will be answered by none.

Agencies rating lists, some rules about commenting

About four years ago I wrote a long post on Agency rating lists. I had almost forgotten that post, but today someone left a comment to the post:

Hello, great post - I´m just struggling with an agency in New York - [Redacted] - hands off!! Two invoices overdue for 66 and 16 days trying to cut 50% of last invoice arguing the end client is requiring this due to repetitions. None of this was in the contract, the low rate was general, for all text of a mega project (including legal and IT parts). The text is online for over a month now, we are a team of around 10 translators struggling for our money. Absolutely incredible. This agency is an outsourcer [Redacted] called agency and has no seriousness at all, being herself a translator and teacher for translation... !!!

I have not published this comment, and quoted here with the relevant names redacted. On the one hand, I have no reason to believe the angry translator who left the post is not telling the truth about her particular experience. On the other hand, I've checked this agency both on Payment Practices and on the Blue Board - and in both places the agency in question enjoys an excellent reputation.

If the translator who left the original comment reads this post, I encourage her to leave her comments in the appropriate fora, such on the Blue Board, on Payment Practices or on the other agency rating lists - some of them do investigate non-payment claims, and might be able to help.

This is also a good occasion to set some rules on comments  about other translation companies: this blog is not the venue for it - please go and add your comments on Payment Practices, the Blue board, TCR or any of the other payment practices lists. Since I have no means of investigating claims of non-payment, leaving such comments published here could damage the reputations of perfectly legitimate companies. If the claim is true, this still is not the place for it: most other translators, when researching the reputation of translation companies, do not look here.

What’s sauce for the goose…

I’ve recently criticized here translators who don’t know how to communicate with translation companies, and start their messages with “Dear Sir / Madam” (going downhill from there).
What’s sauce for the goose, however, is also sauce for the gander. Translation companies and project managers also should refrain from a scattershot approach, sending translation requests to “everyone”, as if any translator were perfectly interchangeable with any other, in the hope that someone is desperate enough to accept a rush assignment due in just a few hours.
From a major translation company:

Hello Everyone,
We have an urgent request for [Name of the project]. Please find below the details. Would request you to please confirm your availability at the earliest. Upon confirmation from me or [Name of PM] please start working on the request.

Answer:

We are not available for this job.
Also, our name is not “everyone”: a little bit of courtesy and respect for professionals would not hurt.
Best regards,

(No, it is not from TP – it is from a company who should know better – and, to their credit, often does).

Babylon Ltd. is looking for translators for their forthcoming online human translation service

Up to now I knew Babylon only as providers of dictionary software. They offer a straightforward application to query several dictionaries and glossaries at the same time, and a utility to build and manage your own glossaries. The standard Babylon subscription includes many "free" glossaries, but for more professionally finished dictionaries they charge extra.

While some of the claims Babylon makes are over the top (for example they offer the English-Italian Oxford Paravia Concise dictionary - a decent dictionary, but far from "[...] the most authoritative and comprehensive Italian-English dictionary" they claim: several more comprehensive and authoritative English-Italian dictionaries are available, some of them even with free online versions), I found their software fairly useful, especially if you need to query several different references at the same time.

Now Babylon wants to enter the online human translation field. I received an e-mail inviting me to apply on line.

Unlike those of many translation companies, the application form takes only a few minutes to complete. However, I noticed three potential issues:

1. Among the required fields were Gender and Year of Birth,
2. There is no field to enter your rates, and
3. While the "Basic Agreement to Terms of Conduct and Terms of Conditions" are short and clear, they include one I would want to negotiate before accepting: "If you have returned an incomplete or low quality work, your payment might be withhold or/and reduced" (sorry, but "low quality work" according to whom, and verified in what manner?)

I asked Ursula Ron about the reason to include the Year of Birth, and she answered it was useful to double check the claims made by the translators about their experience "If someone is born 1980 and tells me he has 15 years of experience, something is definitely wrong". Fair enough, but I still don't understand why they also need "Gender" as a required field.

I'm posting here some of the additional information Ms. Ron sent me, with her permission:

• What is this all about?

We envision the Online Human Translation Service as a web site that allows customers to place projects to be translated, and translators to pick those jobs that suit into their daily workflow.

• When will it happen?

A limited test version should be online within three to four weeks and we are aiming to have the official version ready by the end of May.

• What about the rates?

We are still trying to figure out the most suitable rates that a) will allow qualified translators to get a fair payment, b) will allow us to offer competitive prices and c) will make this enterprise profitable to Babylon.

Since Ursula Ron clearly said they are looking of experienced translators, I urge her to let the translators set their own rates.

I have some misgivings, since this could turn out as yet another site offering cheap translations. Still, the declared interest in experienced professionals is an encouraging sign.

A translation giant in trouble?

According to an article in the Boston Business Journal, Lionbridge will cut 325 positions globally (about 8% of its staff).
Liobridge recorded a $ 114 million loss in 2008.
The CEO's statement appears to be a good example of pure corporatese: "...moving forward as a leaner company while maintaining our focus on innovation and customer quality".
Best of luck to all the Lionbridge staff we know personally.

(Hat tip to Luigi Muzii of il Barbaro for the link)

Agency rating lists: update

In my February post about agency rating lists, I said that to access the TranslatorCafé "Hall of Fame and Shame" it was to necessary to pay TranslatorsCafé's $120 membership.

I have now been informed that any payment to TranslatorsCafé is sufficient to access the Hall of Fame and Shame. From the message I received:

[...] any payment (starting from $10 for credentials verification) [is] enough to get full and unrestricted access to the Hall of Fame and Shame without any time limitation. Active members also have full access irrespective of their membership status. For those who cannot pay, there is always a possibility to ask any moderator to provide with free access.

I will also update the original post with this new information.

Agency rating lists

How do you know if the new prospect that has just contacted you is going to become one of your best customers, or a headache that will pay (IF they pay) only late and after sundry reminders and threats?

In pre-Internet times, there was no quick answer: a translator could check with some trusted colleagues if they had heard of that particular agency, but that was about it.

Later, translators started to exchange such information online, in an unsystematic way in bulletin boards and newsgroup.

For some years, now, there has been something better: sites or list specifically devoted to collect information about translation agencies from translators, and make such ratings available (usually for a small fee) to other translators.

There are three such services that I use regularly when checking new prospects (or even old customers that come back after a long absence): the ProZ Blue Board, TCR, and PP. There are other similar services, although, for some of them, it is difficult to assess their reliability (I'm thinking, for example of the Translation Directory "black list", since it is difficult to know what selection criteria have been used to add translation companies to this "black list"). There are also smaller free Lists and others that specialize in a specific country or language.

To use most of these services there is a fee to pay, but it is well worth it. For the Blue Board (if you want to use it fully), the fee is the ProZ paid membership; same for the Translators Café area devoted to agency reviews (the "Hall of Fame and Shame). For the other two services, I use Payment Practices (PP) and the Translation Customer Review (TCR) list, the fee is respectively 20 and 12 dollars.

A few pieces of advice. Pay attention to trends, if possible: two companies with an average rating may be different if the rating of one is improving and the other worsening, and a positive or negative rating may not be worth much if too old. (In many of these lists, however, it is possible to ask for more up to date information). Also, if the information is available, check how many people have rated the translation company: a rating that averages twenty responses is more informative than a single one.

If the rating list shows who has given bad ratings to a company, try to verify the reputation of those translators: a bad rating given by a translator known to be unreliable may mean something different from the same rating given by someone who has a stellar reputation.

Follow the rules set by the service, and don't abuse them. In particular, I believe that to threaten your prospect with something like "if you don't pay I'm going to give you a bad rating on XYZ board" is forbidden by these services' rules. In many jurisdictions this would be illegal (blackmail). Even if it worked, you would pay a disservice to your colleagues (a bad payer that pays only because threatened remains a bad prospect, and should be rated as such, to protect other translators).

Try to see why a prospect has a bad reputation: you can probably live with someone who consistently pays late, if they are also known to pay always, eventually, and remember that normally it is better to get a customer that pays on time at, 45 days, than one who sometimes pays at 20, and sometimes at 90: you need to be able to plan your own payments.

Bear in mind that you are usually hearing only one side of the story (and as a translator, you are perhaps naturally inclined to side with your colleagues)

Beware that you can also err by excessive caution: we acquired one of our best customers a few years ago: they had found my name on the ATA site, and called to see if I was available for a big project. I checked them out: they were the successors of a company with a truly bad reputation... however, I had a good impression of the project manager who called me. I called her back with my doubts, mentioning the past reputation of the company. She explained that the company had recently been taken over by new owners, who were trying to overcome the bad impressions and practices left by their predecessors. I trusted her, and my hunch. We never regretted it.

1. PP - Payment Practices
   Fee: $ 19.99 year
   - structured information about the translation companies
   - structured feedback from translators visible
   - information may be updated over time
   - no feedback from agencies
   
   
2. TCR - Translator Client Review List
   Fee: $ 12 year
   - less structured information
   - feedback from translators visible
   - information may be updated over time
   - no feedback from agencies
   
   
3. ProZ Blue Board
   Fee: free for limited access; otherwise included in ProZ paid membership - $ 70 / year for limited membership, $ 129 / year for full membership
   - limited access without paid membership to ProZ
   - structured information about translation companies
   - feedback from translators visible
   - feedback from agencies
   
   
4. Translators Café Hall of Fame and Shame
   Fee: free for very limited access; otherwise included in Translators Café paid membership - $ 120 / year; unrestricted access is also available with any payment to TranslatorsCafé, starting with the $10 fee for credentials verification. Unrestricted access also available for free to active members, and upon special request to moderators, to those unable to pay.
   - (usually) limited access without paid membership (or other lower payments) to Translators Café
   
   
5. WPPF WorldPaymentPracticesFree
   Fee: free
   - Simple yahoo group
   - Fewer members than other lists
   - Feedback from translators visible
   
   
6. Translation Agency Payment
   Fee: free
   - Simple Yahoo group
   
   
7. TranslationDirectory.com "black list"
   Fee: free
   - sent as an e-mail for free upon joining the Translation Directory mailing list
   - Feedback from translators not visible
   - No visible means of updating the list, apart from agencies been added to the list from time to time
   - No feedback from agencies
   
   

Please note that there may be other lists available, and that I have a less personal experience with the rating lists after the first free: for example, I could not explore the Translators Café list better, as my lack of a paid membership did not permit me to access it fully.

Update

I have updated this post with new information about the fee necessary to access the TranslatorsCafé "Hall of Fame and Shame"

Myths and legends about translation tests

• Be wary of translation tests: agencies may use them to piece together a translation for free.
  
  This, as far as I can find out, is one of the favorite urban legends of translation. In 24+ years of professional experience I've never seen any evidence that something like this ever happened. Even if it did, the agency in question would soon disappear: the quality of the resulting translation would be so bad and uneven that any customer would soon flee.
  
  
• I don't want to do a free test: I'll send them some sample of previous work of mine, and they can evaluate that.
  
  You can try, but usually whomever sends out the test does it for a purpose: comparing candidate translators to one another - something that you cannot do with translation samples of different originals. Also, bear in mind that a well designed translation test does not only test the quality of the translation: it checks how well the candidates followed the instructions received.
  
  
• I don't want to do a free test, they should pay for it!
  
  Go for it, if you can get it. The most likely outcome is that you'll just exclude yourself from the selection process.
  
  I used to work as a manager in the translation department of a large software company. To evaluate candidates for staff positions (well paid staff positions), we used tests to compare the quality of the translations done by the candidates, and how well such candidates would follow the instructions received.
  
  The first tests were unpaid. Those who refused to do them were just removing themselves from the selection. The company was not being stingy (we invited the candidates who passed the first screening to the company's HQ, all at the company's expense), we just were not interested in people that would not invest a couple of hours of their time to show they were interested in working for us.
  

Having said that, I recommend against doing free tests longer than reasonable (say, 250 to 500 words maximum). Probably an experienced translator could do away with tests, or maybe limit them to only very good prospects.


But, as I was saying, just refusing to do tests is a quick way to remove oneself from the selection process.

ASET update: "Just discard that contract"

ASET's Kevin Hendzel intervened in the ongoing chain of e-mails, stating that he didn't know about the contract, that it had been sent without his knowledge, and that it should be discarded, while ASET drafts something much more appropriate.

Some translators suggested that ASET should take into consideration the opinions expressed in the current exchange of opinions in drafting the new contract.
Also, several translators who know Kevin Hendzel wrote about his contributions to our profession and to ATA, so perhaps the current fracas could indeed be ascribed to internal miscommunications at ASET.

All the same, several aspects of the proposed contract were disturbing. We'll have to see what the new contract looks like.

In the meantime, I'm inclined to give ASET the benefit of the doubt.

ASET puts their foot in

ASET, a translation company who boasts of the quality of their work, seems to have just put their foot in: they sent to their existing suppliers a "new supplier package": W-9, W-8, and an 18-page contract.

For some reason, e-mails from translators who are answering to this rollout are forwarded to all other translators to whom the package was sent: so far I've received 16 of these e-mails, most very critical of the way ASET behaved (among other things, the e-mails complain of unreasonable demands and extended payment terms), with more than a few translators demanding to be removed from ASET's list of suppliers.

I've not had time to study the new contract myself, but this looks like a medium-sized PR fiasco for an otherwise fairly well-regarded translation company: they seem to have alienated at a stroke a number of good translators.

Update

Probably more like a major fiasco: 48 messages and counting, not a single one of them positive, and many of them from excellent translators that no good agency could afford to lose.