The past few months have been busy ones, at least in my corner of the translation industry (corporate communications, including financial). The crisis currently buffeting the financial markets has generated a lot of analysis and commentary – all of which needs to be translated!
This surge in demand has brought with it a bevy of requests from translation agencies. My inbox and voicemail have been bombarded with messages that all look more or less like this:
Madam,
We are a translation agency located in CITY. We have a NUMBER-word translation project to outsource for our client with a deadline of DATE. If you are interested, please reply with your best rate to EMAIL.
Regards,
PROJECT MANAGER
What I find interesting is that there is almost never any mention of the subject area (if the document is about a new medium-term corporate strategy or marketing plan, fine; if it is about brain surgery or rocket science, forget it!). Nor does there tend to be much concern with my past experience or areas of expertise.
Now, when I receive such messages, I can’t help but think of the end client, who is probably totally unaware that their document is being outsourced anonymously to a translator that the agency doesn’t know from Adam and who has not yet been given an opportunity to demonstrate competency (or not) with the end client’s industry and type of document.
The translation is simply being outsourced by the pound. Pricing and deadline are the sole purchasing criteria for the middleman. Quality and service don’t seem to enter into the equation.
With this business model, everybody loses. The translator often comes up against a relatively low ceiling when it comes to negotiating rates. The end client has no visibility or control over how their project is being handled and, if the target language is not one they master, has little leverage for complaint if the result is not up to standard.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Sara,
Indeed, this can be maddening, and it always feels denigrating. Much of our added value is in our individual fields of specialization.
In defense of translation agencies, however, in my experience, this sort of email has usually come with a request for my CV. Presumably, the agency would then do some selection based on my area(s) of expertise. And since it hasn’t told me the subject matter, I can’t orient my CV accordingly. Perhaps this is what the agency wants.
If you now object that the agency should show a little more trust in the people it contacts, I would agree wholeheartedly. I think it would make its own life easier if it narrowed the field of responses. But then again, maybe that field is not that broad to begin with, at the rates they’re offering ….
All the best,
Steve
Educate your clients…
I usually reply to vague requests of “can you do a translation?”, with the reply “how long is piece of string?”…!
Now, most of clients know to send volume/domain/deadline in the subject line of the email.
Wading through hundreds of emails myself, I try to send emails with meaningful (rather than brief) subject lines.
Great blog Sarah!
The cyclostyled type of agency work offer you mention sounds as if it comes out of a garden shed on the edge of town. The tone is “infra-professionnel”, and should be sufficient to warn people off. In any case, an out-of-the-blue job offeror should be checked: address, business information, phone number, the e-mail domain (preferably not a “low-cost” one). And it’s worth checking the their client vetting services on the larger translator portals (Translators’ Café, ProZ, etc.) – there’s many a punter walking the Embankment for lack of caution!
Your blog feels friendly, by the way!
With kind regards,
Adam Warren.
Adam, thanks for your comment and sorry for the delay in approving it!
@Adam, thanks for commenting. Crowdsourcing does have its uses and professional translators capable of adding value through skill, talent, service and a capacity to understand their customers’ business challenges have nothing to fear. What I do find kind of scary are crowdsourcing/MT platforms like aximag.fr that promise paying customers the moon without necessarily having the right professional human intervention at the right stage in the process.
I delete any request that mentions my “best rate,” pure and simple. It tells me this middle man is not in the market I’m aiming for, which seeks my best *work*.
Unfortunately, it seems like most agencies have adopted this quick-buck business model. All the more reason to find direct clients. (hint-hint
)