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Offer of the day (low rates)
Thread poster: Mirko Mainardi
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 11:38
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
It's not foolproof Apr 29, 2019

Andrew Morris wrote:

Did you know that you could adjust your mail settings within your profile so that you never receive offers beneath whatever rate you stipulate?

https://www.proz.com/?sp=dashboard&sp_mode=jobs&fbclid=IwAR0SGn0-ddRa6s68McUkanIf3Lhedd9E0vwEZSagRJuKd6CEj391lObHFgE

That might save a lot of people a lot of heartache.


I get lots of 'personal' offers well below the rate I stipulate, and if the hopeful outsourcers do not mention a rate, they are not filtered out. Maybe something to do with currency, but I have stated my rate in Euros on the site.
I agree, in principle, if outsourcers can see there are lits of translators who will not accept their offers, they may think again, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to work that way.


Andrew Morris
P.L.F. Persio
 
Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris
Local time: 11:38
ProZ.com team
The purpose of rejection... Apr 29, 2019

Sure, Christine, I see your point..

(Edited to add: ok, let’s look into tightening that filter when the client does not mention a rate. There must be a tech solution for that.)

But on the bigger issue, every time I refuse an offer, I am not seeking to change the industry from top to bottom.

I’m looking after my sanity and my wellbeing. I don’t think the importance of those should be underestimated.


 
Thayenga
Thayenga  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:38
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
Promises are made to be broken Apr 29, 2019

Fiona Grace Peterson wrote:

Of course the rate will be justified by payment at the speed of light (no, faster; payment will be in your account before you even accept the job) and volumes of work so high you need to wear a diaper because you've no time to leave your computer even to take a leak.

And being the medical field, the quality will be so impeccable we should start bracing ourselves for a tsunami-like wave of patient injuries, litigation or worse, or healthcare professionals unlucky enough to get their hands on such "translations" scratching their heads and going "Eh???"

I got one such translation to review recently, and it looked like the Manson family got there before me.


This is common practice, or seems to be also on ProZ. I received an offer the other day that tried to cut the rate to USD 0.04 for a 10 K, in this case quite challenging engineering/aerospace project. 100 - 70% matches payment, USD 0.02. Payment 30 days after receipt of invoice via PayPal (fees paid by the translator, of course). Turnaround time: NLT 72 hours. The justification for the low rate was, wouldn't you have guessed?, that very high (?) volume.

I had to decline this generous offer. Justification, no diapers available.


Andrew Morris
P.L.F. Persio
 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 10:38
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
There's a drawback Apr 29, 2019

Andrew Morris wrote:
Did you know that you could adjust your mail settings within your profile so that you never receive offers beneath whatever rate you stipulate?

A lot of my income comes from revising texts. Of course, if a budget per word has been specified, it's going to be considerably lower than what I'd accept for a translation job. In fact, if it's final monolingual proofreading then a single cent may be enough to interest me if the quality is really good. I'm sure that filter is supposed to take account of the different services, but it doesn't always. A lot of the jobs I quote on carry a warning that the rate is below what 80% of translators would accept (or words to that effect). I imagine I'd be automatically denying myself perfectly legitimate jobs. Not a smart move.


Andrew Morris
 
Jo Macdonald
Jo Macdonald  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 11:38
Member (2005)
Italian to English
+ ...
1 cent? Apr 29, 2019

Sheila Wilson wrote:

In fact, if it's final monolingual proofreading then a single cent may be enough to interest me if the quality is really good.


Shiela you would proofread a good quality monolingual translation for 1 cent/word?
For 200 words/1 page that would be about €2, for 2000 words about €20.
How can that be worth your time?
Even if no or very few changes are required, it still takes time to read and check something.


 
writeaway
writeaway  Identity Verified
French to English
+ ...
That's a typical rate offered here or so it seems Apr 29, 2019

Jo Macdonald wrote:

Sheila Wilson wrote:

In fact, if it's final monolingual proofreading then a single cent may be enough to interest me if the quality is really good.


Shiela you would proofread a good quality monolingual translation for 1 cent/word?
For 200 words/1 page that would be about €2, for 2000 words about €20.
How can that be worth your time?
Even if no or very few changes are required, it still takes time to read and check something.


Last week someone posted an "offer" consisting of proofreading a 7900 word Fr-En legal translation for a rate of €104 to €115 euros, so way under 2 cents/word.
13 people "offered" their services.



 
Christopher Schröder
Christopher Schröder
United Kingdom
Member (2011)
Swedish to English
+ ...
Leaving ProZ is the only foolproof way to weed out silly job offers... Apr 29, 2019

I've found that not being a paying member of the site is very effective.

But the best way would be to delete my ProZ profile altogether.

So I'd say there's a pretty strong business case for ProZ to do more in this area, even if it feels no moral obligation to do so.


Mirko Mainardi
Robert Forstag
Jan Truper
 
Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris
Local time: 11:38
ProZ.com team
A question of judgement Apr 29, 2019

Sheila Wilson wrote:

A lot of the jobs I quote on carry a warning that the rate is below what 80% of translators would accept (or words to that effect). I imagine I'd be automatically denying myself perfectly legitimate jobs. Not a smart move.


That's also perfectly fine. We each have to decide for ourselves of course.

My point is that the tool is available, for those who are talking about straight translations at per-word rates.


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 10:38
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
@ Jo, writeaway and Andrew Apr 29, 2019

Jo Macdonald wrote:
Shiela you would proofread a good quality monolingual translation for 1 cent/word?
For 200 words/1 page that would be about €2, for 2000 words about €20.
How can that be worth your time?
Even if no or very few changes are required, it still takes time to read and check something.

I always charge for my time, Jo. My hourly rate is EUR 30.00 -- low by a lot of people's standards, but I'm happy with it here in Spain. I always start by asking the client what they expect from my intervention, and I insist on seeing the text. A lot depends, of course, on what is implied by that tricky little "proofreading" word. Once we have the job defined, I'll quote a maximum spend in terms of hours. I charge only for the time actually needed, up to that maximum. I can get my calculator out and give a per-word figure if they really want that, but then they'd be paying the maximum. If I'm dealing with non-native English that's understandable but full of minor errors or with muddle-headed English-native writers, I'll charge more like 4 cents per word. But if the text has already been checked and I'm just doing a final, pre-publication proof check, then 3,000 words an hour isn't uncommon.

writeaway wrote:
Last week someone posted an "offer" consisting of proofreading a 7900 word Fr-En legal translation for a rate of €104 to €115 euros, so way under 2 cents/word.
13 people "offered" their services.

That's bilingual revision/review -- also known as "proofreading" here, confusingly enough. If I offered that service -- which I don't often -- I'd be thinking more around €500 minimum. However, when you're comparing the two texts to check for accuracy, omissions and additions, as well as checking how the target text reads, I think some errors on the level of "form" vs. "from" are inevitably going to slip past you. If it's critical to get the text as near perfect as humanly possible, there should be at least one more read-through of the target text alone. And that's the one I was referring to in my previous post.

Andrew Morris wrote:
That's also perfectly fine. We each have to decide for ourselves of course.

My point is that the tool is available, for those who are talking about straight translations at per-word rates.

And my point is that the tool doesn't work correctly for many jobs. It needs to compare the rate with that service's range of acceptable rates, not with the general translation rate.


Andrew Morris
Jo Macdonald
P.L.F. Persio
DZiW (X)
 
Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris
Local time: 11:38
ProZ.com team
Noted Apr 29, 2019

Sheila Wilson wrote:

And my point is that the tool doesn't work correctly for many jobs. It needs to compare the rate with that service's range of acceptable rates, not with the general translation rate.


Ok I can pass that on. That's valuable feedback. Thanks!


Thayenga
 
Tina Vonhof (X)
Tina Vonhof (X)
Canada
Local time: 04:38
Dutch to English
+ ...
@Andrew Apr 29, 2019

Andrew Morris wrote:

On the wider issue, this does indeed reflect a changing market, which I agree is worrisome.

But I firmly believe that we as individual freelancers need to deal with it ourselves.

So while I am a huge supporter of colleagues sharing experience online and see enormous benefits in that, when it comes to the tens of millions of transactions between clients and individual freelancers, I fear we are pretty much alone and need to accept that.

I can’t say “Hey Mirko, help me out here,” if a FR>EN client tries to pull the wool over my eyes. I need to act on my own behalf.

What ProZ.com does via the link I posted above is offer you a tool to do just that. That’s all.

And yes, in my opinion, that would save heartache. Which is no bad thing.


Hi Andrew, I'm only quoting some relevant parts of your post and, as is often the case, we agree more than we disagree. Of course, individual translators need to deal with declining job offers ourselves and maintain our own standards. But I think awareness of the changing market among ourselves and learning how others deal with it to maintain their personal standards is very helpful and may even create, not necessarily the same responses, but a shared 'philosophy', if you will, at least among a number of us.

Of course, people can choose to block these seemingly low job offers but as Sheila points out, it depends on the job, the language combination, and the currency. Not an easy fix, I think.


Mirko Mainardi
Andrew Morris
 
Robert Forstag
Robert Forstag  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:38
Spanish to English
+ ...
Another one bites the dust Apr 29, 2019

Some time within the past hour or so, this thread ceased to appear in the “Recent Posts” list, at least on my devices.

Jan Truper
Mirko Mainardi
 
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