Do translators need sleep?

apk12 wrote:

(Pablos comment taken as base, edited.)

Dear Colleague: May I please also offer you my services as I honestly believe in the freedom of market, the financial crisis and my own power to set translators' prices.
I can even finish it well before Pablos proposed deadline and at a quite lower price due to my long experience and very fast typing, which allows me to offer prices far below any newbie living on a caribbean island without rents, without superfluous paying for food (coconuts grow there on the trees for free and I btw. feel good with my time waisted trendy silhouette) and, of course, without expenses for internet connectivity (unnecessary to mention that this island I also believe in).
Even more: Due to my professional speed coming with my experience, I can offer rates even lower than those of any inventive MT editor who just discovered a new biz idea with some help of google and a biz plan written on a handkerchief.
That's why your offered rate in your offered currency a bit smaller than coconuts is no problem for me.
So, I offer a 70% discount to you, but please assign the triple number of words to me, as otherwise I will have a boring day.

Looking forward to your reply. TIA (Tortilla Industry Association).

Pablo Bouvier wrote:

Noch besser! Wer gibt mehr? By the way, the handkerchief was a fabric or a paper one ? Bear in mind you should save some coconuts to retire and also stay environmentally friendly ;o)

Jeff Whittaker wrote:

"Dear Colleague,

“We are offering translators the rare opportunity to work with our agency. It is Friday afternoon and we have 2,567,000 words that must to be translated in two days. Please do not bother to respond if you cannot meet this deadline (we need to have everything back by 3:00 pm this Sunday) of if you are not able to translate more than 20,000 words by this time. We know that this is a lot, but we could not say no to this great money-making opportunity for us and this great opportunity for some new translators to get some great experience. We need to roundup at least 115 more translators, so if you can type your name, you have the job. However, we do prefer translators who can offer good quality, are prompt and who offer discounts for large projects and for TRADOS repetitions. Because of the great volume of this job, we have very low budget and can pay no more than .03 a word, so please give us your very, very best, best-friends forever rate because we are a great company and we deserve it and please place the rate in the subject line (because of the rush schedule we do not have time to qualify anyone and only translators with the best rates will get the work). However, please note that even though you will be working for two days and nights without sleep on this highly-technical text, if our client finds that you have made even one small error, you will not be paid. The subject matter is very interesting and several of our translators have actually offered to do this job for us for free, but we understand if you need a little money to help defray the cost of electricity to operate your computer and coffee to stay awake. Translators are responsible for editing their own work – unfortunately, there is no money in the budget for us to do anything but pass your work on to the client. If only we could find a way to eliminate the need for silly translators from this process, our clients would be happy and we could make more money. However, once we piece together the work of over 100 high-quality translators like you working without sleep for less than 1/5 of the going rate, we are confident that our client will order more work from us in the future. Despite the rush nature of this project, translators will not be paid for 90 days.”

Nicole Schnell wrote:




How come that the lucky candidates don't have to do a test translation first? Two pages, unpaid and in an unrelated technical field, of course.

Pablo Bouvier wrote:

Yes! After applying, I felt there was something wrong with this job. But, I could not realise exactly out what it was. Now, I know what it was! Nicole, thanks a lot to take my attention to this. Only two unpaid translation test pages seem unfair to me. I will call them at once asking for a 20 pages unpaid translation test and not one page less!

Now, I feel happy!

Jeff Whittaker wrote:

Thank you all for sending in your quotes and test translations. However, the client has decided to have the translation done in house.

Jeff Whittaker wrote:

Update: The client has completed the project in under 30 minutes using Google translate. You will be pleased to know that they are now asking us to have the project edited. I hope that some of you are still available. Our budget range is US$ .005 to US$ .005 per word.

[Edited at 2010-04-07 21:28 GMT]

Nicole Schnell wrote:

Dear outsourcer,

It will be my pleasure to take care of the editing. However, to err is human, whereas a machine is infallible. Please allow me to provide the editing at a reduced rate as I might screw up the text. Also, I just bought insurance five minutes ago, so feel free to sue me, should the result not be to your utmost satisfaction.

Jeff Whittaker wrote:

We're sorry. However, it appears that you are too experienced for this project. We generally only use translators with < six months experience as they tend to complain less when we don't pay on time or at all or when we reduce our rates due to alleged customer complaints. It has been our experience that translators with a lot of experience tend to be too demanding.