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Is transparency a requirement for agency rate policies?
Thread poster: Catherine Pawlick
Katalin Szilárd
Katalin Szilárd  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 22:04
English to Hungarian
+ ...
If end-clients knew about this behavior... Mar 2, 2020

Fiona Grace Peterson wrote:


I see nothing sinister in this entire affair. This is how the translation industry operates nowadays. Luckily we have choices. Just as this agency is no longer willing to pay your rates, I am sure there are many others who are.


I read that many good translators with good business skills have been in such situations recently.
I'm not talking about the begging part, because that was a very very wrong choice: but when agencies sending a lot of work and then suddenly nothing, they were very satisfied with your work and after a 1-2 months you realize what was going on behind...
You are there in the database or pools, the agency/platform may be using your name, CV, etc. to attract end clients, and they assign the jobs to translators who are much cheaper than you.
This situation is not only about poor small translators vs. nasty agency business behaviour ("So it goes".), but it is about the agency lying to his own client: basically he is fooling (scamming) the end-client. Because the end-client will probably pay the same price and will probably don't know anything about that the shown best translators (or skills) are not those translators who will really translate his/her documents.

So I do not think we should just say: this is how translation industry is working nowadays...
or this is the nasty world of business.. This shouldn't be normal. This is not acceptable.

That's why high-end clients should know about this, and think twice. . If end-clients could peek into the "behind scenes" work of such "cheating" agencies, they would never choose such agencies.
End-clients may think twice, whether it is worth for them to hire an agency, or whether they do this task by themselves: they hire 2 professional translators (translator + proofreader) chosen by themselves.
I'm not talking about end-clients who would choose freelancers for cutting price (I have seen a couple of them in the job board), but those who need high-end quality.

Adam Warren
 
Katalin Szilárd
Katalin Szilárd  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 22:04
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Empower - I thought I would never write this word :) Mar 2, 2020

And this is the 2nd time I'm using it recently. First I used it a couple of days ago in a Kudoz answer.

Anyway, if translation industry is changing in that (wrong) way, maybe it is time to empower translators with being visible online: make their own sites, own websites, proz profiles or LinkedIn profiles, their individual Kudoz answers to be visible for end-clients by high-ranking (as highest rank) in search engines ... See more
And this is the 2nd time I'm using it recently. First I used it a couple of days ago in a Kudoz answer.

Anyway, if translation industry is changing in that (wrong) way, maybe it is time to empower translators with being visible online: make their own sites, own websites, proz profiles or LinkedIn profiles, their individual Kudoz answers to be visible for end-clients by high-ranking (as highest rank) in search engines such as Google... We were at a disadvantage in this for too long....

*edited for typo


[Edited at 2020-03-02 09:08 GMT] ▲ Collapse
 
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Is transparency a requirement for agency rate policies?







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