Tuesday

The British Centre - Jesi (AN), Le Marche

The Company

The
British Centre of Jesi says it has been in business since 1977 -- though it still hasn't translated its own website into English.

They offer "fast, efficient service for documents of every kind (technical, scientific, legal, and business-related) in any foreign language," and, of course, they underscore their "collaboration" with native speakers.


The History

On January 8, 2008, the British Centre of Jesi posted a job to the Proz job board:
URGENT. ITALIAN INTO ENGLISH 1 PAGE

Though the job may well have been one printed page, the word count indicated in the posting was 550 words -- or approximately 2.5 "cartelle" of 1500 keystrokes each.

Payment was "15 usd" and the British Centre further promised:
"you will be offered other projects from our agency."
The rate quoted here, then, comes to approximately $6 per cartella. Note that, as of this writing, the British Centre's company profile on Proz.com indicates a "standard rate" of "0.04 Euro per word" for Italian->English translations.

Based on that, a job of 550 words should come in at a minimum of E. 22 or about $31.90 at today's exchange rate. There's no explanation for why this particular job -- marked URGENT! -- was priced so low.

I contacted the company about this job offer and their rates and received the following response:
you email, seems that you are quite bored. please just next time if u dont like the project and what offered, ignore them....and dont stress us with your tantrums.

1 comment:

  1. My very first job through proz.com, as a rather naive newcomer, was through this agency. It took months to get paid a mere pittance. Stay away.

    ReplyDelete

This blog does not allow anonymous comments. I reserve the right not to approve any comment that I find inaccurate, offensive to translators, or just plain silly.