_TL: Lingo24.com: 1000% Profit! (just not for translators)

In case you needed more evidence for the proposition that massive online jobbers like Lingo24.com are a total ripoff offer virtually no advantage to professional translators, here's a clear example. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to dig up the following facts, either.

Recently, Lingo24 posted an announcement on ProZ.com. Since ProZ continues to allow outsourcers to name their price, Lingo24 was able to include these helpful "budget and payment details":

We can pay 10 GBP per 1000 words (very easy texts). Applicants should send their CVs to alina.ungureanu@lingo24.com.

On Lingo24's site, meanwhile, here's what they tell the public:

Our minimum charge is £50/€60/$80 and our rates for translation start from £100/€120/$160 per 1000 words.

The offer is inherently offensive (the equivalent of €0.01/word), but what's truly appalling is that Lingo24 has no qualms about paying its translators one-tenth of what it charges its clients -- or, to put it another way, Lingo24 makes a ONE THOUSAND PERCENT profit on the translator's work. And that's at a minimum.

Don't agencies need to add something to their rates-to-translators in order to cover costs and overhead? Of course they do. But when an agency is charging end clients 1000% of what the translator is earning, that's not called fair profit. It's called shameless exploitation.

It's no accident that job posters like Lingo24 keep turning to ProZ.com in their search for desperate translators willing to be squeezed like lemons -- they're essentially partners in the same nefarious, bottom-feeding approach that is putting experienced, professional translators out of business.

Like every single agency organized on a similar business model (low cost is the only marketing lever worth talking about, while translators exist solely to be exploited), Lingo24 boasts that it has "top linguists at your disposal." Well, no they don't, either. Not for €0.01/word. (And why is it that end clients so often fail to recognize that agencies like Lingo24, who pay peanuts, are selling them the work of monkeys?)

What's more, Lingo24 wants you to know that it is "proud of its entrepreneurialism and is always on the look out for new opportunities."

Right. Opportunities to abuse translators and to reap unfair profits. Definitely something to be proud of, Lingo24.