Wednesday

Sometimes They Come Back: Is Eurostreet Seeking Translators or Vu Comprà?


The Eurostreet Società Cooperativa (Via Losana, 13, 13900 – Biella, Italy) is on a new hunting expedition, this time looking for native English speakers it can underpay, undercut, and abuse economically.

Their most recent offer, sent in a mass email blast in February 2013 to Italian>English translators culled from a data dump of the Langit City site, is even more reprehensible than usual.

Because “alle volte ci capita di dover rinunciare a lavori importanti perchè non abbiamo abbastanza traduttori di madrelingua Inglese” (“at times, we have to let important projects go because we have too few native-English-speaking translators”), Eurostreet has made a gigantic sacrifice in order to offer ... wait for it ... 11 lousy Euros per cartella.

But there’s more. On Planet Eurostreet, a cartella is 1500 keystrokes MINUS THE SPACES. And the offer is BEFORE taxes (which, for Italian freelancers, are now up to around 35%). Oh, and yes, you’ll be required to take a free translation test first.

Il Segno di Caino simply cannot understand why Eurostreet is having trouble finding native-English-speaking translators, can you?

Not only have things not changed since Il Segno di Caino wrote about Eurostreet three years ago, they’ve evidently gotten much worse. Eurostreet’s prices have dropped more than a third from the price list they posted in 2010.

How could Eurostreet possibly still be in business? Well, you could write and ask Claudio Ranghino, who is supposedly Eurostreet’s “legal representative” (commerciale4@eurostreet.it).

When Mr. Ranghino wrote to threaten a lawsuit against the individual who brought Eurostreet’s latest outrageous offer to Il Segno’s attention, however, he promised to sue for “diffamazone” instead of “diffamazione.” So draw your own McConclusions about where he got his McLaw degree.

(Actually, an internet search suggests the probability that Mr. Ranghino isn’t a lawyer at all. In that case, he might like to know that impersonating a lawyer is illegal, whereas calling an offerta al ribasso di merda an offerta al ribasso di merda is not. Meanwhile, if you read Italian and you’re interested in Eurostreet’s extremely inflated opinion of itself, you can find it here in this message offering the agency’s services as language experts to poor, defenseless Italian school children.)

In any case, here’s the answer to the above rhetorical question. Eurostreet keeps its doors open because:

·               a) exactly like other single-celled organisms at the bottom of the food chain, Eurostreet is a perfect fit for customers who don’t mind sifting through mud; and

·               b) self-harming idiots continue to accept Eurostreet's translation rates, though they'd be a tough sell even in a third-world country. Hey, translating for Eurostreet probably beats wandering the piazzas of Italy muttering “Vu comprà?”

Eurostreet clearly has no intention of being ashamed of itself. So let’s shame the translators who work for Eurostreet instead. There’s a word for what they are, and that word is “scabs.”

What’s more, if you are a legitimately qualified Italian>English translator, they and Eurostreet have their grubby hands in your pocket.

Are you angry yet?