_TL: We Get Letters: TransPerfect is Still TransAwful

Since we first wrote about TransPerfect more than three months ago, we’ve heard from numerous translators who have their own stories of horror to tell.

Liz Elting = the Dark Lord of the translation industry?

Well, there's a lot of competition for the title actually....

TransPerfect’s new “strategy” for cheap, quick translations is crowdsourcing (as a translator makes clear in one of the comments below, TransPerfect now breaks up virtually all translations and sends pieces of them to multiple translators at the same time) coupled with a demand that translators provide deep discounts for CAT-tool “matches.”

As a business model, it sounds like utter panic to us. Does anyone actually still think TransPerfect is capable of providing quality translations?

From a July 27, 2010 job offer for English to Spanish (rush – same-day delivery):

I have an new translation job for you for, EN> ES.
2213 words
This is due 7/27 by 8am EST
I could pay $100 for this job.

So: less than $0.05 per word for a rush job (and, of course, TransPerfect will provide a transaltion memory and will insist that fuzzies and 100% matches be discounted or subtracted from the word count).

“How low can we go?” the translator asks. We can't be sure yet, because TransPerfect is still digging.

Another translator tells Il Segno:

[Y]our blog helped me finally make a decision regarding my relationship with TransPerfect....

When I first began working with TransPerfect, it seemed to be a very serious company. Their rates were low, but not as low as many other companies, and within what I considered the "bare minimum" I would be willing to accept.... My first jobs with TransPerfect were smooth ... and I received a check within 30-45 days. I worked with them a few times and was happy with their professionalism.

Unfortunately, much of this has changed. My first negative experience was last fall, when they wanted some help with a huge project they were distributing among translators. I took some files and translated them, I believe, well. A few days later, I received a startling e-mail stating there were some quality issues with my work and to look over the comments of the proofreader. When I looked at the documents, I realized that the majority of the documents with which they had a problem and which they wanted me to review were a)not the files I had translated and b)proofread by someone with no knowledge of the document's subject. TransPerfect wanted me (reduce my invoice) because they had associated my name with files I had not translated and with which an unqualified (for that field) proofreader had issues.

This is when I began to realize there was a problem, especially with distributing files among several translators, getting the assignments confused, and ensuring that the both the translator and the proofreader understood the subject of the translation....

Since this incident, I have noticed many other things that indicate the company's commitment to quality is not what it once may have been. There are many mass e-mails sent asking for availability; sometimes these blast messages seem personalized, but, when you write to give your availability, you receive no reply. The translations being offered are many words in a short amount of time (sometimes only hours), for very little money..... The company continually tries to lower the rates being offered, wants translators to complete impossible translation feats in little time (all jobs seem to be rush jobs now), now requires WordFast for most jobs, and has a habit of splitting jobs (even those that are large but not huge) among translators in order to complete them more quickly, rather than giving one translator a couple of more days to ensure uniformity in the translation....

My biggest complaint with this company is the lack of respect for the translator. Recently, I was sent a mass e-mail about a job. I answered and offered my availability. The project manager responded, sent the files for me to approve, and we had a discussion via e-mail to confirm rate and deadline. Everything seemed agreed upon, so I set aside the time and waited for the Purchase Order, which never arrived. After an hour, I e-mailed the project manager to ask him to send the PO or to let me know if he had given the job to someone else so I could accept other jobs. Two days later, I am still waiting to hear from him. I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but, unfortunately, this is the second time this has happened, with two different project managers, and I am afraid this will mark the end of my association with this company.

And, finally, a former employee offers this insight:

As a former employee, I am in agreement with your article on TransPerfect; however I don't think putting up the names of individual project managers in the comments serves your purpose.

With the exception of Amy DiTrani, none of the others have been there longer than 3 years. They work 12+ hour days and are often called in over the weekend. They are underpaid ($35-$50K in one of the most expensive cities in the world). They themselves are unlikely to make excuses for the company. The sales people undersell the jobs and hand them over to the project managers, who then have to find someone to translate it. They have to meet a stated mark-up of 2.1 (or the sales people get no commission) and an implicit markup of 3.1 (or the project managers get no bonus, which many count on to balance their checkbooks at the end of the quarter). Their profit centers (which is where their bonuses come from) are docked $300 for every faulty PO and other slip-ups.

While it may not seem like it from the outside, most of the project managers who work at TransPerfect are victimized by the company at least as much as the translators. For one, they can't say no or press delete when a new message comes in, asking them to turn 40K words around overnight for a budget that leaves only 4 cents per word. Linking their names to TransPerfect makes it seem like they are the problem, but they are but cogs in the machine.

We have no difficulty believing that TransPerfect treats its sales people and project managers badly, using punishments and “incentives” that sound like a cross between the robotic excesses of 1980s Japanese-style corporate management and the personal charm of Gordon Ramsay (the “F-Word,” indeed). But that doesn’t get them off the hook.

No more “we were just doing our job”; no more “we’re just foot soldiers.” If they have direct experience regarding the rot in TransPerfect’s human and business model, they should stop helping the business exploit translators.

Or, better yet, they need to mount a serious media campaign to let the public know what TransPerfect is, what it stands for, and how it is harming translators and the translation profession.

So we say again, write them and make your position clear:

Liz Elting, CEO: lelting@transperfect.com / Amy DiTrani: aditrani@transperfect.com / Anne-Claire Lord: alord@transperfect.com / Cristina Farelo: cfarelo@transperfect.com / Hyojin Park: hpark@transperfect.com / Jennifer Adie: jadie@transperfect.com / Jennifer Bucci: jbucci@transperfect.com / Michael Petrigliano: mpetrigliano@transperfect.com / Pearl Leo: pleo@transperfect.com / Sara Hutchison: shutchison@transperfect.com / Sung Ha Lee: slee@transperfect.com / Zachary Eldridge: zeldridge@transperfect.com

Support Denise Bottmann against Brazilian Publishers Engaged in Plagiarism

You may already have heard that Denise Bottmann, a Brazilian translator, is being sued by a Brazilian publisher for having exposed on her blog what is apparently a long-standing practice in Brazil: the republication of previously published translations--either eliminating the original translator's name or, in some cases, using it without permission. The issue is that translators are not being compensated for re-translation/re-publication rights, as the law (and common decency) would require.

A petition in support of Denise is online at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/Bottmann/petition-sign.html.

Because the petition is in Portuguese, here's a quick-and-dirty English translation to help you get the gist.

Please read, sign, and disseminate!

========================

To: MEDIA OUTLETS, TRANSLATORS, EDITORS, CULTURAL WORKERS, AND ALL THOSE INTERESTED IN COPYRIGHT

Reports in the media have made professionals in many fields aware that yet another lawsuit has been filed against the translator, Denise Bottmann, as the result of the accusations of plagiarism published on her blog "I Object to Plagiarism."

Over the years, Denise's tireless work has unmasked numerous examples of plagiarism, making clear that the extent of this crime is far greater than anyone had imagined when she filed her first reports.

In this instance, the lawsuit was filed by Editora Landmark, which made the following demands to the Brazilian court: significant monetary relief for alleged moral damages; a media blackout on court proceedings; and the closing down of Denise's blog, "I Object to Plagiarism." Citing the Brazilian "right to oblivion" law, Editora Landmark has also requested a preliminary injection against "I Object to Plagiarism" (i.e., it has asked the court to shut the blog down and to purge its contents entirely from the internet even before the lawsuit has been decided on its merits).

In fact, Denise's blog has become widely known in only a short time. As such, it has served as a lightning rod and an "inconvenient truth" for a publishing industry that has up to now been undisturbed in its quiet rush to copy and re-publish previously published translations-using translators' real names or, in some cases, fictitious ones that disguise the work of the actual translators.

Because complaints about this practice are not only continuous but increasing, we, the undersigned, have joined together to call attention to a practice that:

1. Violates the Copyright Act, according to which the translator is considered the author of a derivative work and has moral and economic rights that deserve protection;

2. Creates unfair competition to the extent that some publishers, acting in bad faith, re-publish translations without paying for translation rights or retranslations, thereby disadvantaging honest publishers who are concerned about maintaining their good reputation;

3. Undermines our cultural heritage through the dissemination of illegally copied and re-published works which often nonetheless bear the names of translators who are known and appreciated in our literature.

For these reasons, and in the hope that justice will be done, we have published this expression of support for Denise Bottmann's efforts. We ask anyone interested in combating the criminal practice of plagiarism and enriching the cultural life in this country to join us.

Living Wages for Translators: Hey, ProZ.com, see that translator over there? The one holding a slingshot?

Here’s the analogy I’d like to start with.

In the middle of your town, there’s a dangerous stretch of road where numerous accidents have taken place. Wrecks have occurred because the road is full of holes in the summer and tends to ice over as soon as temperatures drop in the winter. Many people have been injured, despite the fact that they were themselves driving carefully. The area is badly lit, and even walking on the sidewalks isn’t entirely safe because of the cars skidding on ice or veering suddenly to avoid potholes.

Given the way your town is planned, though, it is almost impossible not to travel on that road or visit that area. It’s where almost all the businesses are located, the majority of the stores. If you want to buy groceries or grab a pizza, you have to go there. Your work and your kids’ school are on that road.

A group of citizens asks the city to take action. The city says: “We don’t have any authority over the weather. It isn’t our fault if the temperatures drop below zero and the road gets icy. We can’t control the fact that asphalt eventually breaks down. It’s a natural phenomenon! And you certainly don’t expect us to put someone in every single car to make sure the driver observes common decency or is respectful of others when he or she drives? Plus, at the end of the day, the sun goes down and the street gets dark--are you demanding that we control the sun, too?! You're being ridiculous! Everybody knows what that area is like. We're each responsible for our own personal safety. If you don’t like the road, don't use it.”

In essence, this is what the owners of ProZ.com have to say to translators who—for years—have complained about the rock-bottom rates, detrimental working conditions, and unfair competition that ProZ promotes via the job announcements that appear on its site.

Translators who complain privately to ProZ about rates that don’t allow them to make a living wage receive this canned answer from the job board’s monitors: “We believe that each member should be entitled to set his or her own minimum rates.”

And so, not even a month after the Trust Traduzioni/Italian Ministry of Tourism scandal, in which ProZ permitted a job posting that included both an illegal payment condition and an obscenely low rate that equated to less than what people earn for cleaning houses or flipping burgers, ProZ has bought itself a boycott and a petition drive. (The petition is available online: A Translators' Petition Concerning ProZ.com's Job Policies; in the petition's first six hours of existence, 380 translators signed it--more than one a minute.)

ProZ.com is the largest online clearinghouse for translation-related jobs. It’s not the only one, and it’s not the only one that gives job posters free rein to drag the market down. But it’s the biggest one and the most influential. Positive change on its part would ripple throughout the industry.

At issue are a couple of dead-serious errors of judgment on ProZ.com's part. First, ProZ.com allows job posters to establish rates and conditions, a complete distortion of the way freelancing works. Translators are service providers. Companies, agencies, and individuals who want translations are clients. Service providers set rates, not clients. (For precisely the same reason that, when you sit down in a restaurant, you don’t have the right to tell the owner: “Your steaks are over-priced. I’ll pay half. And throw in a bottle of wine with that.”).

Second, because of its influence and international reach (ProZ boasts 200,000 members all around the globe), ProZ does not merely reflect the market, as it consistently claims. Rather, ProZ plays a significant role in shaping it. Low-wage conditions exist in part (not entirely, but in part) thanks to ProZ.

While we're at it, in fact, it’s worth exposing the lie of the “free market,” which is the “reality” that ProZ claims to be “reflecting.”

Here’s a newsflash for ProZ and its owner, Henry Dotterer: The free market does not exist. All that exists is the question of who will pay for it.

In the case of ProZ (which currently charges its members €114 [or about $158] per year for a basic membership and more than double that for a “corporate” membership), its executives have decided that letting translators pay for the free market—in which every cog in the wheel except the translator has the opportunity to earn a profit—is a perfectly acceptable business model.

Rather than talk about such capitalist wet-dreams as the “free market,” though, I’d much rather talk about living wages for translators. Clearly, defining the concept of a “living wage” is complex, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that translators deserve to earn one.

When an Italian agency offers a job to a translator who lives in Italy and earns in euros, meanwhile, it isn’t too much to expect that agency to pay a rate that allows the translator who lives in Italy and spends in euros to earn enough to make ends meet. And that’s largely the kind of job we’re talking about: the kind in which the job offerer and the translator live and work in precisely the same economy.

Ever since the boycott and petition were first being discussed, of course, the naysayers were already tripping over themselves to say their nays. My feeling is: Who cares? You can’t have a revolution without counter-revolutionaries. Plus they allow one to recall happier times, when terms like “capitalist lackey of the running dog imperialist scum” had some teeth.

In the meantime, translators are doing something to bring attention to an untenable situation. They’re taking action. They’re helping themselves. They’re demanding, with the ProZ.com boycott as a first step, living wages for translators.

It’s the first time in years I’ve felt some pride in the profession I’ve chosen. Go sign the petition and see if you don’t feel a little better yourself.

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.

NetworkOmni, Westlake Village, CA

The Company

NOTE: This post is based on information received from the colleague involved.

Network Omni Multilingual Communications offers "Interpretation, Translation, Training and Consulting Services" and further promises:

Translation and Localization

Getting your printed materials over language barriers will require more than just a word-for-word translation. It will require sensitivity to the local culture and an understanding of regional subtext—tastes, preferences, influences. A baseball metaphor will mean something in the United States, but nothing in most of the rest of the world.

Localization also encompasses the technical details that separate other cultures from our own: time/date formatting, page layouts, webpage sizing. That’s why NetworkOmni pays special attention to local relevance. It’s the best way to assure a truly global influence for our translation clients.

Their corporate information is:

NetworkOmni Multilingual Communications
4353 Park Terrace Drive
Westlake Village, CA 91361
Toll-Free: 800-543-4244
Main: 818-706-7890
Fax: 818-735-6305



The History

NOTE: The following is taken from information reported to the Northern California Translators Association listserv by a colleague whom I know personally and consider reliable; it does not come from my direct experience.

In August 2007, the translator in question was contacted by NetworkOmni for the urgent editing of a brief German-to-Italian translation. She edited the text and returned it to the agency on the same day.

As of October 30, 2007, and despite repeated reminders and requests, they had not paid and had failed to respond to her messages.

A search of messages on the NCTA list turned up a half-dozen other complaints, dating back to May 2006, regarding slow payments on the part of NetworkOmni.

_TL: Indian Outsourcers: Off-Shoring with a Vengeance

See more on high-quality India English on the "Inglisc: Mèd Een Eetaly" site:
… maybe this explains why they only pay translators $0.01 a word.

.025 cent per source word:
Adith Multilingual (Chetan Kumar), transco@adithmultilingual.com, Bangalore, India - Posted on the "Go Translators" list: "Italian to English Translation work of approximately 1,00,000 words."

.015 cent per source word:
Shakti Enterprises (Amit Shirodkar), profiles@shaktienterprise.com, Mumbai, India - Posted on the "Go Translators" list: "We are looking out for a translator ( Italianto English ). We have around 100 + words to be translated in English. We can pay you immidiatly on recieving the translation through paypal. TOTAL: 15.00 USD."

TRP Traduzioni Srl

The Company

Camignone di Passirano (Brescia)-based TRP Traduzioni Srl introduces itself thus on its website: "Founded in 1978 as one-man business and grown-up during the years, the current structure of TRP Traduzioni srl may well boast a twenty-year experience in the translations and annexed fields world. Our customers include clients based in Italy, Germany and Benelux, as well as a consistent number of translation centres in Europe with which we collaborate translating mainly from European languages into German. A staff of mother-tongue permanent translators guarantees qualified and punctual translations."

It continues in that vein ("The application of directives provided for by the UNI EN ISO 9001:2000 VISION regulation which we are certified to, is part of the company’s professionalism and reliability").

Evidently, their staff of "mother-tongue permanent translators" wasn't employed to translate their website into English.

The History

On 21 February 2007, a translator who had been employed by TRP Traduzioni wrote: "I advise caution in dealing with this agency: late payments, repeated requests ignored, etc. In the end, they did finally pay me."