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?
