Today, a petition was started against the manner in which ProZ.com runs its job-placement service for the translation industry.

Here’s the key passage from the petition:

…as in any freelance profession, we believe the freelancer and not the client should establish working conditions, prices, etc.

We hope that ProZ.com will take swift action to revise its job posting system to bring it in line with its stated mission to “serve translators” and deliver “essential services, resources and experiences that enhance” translators’ lives.

The main point here is that those who are looking for a translator are essentially allowed to “dictate” the rate they are willing to pay, rather than it being the freelance translators who propose the rates at which they are willing and able to take on a given type of job, as should be the case — and as is the case in virtually every industry there is. After all, it’s the product supplier or service provider who knows how much it costs to produce a product or service, not the customer. All the customer can do to “influence” prices is to shop around until they find the price they are willing to pay for the quality they feel they need.

Of course, ProZ.com didn’t “cause” the problem of low rates and poor quality in the translation industry, and they aren’t even the only ones who run job boards in this way. But they certainly are now a powerful force in the industry, so they have the power to influence how things are done and how translation service providers are perceived by potential customers.

In fact, many translation agencies — particularly the “chop shops” mentioned in a previous post of mine — also attempt to do this same sort of price dictating, so it’s a problem that is fairly common in the translation industry. But if ProZ’s stated mission is to “enhance the lives of its members [i.e. translators]“, placing this sort of price-setting power on the demand side of the industry, thereby perpetuating an existing problem, wouldn’t seem to be the best way to achieve that.

Certain very large corporations are able to essentially dictate their own prices with their suppliers, but why would ProZ want to help all potential translation customers to have this same sort of power?

I feel I should also mention that I’ve recently written favorably about a service, myGengo, that also fixes prices in this same sort of way. Here, though, at least in theory, myGengo is seeking to fill a very specific niche — i.e. short, quick, generally simple translations that a translator can do now and then, essentially in their free time, and that people are currently trying (largely ineffectively) to do with tools such as Google Translate — and the company is very clear about why it’s rates are set so low and what both the customer and the service provider should expect at those prices. This differs from ProZ (and others) in that frequently very large jobs are posted at very low rates, meaning that a translator would have to dedicate a significant amount of their time earning a very low rate if they choose to accept the job.

And sure, we’re free not to accept the jobs posted at very low rates, but the point is that it shouldn’t be the customer proposing the rate at all. It should be the service provider, i.e. the translator, the one who knows how much the service costs to provide and how much their level of quality is worth. Some have suggested that ProZ not allow customers to post jobs at very low rates, but it seems to me it would be more appropriate for ProZ to be in a position to encourage its members not to offer their services at very low rates. If they were to stop allowing customers to recommend rates at all, ProZ would then be in a better position to help their members sell their services at an appropriate rate. Not through price fixing or by setting some sort of minimum rate, but by educating their members and giving them the tools they need to market themselves to potential customers.

That would be a real value-added service ProZ could provide that would make a premium membership worth paying for.

There’s a fairly common belief among freelance translators that translation agencies are, at best, something you necessarily grow out of as your career develops and, at worst, a plague to the translation industry. The problem with this belief is that it assumes that all translation agencies are nothing more than paper-shufflers passing e-mails back and forth between translator and customer. Unfortunately, this is true for a great many translation agencies, but as not all freelancers are created equal, so, too, are there great differences between “quality” translation agencies and the chop-shops.

So why exactly should a business prefer a translation agency over cutting out the middleman and going with a freelance translator? Well, it’s much the same question as whether to hire a law office with a team of lawyers or hire just one individual lawyer or, indeed, create a legal affairs office within the company (or any combination of these three basic solutions). In fact, it’s much the same as deciding whether (and how) to outsource any function a company needs for its operations.

The main problem with a business going direct to a freelance translator is that, like with most lawyers, freelancers are specialized in just a few fields and just a few (or one) language pairs. So if a business has a frequent need for fairly urgent translations in a variety of languages, they are going to need to hire several freelancers, not just one. So the problem becomes how to select and then manage all of those freelancers. Does the business know how to assess the quality of a freelance translator’s work? Maybe, but more than likely not. And do they set up a specific office to organize and manage translations and translators? Or do they let everyone in the company fend for themselves when they need a translation done? I think you start to see the problem, as well as the parallels with other business functions….

So sure, some businesses may find that it’s best for them to go direct to the freelance translators (or to do so for specific types of projects), but given the highly specialized skill set needed to execute and manage translation projects, I would say that most businesses would be better served by a high-quality translation agency that can advise them on how best to manage their translation needs, in much the same way that many businesses would be best served by an external law office with a team of lawyers.

And this is before considering the translation-specific issue of proofreading. What about that? If it’s better to cut out the middleman, should a business also arrange for their own proofreaders? Or does the freelancer handle that? If the freelancer handles it, does that mean proofreading one’s own work? Personally, I would hope not (but that’s a topic for another blog post…). Or do we arrange for a proofreader and bill the cost to the customer? If so, then we’re already on our way to becoming agencies ourselves….

Anyway, this is why I think we freelance translators should be careful about bashing translation agencies generally and should focus our efforts on promoting “quality” translation agencies and perhaps even raising awareness about the great many chop-shops out there and how to recognize them. That segment of translation agencies is something of a plague for our industry.

I’ve recently been trying out the translation service myGengo as a translator and thought I’d share some of my experience and impressions.

I started by creating an account and taking my first shot at the test to qualify for jobs at the “standard” level, which pays the translator a whopping $0.03 per word. Much to my surprise, I was actually rejected after this first attempt. OK, I had to translate a brief (about 300 words) weather report, which isn’t my area of specialization, but I still find it hard to believe that my translation didn’t sound “natural” in “several” places, as the reviewer claimed. Anyway, whether it did or not, this initial rejection actually, on the whole, reflects well on the service since it means that they have a screening system that should keep out most of the “hacks”. I do think there may be room for improvement in the process, but I’m sure it’s better to err on the side of caution.

In any event, myGengo allows you to try again three days after a rejection, so I did. I got a different text the second time around and passed without any problem. I then went on to pass the tests for pro-level texts and for proofreading on my first try. And by the way, I wrote to myGengo after my initial rejection to share some of my thoughts on the process, and they did get back to me quickly with some explanation of their views on testing. So there are real people behind the service who appear to be knowledgeable and helpful.

On the Saturday morning after passing the pro-level test, the first two jobs showed up in my queue. As it happens, I was home and not doing anything in particular, so I thought I’d go ahead and take the jobs on. They were two different texts, each about 220 words in length and neither particularly difficult. One was a pro-level job, and the other an “ultra” job (which includes a pass with a proofreader in addition to the translator). Once I started a job, I was given a time limit of one hour to complete it (I don’t know if this time limit varies with text length), which was plenty of time given that I completed each in about half that time. Both jobs were then approved by the customer. It should be noted here that the customer has the right to reject a job and receive a full refund, in which case the translator is not paid for their work either. I don’t know how that process might work, though, and if there’s a verification or dispute procedure or what.

My “reward” (their terminology) for these jobs totaled about $35, which is paid via PayPal usually within 24 hours of requesting a “payout”. I just requested my payout today, so I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work, but there’s apparently a 3% charge applied by PayPal(*), which is another thing to keep in mind when thinking about the rates myGengo pays. On the other hand, payment by myGengo is essentially immediate, which is a lot better than the 30, 60 or even 90 day payment terms most clients apply.

Also, one of the customers for these jobs that I did requested specific experience in the field, but the myGengo staff was quick to point out to the customer that myGengo doesn’t assign jobs by area of specialization and that the customer could withdraw the job if that was an absolute necessity for them. I was also contacted by a real person, who pointed out the customer’s request and explained myGengo’s position on specialist jobs, saying that I was free to take the job on if I felt I could do a good job. So again, there are knowledgeable people behind the service who are there to help you out when you need it.

So… the rates. Yes, they’re low. The “standard” rate is especially low. At current exchange rates, it’s even less than what agencies pay me for proofreading. Actually, it’s less than what myGengo themselves pay for proofreading! But it’s important to keep in mind that myGengo is designed for short, simple (i.e. non-specialist) texts, and they are very clear as to what the customer should expect at each of their three service levels. And also, as a translator, you’re perfectly free to do or ignore translations whenever you want. So if you’ve got nothing better to do and there’s a short text you can bang out in a few minutes “for fun” (my words, not myGengo’s as far as I know), why not get paid a few bucks at the same time?

Is myGengo a threat? Will it drag rates down in the translation market as a whole? I suppose time will tell, but the way the people at myGengo are currently positioning and presenting their service, I don’t think so. In one of their e-mails to me, they said that myGengo is targeting people who want short texts translated quickly — the kinds of things some today are trying to use Google Translate for (“emails, blog posts, tweets, articles, anything non-specialist” were their exact words to me). Somewhere else (in the comments to a blog post, I think) I read someone from myGengo who wrote that these are the kinds of texts most professional translators hate to take on. And I think that’s pretty much true. But why do we hate these short texts? For me, it’s not so much for the length of the text, but for all the time you waste with the client before (and after) the job and the fact that most of the time you have to interrupt other work to do them. With myGengo, though, you don’t have that problem. You do the jobs only when you want, and you don’t have to be bothered by phone calls and e-mails from the customer to figure out if and when you can take them on.

I did my first two jobs, for example, in half-hour chucks of time in which I wasn’t doing anything else, and at the end of the day I got paid about €23-24 for an hour of work. Not a huge amount, but not all that bad either, considering that the alternative for that hour of my time was €0. In fact, another thing they’ve told me is that they aren’t looking for professional translators to work full time for them, but rather for translators willing to do the odd translation now and then in our “spare time [to] earn a little extra money”. (By the way, they also have an “affiliate” program that pays you 10% commission on referrals, so that may be something you’ll want to figure into the equation, as well.)

So all in all, given the way myGengo is currently designed and is being marketed (their slogan is “Simple human translation”), I don’t see the service as a threat, and I will probably do translations for them in the future.

Finally, I was asked by a Twitter follower whether you work online when working with myGengo. So to answer that question, no, not really. Not in the sense of having a web-based CAT tool to use. Job management is all online, but for the actual translation phase, you’re given the entire source text in one field along side an empty field into which you enter the translation. So you could type the translation directly into this web form if you wanted (and for very short texts I imagine I would), but I copied the source text into Word and translated it there using Wordfast. Then I copied the translated text back into the field for the translation on the web page. But I see that Wordfast is working on their web-based Wordfast Anywhere, and I think it would be interesting to see something like that implemented by myGengo in the future.

But there are some questions I still have about the service that I’ll want to look into, such as:

• How does the job queue work exactly? Do multiple translators see the same jobs at the same time?
• What happens when a customer rejects a job? Does myGengo make sure the complaint is valid?
• What happens if an “ultra” job is rejected because of a mistake the proofreader makes? Does the translator lose the credits, too, even though it wasn’t their fault? (This may not be all that likely, but I suppose you never know….)

And if and when I find the answers to these questions, I’ll let you all know.

~G

ANSWERS: I’ve just received an e-mail from the myGengo people in response to this blog post, so here are the answers to those questions:

• The job queue is on a first-come-first-served basis, and the reason my jobs were in the queue for so long is likely because Italian<>English has only been available on the site for a couple of weeks. Also, e-mail reminders are sent out every hour when there are jobs in the queue, and there is an RSS feed you can follow.
• Yes, myGengo has a low (about 1%) rejection rate and so is able to manually review rejections to make sure they are valid. And in their experience, they generally are. Not a lot of cheating the system apparently.
• For the ultra jobs, the default is to not pay either the translator or the proofreader in the event of a rejection by the customer, but here, too, they are willing and available to manually review such cases in order to determine fault and make adjustments, and they do keep a record of the text at both the pre- and post-proofing stages.

They also mentioned that they may eventually add some CAT functionality to the site in the future, but their intention for now is to keep things simple, rather than “reinventing the wheel”.

—

(*) UPDATE: I’ve received my payout in my PayPal account, and the fees were actually closer to 5% because, as I’ve now seen on PayPal, the actual rate is 3.4% (for transactions up to €2,500.00) plus €0.35 per transaction, so next time I’ll wait to have a larger balance before paying out. Anyway, that means that I actually received just under €23 for the two jobs, rather than between €23 and €24. Not a huge difference, but still something to keep in mind.

Well, there are a few sections of the Italian site where my Italian still needs to be checked, but I think my new site design is ready to be announced to the world! So here it is, my new WordPress.org site for my business, drane.it!

Here’s a quick rundown of the most important changes introduced with this new design:

Social networking (Web 2.0) features:
- Twitter updates to announce my availability
- iPhone version of the site
- this blog, which I will use to write about translating and copy editing

Changes to my services:
- added alternative energy as a specialization
- increased focus on copy editing, literature and philosophy
- optimized business fields to increase efficiency (e.g. no more marketing or legal texts)

I may talk more about some of these features in future blog entries, but I wanted to highlight the Twitter stream right now. Following my Twitter feed (and joining Twitter if you don’t already have an account) is the easiest, fastest way to track what I’m up to and when I’ll be free to take on more work, but you can also check my web site and follow the links provided here to check my Twitter stream even without a Twitter account.

I’ll also be using my Twitter feed to announce new blog entries and for other microblogging related to my work, and since Twitter is becoming a mainstream phenomenon, I highly encourage you to give it a try if you haven’t already.

I also have a personal Twitter stream and blog, as well as a few other social networking contact points – FriendFeed in particular. So if you’re interested in what I do when I’m not working, please do check those out, too!

So now add my blog’s RSS feed to your feed reader of choice for all the latest news and musings about me and my work, and let me know what you think of my new site by leaving a comment below.

Thanks!

~G

There are still a couple of minor tweaks to be made, but my web site is now essentially all converted over to WordPress.org format!

One thing this means (apart from the addition of this blog, of course) is that you will now be able to have an idea as to whether I’m available for a job by following me on Twitter. The latest tweet will also always be displayed in the right-hand column of every page of this site, but that won’t always be a message about my availability, so sometimes you may need to check one or two messages back through my “tweet-stream” to find out when I’ll be free.

Cheers,

~Grey

Welcome to drane.it!

Bear with me as I convert my web site over to WordPress. Everything should be up and running again by Monday (24 Nov.).

Thanks!

~Grey