Anything and everything about vendor management, just ask.

RESOURCEFUL L10 wrote:
but I wouldn't take their marital status or the number of children they have as a factor on how well they can do the job.

RESOURCEFUL L10 wrote:
I never know the personal life of the vendors when I recruit them, only what is mentioned in their CV

RESOURCEFUL L10 wrote:

It depends, we know we work with human beings, however, we expect them not to take abusive rates if they think to be so. We can't improve their business values for them.

Personally, if the company treated their vendors very badly, I would try and look for another job ASAP Because it probably means they won't treatment very well as an employee.
Also if a colleague comes to me with a project that offers a very low rate for the vendors, I would let them know the rate is too low and they might not be able to place it, but we still need to try as it is part of our job/upper management wants so.

Giovanni Guarnieri MITI, MIL wrote:



The bolded. This is where my objection lies. You don't work for such clients. Of course it's up to us to accept a certain rate, but, as an example, I recently stopped accepting jobs from an agency who rejected my minimum fee and kept sending me jobs for €3.00 - all in all, it would take me about an hour to perform the translation, checking the proofer's corrections, and performing all the administrative tasks. Since you are a specialist in vendor management, how do you feel about the ethics of certain clients? Surely, the agency must know we are educated individual, some with degrees and master's and still they offer us €3.00? It's just offensive. What do you think about working for such clients? According to the bolded, you do.

Sadek_A wrote:


It wasn't really about "how well they can do the job", but rather about "how well they need the job"?
According to your emotional/social/gender perspective as a VM, that is!


Assuming that it was there, on their CVs, or in the open, or communicated during subsequent contact?
Would your human emotions, or otherwise, play any part in the choice?

Eleftherios Kritikakis wrote:

First of all, the correct job title is "Vendor Database Manager". Not vendor manager. Translators are not subject to management by an agency.

a) It is observed by quite a few that vendor managers err heavily on the side of personal preferences, irrelevant to the accuracy or quality of translations. A "polite and empty sounding" translator who doesn't know what she's writing is preferable to a less polite, yet accurate translator. Is this true?

b) Rumor also has it that vendor managers prefer to set a good translator aside, than admitting that their initial assessment was wrong. That is, trying to save face against the interests of their own companies. Is this true?

c) Do vendor managers consult their accounting departments to check paid and proved experience and "seniority" with the agency, or are they just impressed by a new polished LinkedIn profile (as a "safe" indicator)? I hear Mr. Charles Ponzi would have had an excellent LinkedIn page on the topic "Investments".

d) Who in his right mind assigns translations of: cosmetic product guides to a middle-aged male engineer (!), financial documents to people who don't know how to balance a check book, critical legal analysis to newly "recruited" inexperienced part-timers, culturally critical documents to people who have visited other cultures only via facebook?
I know personally the case of an agency (large enough), that has in the database an editor with 35 years solid experience, Mechanical Engineer by degree and international practice (this is mentioned in his profile), who is regularly assigned marketing and cosmetics, while a homemaker with no other real-world experience from California is assigned actual mechanical engineering manuals (!), even at a higher price (!!). Absolutely True Story. I mentioned this (very politely, almost apologetically) to the agency's vendor manager, and after that I got no more projects (I had nothing to do with the particular case, I just made her aware of it).

e) Do vendor managers ignore long-term substandard performance on the basis of a personal socio-political preferential views? (for example, consistently forgive substandard translators because of personal socio-political preferences, while being particularly hard on minor issues of others that look like preferable targets). I hear rumors that are very well substantiated with patterns of events.

f) You need to update your Database Structure. According to the current "vendor management" software databases, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and thousands of others, would have been excluded from software localization and computer-related translations, as "high-school graduates only". The database would suggest someone with an advanced degree in "Linguistic analysis of Swahili", as long as the vendor and the project managers liked the picture or how the name sounds.
I challenge every single vendor manager anywhere in the world to tell me, without searching on Google, whether they would assign financial projects to: a ChFC or an L.M.H.C. or a CSA.

g) Dead corporate lingo is not there to solve problems, it's there to avoid Press questions. Isn't it better to approach inquiries in a common-sense approach than over the exchange of pre-written phrases and bias-loaded attitudes?

I understand that there are so many translators nowadays, something that agencies particularly enjoy (having the workers compete with each other downwards), that a real-world human approach to "vendor management" seems unnecessary.
But given the competition between agencies, the proliferation of MT among end-clients, and the unwillingness of new generations to embrace dead-end remote and impersonal hand-to-mouth low paid lonely and stressful gigs ("the choice of the desperate"), along with the willingness of Governments to expand their permanent employee base (offering security, schedule, paid time off, promotions and insurance), we may be nearing an era that can't accept the current agency approaches.


[Edited at 2021-07-07 06:28 GMT]

Eleftherios Kritikakis wrote:
e) Do vendor managers ignore long-term substandard performance on the basis of a personal socio-political preferential views? (for example, consistently forgive substandard translators because of personal socio-political preferences, while being particularly hard on minor issues of others that look like preferable targets). I hear rumors that are very well substantiated with patterns of events.

Eleftherios Kritikakis wrote:
But given the competition between agencies, the proliferation of MT among end-clients, and the unwillingness of new generations to embrace dead-end remote and impersonal hand-to-mouth low paid lonely and stressful gigs ("the choice of the desperate"), along with the willingness of Governments to expand their permanent employee base (offering security, schedule, paid time off, promotions and insurance), we may be nearing an era that can't accept the current agency approaches.

Sadek_A wrote:
Asked, among other questions, and evaded, again among other questions.