| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: What is your worst experience as a translator? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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| | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 03:10
Spanish to English
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Translating medical reports with negative outcomes. For example, a medical report from the US about a girl who had gone there for treatment for melanoma. The outcome was terminal. I didn't charge the family, as they had already spent more than enough sending her to the US for specialist treatment, all to no avail.
I also translated a website about spinal injury for free, then later found out the people behind it had become involved in a fraud case.
Late payments I can w... See more Translating medical reports with negative outcomes. For example, a medical report from the US about a girl who had gone there for treatment for melanoma. The outcome was terminal. I didn't charge the family, as they had already spent more than enough sending her to the US for specialist treatment, all to no avail.
I also translated a website about spinal injury for free, then later found out the people behind it had become involved in a fraud case.
Late payments I can wait for. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Liena Vijupe 
Latvia
Local time: 04:10
Member (2014)
French to Latvian
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Feeling out of my depth with certain texts. It's rare because I usually don't accept any work outside my fields of expertise, but it can happen.
One time I even had to refuse a job after accepting it. It seemed quite general and easy at first, but when I started translating it turned out to be full of very specific legal terms with no equivalent in my target language. I wrote to the client that I can't do it and, luckily, there still was time for them to assign it to somebody else.
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None of the above: in over 35 years one hand is enough to count the number of times I haven’t been paid; I have never missed a deadline; I have never misunderstood the terms of a contract. My worst experience as a translator was agreeing to do a speech translation during the weekend and then realizing that the transcription was so awful that I couldn’t understand it...
[Edited at 2021-07-24 10:39 GMT]
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| Not getting paid | Jul 24, 2021 |
I once was owed USD 9,000 by a well-known international organization. It took me two years to collect.
Another dark moment was when I was hospitalized for a drug reaction and lost an 800-page project that a client had already assigned to me.
Oh, and there was the torture report for a case that went to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
[Edited at 2021-07-24 11:46 GMT]
| | | | Thayenga
Germany
Local time: 03:10
Member (2009)
English to German
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| Worst case scenario | Jul 24, 2021 |
Translating a few pages of what initially seemed to be a regular translation within my field of expertise, it then turned out to be a very difficult text with mostly specific (customer chosen) terminology that would have taken a very long time to research - with no guaranty of correctness in the given context. I informed the client immediately and discovered that he did everything possible (or impossible, for that matter) to persuade me to do it anyway, thus wasting both our time. The customer t... See more Translating a few pages of what initially seemed to be a regular translation within my field of expertise, it then turned out to be a very difficult text with mostly specific (customer chosen) terminology that would have taken a very long time to research - with no guaranty of correctness in the given context. I informed the client immediately and discovered that he did everything possible (or impossible, for that matter) to persuade me to do it anyway, thus wasting both our time. The customer then threatened to make my "incompetence" (is knowing the limits of one's abilities really incompetent?) publicly know, and, of course, he refused to pay for the already completed pages. Only after I informed him that my lawyer would be handling it from then onward, did he back away. The funny part was, after a few weeks he contacted me again with another similar assignment. Needless to say, I didn't even bother to reply. This might not have been very professional, but neither are threats.
[Edited at 2021-07-24 15:00 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Profile
Canada
Local time: 21:10
Member (2009)
English to Korean
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| Scammer with a racial slur | Jul 24, 2021 |
When he or she was caught about 10 years ago
| | | | Elke Fehling
Local time: 03:10
Member (2005)
English to German
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| 25000 forgotten words | Jul 24, 2021 |
A few weeks (!) after I delivered about 10000 words the PM contacted me and asked about the other 25000 words. I almost fainted.
It turned out they has been hidden in a subfolder avd I hadn't seen it. I had had about 4 weeks for the whole translation (10000 but really 35000 words).
We agreed on one more week to translate those missing texts. It was a horrible week.
I don't work for that agency anymore. Not because of this, but because the PM didn't ever pr... See more A few weeks (!) after I delivered about 10000 words the PM contacted me and asked about the other 25000 words. I almost fainted.
It turned out they has been hidden in a subfolder avd I hadn't seen it. I had had about 4 weeks for the whole translation (10000 but really 35000 words).
We agreed on one more week to translate those missing texts. It was a horrible week.
I don't work for that agency anymore. Not because of this, but because the PM didn't ever prepare any of the texts, she was the laziest PM I ever worked for. She pushed me around and was basically very impolite.
In the last years I became very picky about the agencies I work with. I expect them to work for me (after all, they getting money for that) just as much as I work for them. ▲ Collapse
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Mario Freitas
Brazil
Local time: 22:10
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
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Since I quit being and Amin Manager and became a translator full time, none of the problems I have compare to any of the several problems I had before, working in-house in something that was not my passion. Now, I can't really complain about anything. I got rid of hell, so I won't complain about heaven.
But if I do have to complain about something, it would be about incompetent revisers making undue changes in my translations.
[Edited at 2021-07-24 18:33 GMT]
| | | | | My worst experience: | Jul 25, 2021 |
That translation increasingly has become a matter of "proofreading" in the past two years, associated with the relevant cheaper rates. Nothing to say against using DeepL as an aid, when it's you, who determines whether to use it or not and where applicable, but not when presented as a fait accompli in the projects, with a fixed price and even in complicated technical manuals. I had to draw my consequences of it.
| | | | Yolande Hivart
Austria
Local time: 03:10
Member (2016)
German to French
| My worst experience | Jul 25, 2021 |
70,000 job word, paid only for 35,000 new words (Trados repetitions).
Accepted 5 weeks when I first thought with other clients I would need 2 months.
I tried to keep all clients pleased but after 5 weeks working 10 hours a day 6 days a week I did not have well enough the eyes in front of the holes to rewrite it in a marketing fluid style.
On the verge of burnout I had to accept a cut of one third because the client took himself one week to read all the files through and correct... See more 70,000 job word, paid only for 35,000 new words (Trados repetitions).
Accepted 5 weeks when I first thought with other clients I would need 2 months.
I tried to keep all clients pleased but after 5 weeks working 10 hours a day 6 days a week I did not have well enough the eyes in front of the holes to rewrite it in a marketing fluid style.
On the verge of burnout I had to accept a cut of one third because the client took himself one week to read all the files through and correct grammar mistakes that were populated by trados while i was only trying to bother about the non repetitions.
That said I now know my limits about being Trados productive.
[Edited at 2021-07-25 14:58 GMT]
[Edited at 2021-07-25 15:00 GMT]
[Edited at 2021-07-25 15:20 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Burger flipper rate | Jul 26, 2021 |
As for distasteful experiences, I remember a PE job offer quoted to me at about the same hourly rate as is commonly paid for burger flipping (no offense). I found the agency’s sense of entitlement infuriating. Already Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations describes this business model as exploitation since it denies workers a return on their labor sufficient to recover the resources invested in their education, in this case our education ... See more As for distasteful experiences, I remember a PE job offer quoted to me at about the same hourly rate as is commonly paid for burger flipping (no offense). I found the agency’s sense of entitlement infuriating. Already Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations describes this business model as exploitation since it denies workers a return on their labor sufficient to recover the resources invested in their education, in this case our education as translators. Obviously, I no longer offer PE services. ▲ Collapse
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| Gerhart Hauptmanns play "The Weavers" | Jul 26, 2021 |
Andreas Baranowski wrote:
Already Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) in his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations describes this business model as exploitation since it denies workers a return on their labor sufficient to recover the resources invested in their education, in this case our education as translators. Obviously, I no longer offer PE services.
... regularly comes into my mind so often since I started my freelance career in 2007, a play about freelancing weavers around 1840, working at home and exploited down to the ground by rock bottom rates for the products they have to deliver to their filthy rich monopolistic main customer, while simultaneously confronted with the growing competition by the introduction of ever more sophisticated power looms. It ends with a riot.
[Bearbeitet am 2021-07-26 06:00 GMT]
| | | | | Consequences | Jul 26, 2021 |
Matthias Brombach wrote:
That translation increasingly has become a matter of "proofreading" in the past two years, associated with the relevant cheaper rates. Nothing to say against using DeepL as an aid, when it's you, who determines whether to use it or not and where applicable, but not when presented as a fait accompli in the projects, with a fixed price and even in complicated technical manuals. I had to draw my consequences of it.
Would you be willing to share them?
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Hans Lenting wrote: Matthias Brombach wrote:
That translation increasingly has become a matter of "proofreading" in the past two years, associated with the relevant cheaper rates. Nothing to say against using DeepL as an aid, when it's you, who determines whether to use it or not and where applicable, but not when presented as a fait accompli in the projects, with a fixed price and even in complicated technical manuals. I had to draw my consequences of it. Would you be willing to share them?
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