Based on an idea by Chris Irwin. Chris is a German to English translator based near London. His favourite saying is "Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery."
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
5 Payment per line
Based on an idea by Chris Irwin. Chris is a German to English translator based near London. His favourite saying is "Language is the means of getting an idea from my brain into yours without surgery."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
That's funny! Sometimes I feel like cattle when dealing with certain agencies...
ReplyDeleteThough I am generally treated with respect, I remember one incident during my beginner's year. I came to an appointment at a large agency. The receptionist smiled and asked kindly what she could do for me. I told her my name and said, "I am a translator, and I have an appointment". In a flash the smile vanished from her face, she nodded to some chair in the room and said "Wait there!". I have never forgotten that, and never will.
ReplyDeletePlease don't get me wrong: I don't have a thing with LSPs, otherwise I would not work with some of them. It's just the exotic practices of others, like insisting on € 15.50 less on a tiny job because of repetitions, demanding for source files to be billed rather than target files (in DE>EN and DE>FR there can be quite a difference) and paying by the line (an obscure Imperial measurement).
ReplyDeleteIn the UK, you were traditionally given '100 lines' to write at school as a punishment (e.g. "I must not cut and paste my project work, I must not cut and paste my project work...)" Yes. Those are the LSPs that have to 'stand on line' in my case.
Yes. I guess we have all worked for "Megawords Translations" on some occasion. In my case, they were generally very nice and respectful, but they were also incompetent and relied too much on software and not enough in translation skills. The amount of people "standing on line" must be true. When I was beginning I sought the list of the 10 biggest translation companies and sent them my CV. Most certainly there are a lot of beginners alike.
ReplyDeleteOn a different topic, sometimes I wished I could work on a "per line" basis and not "per cartella", the absurd Italian system...
Hmm.. Putting yourself in the shoes of the translation company, eh? I wouldn't have thought it before, if it wasn't for you Mox. Thanks for this cartoon.
ReplyDelete