Double agents
As mentioned previously in a paean to freelancing, one of the banes of a freelancer’s existence is extracting payment from people with real jobs.
The ultimate goal of course is to establish a steady relationship with your clients, which will usually lead to some regularity in the remuneration process. But there will always be a few (the arts community is notoriously lax) who’ll consistently misread Net 30 days as Why don’t you run out and buy yourself something nice. I don’t need the money.
Im not sure how common this is in other lines of business (but suspect that very comes into it).
In the translation game, some of the most notorious bad payers are agencies, simply because of the nature of the business. Many of course are entirely reputable and good to both clients and freelancers (if you can call skimming 40% off the top, good).
Among the most underhanded practices in agencies are:
- Requesting freelancers to do a test translation, before deciding whether to put you on their roster. In too many cases, these tests are actual jobs that they have been hired to do, and will therefore get paid for. The freelancer, on the other hand, is not informed of this, not paid and, in all likelihood, will never hear from the agency again. (Never do a test over 300 words.)
- Continually hiring new freelancers to the jobs and never paying them. Ever. Or, with the more savvy freelancers who have requested 30% up front (as you should do with all new clients), paying the 30% and not the balance. Ever.
The person who signs the cheques in these establishments is invariably out at lunch, never got your invoice, or in Switzerland on business when you call. Curious, that.
In an ongoing attempt to promote the wacky notion that people should get paid for their work, several translators’ sites have gathered lists of agencies and firms of bad faith, and sought to post them on the web, only to be told they mustn’t.
Faced with an appalling lack of legislation in our favour, and working generally under verbal agreements (usually with clients weve only ever spoken to on the phone), we continue to rely on the kindness of strangers.
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Comment
- I will translate old literature and starve. Much better than getting screwed by strangers.
— Notre Sep 10, 6:33pm # - I tried to solve this problem for ESL teachers here, also by listing schools that had given certain teachers problems, but of course ran into the same problem: the bad schools threatened to shut the thing down and sue everybody, and the bad schools always know their way around the courts and have more money for lawyers than an English teacher has. The best solution must be for translators to always get a solid contract and then take bad clients to small-claims court so that the thing at least goes on record. Or do prospective clients just refuse to sign contracts?
— Eeksy-Peeksy Sep 11, 3:04am # - Ooo, ESL horror stories. I have some of those too.
The only translation contracts I’ve ever signed were for books, otherwise it never even comes up. The best you get is a work order.
Oh, would that translating old literature and starving be an option for me. Candles, plumes and thou.
— gail Sep 11, 4:54am # - I can’t speak as a translator, as I don’t fall into that category, but I have found that people who follow through on payments for web development projects are becoming increasingly difficult to find.
— Tiffany Sep 11, 9:37am # - Would it be possible to have sort of a “word of mouth” warning to translators on who to watch out for? Nothing “official” just an aside, “Oh, that place, well…” without it having to be posted (as an offense to the wretched bastards who won’t cough up the cash)?
— roggey Sep 11, 12:32pm # - Well word of mouth has been attempted a few times on user groups, but each time the agency in question has got wind of it and dropped in to protest too much, which then led to an ugly free for all.
(It stooped as low as accusations of ungainly use of punctuation. We are a sexy bunch.)
It was very entertaining but ultimately dissuaded all from repeating the experience.
— gail Sep 11, 1:23pm # - Another example of the many problems inherent in a free market. In a free market, one is free to chose with whom one deals, and the one with whom one deals is free to attempt cheating, doing so with success in a ratio sufficient to significantly degrade the basic altruistic advantge of a free market. In business, as in personal relations, luck is always the prime mover of success.
— Jack Lobaugh Sep 14, 3:11am # - I can certainly empathise – the same sorts of problems are endemic to the music industry. There seems to be a sort of natural order to it, though. The clients who are shonky and deceptive are invariably running their own business badly, so there’s no point in trying to be nice in the hope of cultivating a long relationship. Those clients who are going to be a good reliable source of work tend to also be professional in how they deal with the musicians that they hire. For that reason, I never think twice about pestering clients for money if their accounts are overdue. Best to try and get the debt recalled before they go under, that’s my philosophy.
— Dan Sep 16, 7:10am # - Hi Gail,
The old advice is still the soundest
1) Never work for a new agency unless you have word from another translator that they have good business practices
2) For a large job (I’d say $3,000 or more, especially if you’re subcontracting) always request at least 50% in advance, unless you have worked for the agency many times and trust them more than you trust your mother. Make sure that the person who is hiring you signs a translation agreement, like the ATA or your association’s standard translation agreement.
3) Always ask for a PO as soon as the handoff for the job is given, it’s your God-given right and sometimes the only proof that you have been hired to translate something
4) When there is a delay in payment…
– Be completely obnoxious. Call them, e-mail them, pester them until they pay you, if only to get you off your back. My schedule of obnoxiousness is as follows: at one week delay: reminder e-mail, at ten days delay another reminder, at fifteen days delay, make an ugly face and remind them that the translation was submited punctually. At one month delay, start e-mailing them daily asking for your check and threaten to denounce them if they don’t pay you.
– If they promised you a check which never arrives…ask them to stop the (probably non-existent) check and resend by FEDEX. Yes, you’ll be happy to take the shipment fee off your check (depending on how much you’re getting on the check)
– If they say there is a problem with your work and that’s why they won’t pay you. Find an independent translator to review your work and compare your review with the agency’s review. To win your case: divide the corrections into three categories: your mistake (grammar, style, etc), preferential (personal choice of words, trading in six eggs in exchange of half a dozen eggs and the like), reviewer’s mistake (which will discredit your peer’s ability to be reviewing your work). Then go ahead and make a graph showing the percentage of changes that were motivated only by personal taste
5) If money is short and you decide to take a risky job, beware of the risk more than of the potential gain. Get very happy if they pay you and chalk it up to your good fortune.
6) If you know that the agency will take forever to pay you…My take on this is as follows: if it’s a small job, under $300 or so, take it. When the check arrives six months later it will have the feel of a windfall…
7) Big doesn’t mean prompt. Some of the slowest paying agencies I know are also the largest.
8) Remote means…remote. Getting payment from a client in Uzbekistan is awfully complicated.
9) If you have a client that pays you punctually…pamper and spoil her, deliver in advance, do anything you can to keep this client happy and become their lead translator in one or more accounts.
10) And the obvious: if an agency gives you hell when it’s time to send the check, never work for them again, not even if they offer your weight in gold for a single word.
— Enigmatic Mermaid Sep 23, 10:51pm #
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