Mental Health: The Silent Scream Thread poster: texjax DDS PhD
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texjax DDS PhD 
Local time: 02:58
Member (2006)
English to Italian
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Monday
- Email received at 8:28 AM
We would like to request your availability for the following job:
Bla Bla Bla
*Start date 11/06/23 8:25 AM
While I was replying:
- Second email received at 8:33 AM
This is to inform you that the following job has been assigned to another resource.
It was a small job, no big deal, but this was still enough to spoil my breakfast.
How did your week kick off? Do you have an anecdote to share?
| | | | Matthieu Ledoré
France
Local time: 08:58
Member (2022)
English to French
+ ...
| Some of the clients' time expectations… | Nov 6, 2023 |
are crazy. I regularly click on potential jobs that are no longer available (even less than 1min after the initial e-mail). Once, I was asked to deliver 35 000 words in 24 hours.
The good news is, this type of clients is in such a hurry that they sometimes make mistakes in our favour!
(Edited due to code issues.)
[Modifié le 2023-11-06 17:11 GMT]
| | | | Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:58
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
I suspect people are not responding manually. Probably automated using a script of some kind that polls the IMAP server every second. If there's an email from Client A it performs a couple of basic checks in less than a second ("If the deadline is no less than 24 hours away AND the volume is now more than 5,000 words THEN proceed") and just sends back an email saying "I can do this by the deadline for X per word".
Presumably clients like this aren't worried too much about quality, s... See more I suspect people are not responding manually. Probably automated using a script of some kind that polls the IMAP server every second. If there's an email from Client A it performs a couple of basic checks in less than a second ("If the deadline is no less than 24 hours away AND the volume is now more than 5,000 words THEN proceed") and just sends back an email saying "I can do this by the deadline for X per word".
Presumably clients like this aren't worried too much about quality, so they give the job to the quickest person with a low-ish rate. Conjecture, of course, but that's how I'd go about gaming the system.
Dan ▲ Collapse
| | | | texjax DDS PhD
Local time: 02:58
Member (2006)
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Dan Lucas wrote:
I suspect people are not responding manually. Probably automated using a script of some kind that polls the IMAP server every second.
You are way ahead of me in this respect! 
Another thing that rubs me the wrong way is taking the time to reply to enquiry emails with no indication of volume, subject matter area, format, etc. to ask for more information in order to craft a quote, just to be told that somebody else has already accepted the assignment in a matter of seconds. Are they so reckless/brave?
How can anyone agree to perform a translation/editing task without knowing whether it's about nuclear fusion, life science, or the list of ingredients of grandma's pudding?
Please note that I'm not talking about mass emails, as I very seldom reply to those.
Edited to correct a typo
[Edited at 2023-11-06 19:29 GMT]
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Dan Lucas
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:58
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
texjax DDS PhD wrote:
How can anyone agree to perform a translation/editing task without knowing whether it's about nuclear fusion, life science, or the list of ingredients of grandma's pudding?
They don't care whether they are qualified to deal with it, or about the quality of the output. And one must assume that the client doesn't either.
Dan
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:58
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| And while we're on the subject.... | Nov 7, 2023 |
...dear Agencies, please stop specifying that you require Trados.
I use a different CAT tool. By specifically requiring Trados and no other you are excluding people like me, who use CAT tools but not Trados.
You might be sorry, because I'm good.
| | | | expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 07:58
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
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| Interoperability | Nov 7, 2023 |
Tom in London wrote:
...dear Agencies, please stop specifying that you require Trados.
I use a different CAT tool. By specifically requiring Trados and no other you are excluding people like me, who use CAT tools but not Trados.
You might be sorry, because I'm good.
Interoperability is a great strength for translators and agencies as well.
Nobody forces me to use a tool that I don't use or like, just as I'm not obliged to accept crappy rates or certain silly NDA clauses - and this what I can consider the most disturbing for the mental health of any translator.
When an agency specifies that the translation must be done with X, Y, Z CAT tool, all I do is import the files/packages and translate it from one tool to another, always preserving the client's original format.
If you're as good as you say you are, you can still use your own main CAT tool and do not feel excluded anymore.
This is just my humble opinion...
| | | | Matthieu Ledoré
France
Local time: 08:58
Member (2022)
English to French
+ ...
Tom in London wrote:
...dear Agencies, please stop specifying that you require Trados.
Hello Tom,
When I interned in a translation agency, Trados was our preferred CAT tool.
However, we did not demand that translators use Trados. While most of our habitual translators did (we were a big source of income for them!), for other skilled translators, we did a very simple export.
It took about 30 seconds, and you could do something else in the meantime.
Therefore, I completely agree with your point. The "Trados/MemoQ needed" approach is mostly for agencies which specialise in fast and cheap translations,IMO.
Regards,
Matthieu.
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| Makes me think..... | Nov 7, 2023 |
Tom in London wrote:
...dear Agencies, please stop specifying that you require Trados.
I use a different CAT tool. By specifically requiring Trados and no other you are excluding people like me, who use CAT tools but not Trados.
You might be sorry, because I'm good.
For the clarity, I am using SDLTrados, but whenever I receive a request from a translation agency, they ask for Trados, memoQ, Memsource (or how it is called now), Across (especially German agencies), and for the whole 'shabam', including their own (slow) platforms, except for CafeTran.
Don't get me wrong, no criticism on CafeTran, I only wonder why?
[Edited at 2023-11-07 19:59 GMT]
[Edited at 2023-11-07 20:00 GMT]
| | | | texjax DDS PhD
Local time: 02:58
Member (2006)
English to Italian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
expressisverbis wrote:
Interoperability is a great strength for translators and agencies as well.
Wholeheartedly agree. However, there's the sad case of clients that demand the use of their online tools (oftentimes very cumbersome, outdated, slow, and less than user-friendly) and are not willing to provide the TM required to perform the assigned task, so that using your own tool is not a viable option.
Matthieu Ledoré wrote:
The "Trados/MemoQ needed" approach is mostly for agencies which specialise in fast and cheap translations,IMO.
Matthieu.
In my experience, that's not necessarily true. That said, requiring a specific cat tool for common file formats it's still a nuisance.
| | | | expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 07:58
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
| About CAT Tools | Nov 8, 2023 |
texjax DDS PhD wrote:
Wholeheartedly agree. However, there's the sad case of clients that demand the use of their online tools (oftentimes very cumbersome, outdated, slow, and less than user-friendly) and are not willing to provide the TM required to perform the assigned task, so that using your own tool is not a viable option.
It's true and it happened to me before. I've worked with Crowdin before and didn't enjoy the experience too much, and I've also had to turn down jobs, for example with Smartling and MateCat.
Matthieu Ledoré wrote:
When I interned in a translation agency, Trados was our preferred CAT tool.
However, we did not demand that translators use Trados. While most of our habitual translators did (we were a big source of income for them!), for other skilled translators, we did a very simple export.
It took about 30 seconds, and you could do something else in the meantime.
Therefore, I completely agree with your point. The "Trados/MemoQ needed" approach is mostly for agencies which specialise in fast and cheap translations,IMO.
I think your statement is a sweeping generalisation and not accurate.
Both Trados and MemoQ can be used by agencies that specialise in fast and cheap translations as you say, but they are also used by many other types of organizations, including businesses, governments, and educational institutions (see, for example the EU).
I can think of one reason why these tools (and others) can be used the way you described: they are used for speeding up translations and automating many of the tasks involved in translation, such as terminology extraction and matching. So, this can save time and money.
On the other hand, Trados and MemoQ don’t replace a good translator. A skilled and professional translator need to use their judgment and expertise to ensure that the translations are accurate, as well as charging their fair rate for the effort and skills they put into their work, and not accept any insulting rate that an agency can impose on them, as we see here on the job board many times.
If there are companies and translators who translate fast and cheap and deliver crap that’s another story.
| | | | Matthieu Ledoré
France
Local time: 08:58
Member (2022)
English to French
+ ...
expressisverbis wrote:
I think your statement is a sweeping generalisation and not accurate.
I might have oversimplified things.
I certainly did not say that CAT tools were for cheap translation only (I rather think the contrary). My point was that businesses which focus on having this or that CAT tool may be more concerned about speed and ease, and less about quality.
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