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Do you ignore offers from certain regions?
Thread poster: Heinrich Pesch
Eva Straus
Eva Straus  Identity Verified
Slovenia
Local time: 14:45
Member (2007)
English to Slovenian
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SITE LOCALIZER
Depends on which market segment they serve May 11, 2012

I have a couple of clients from China and India and they pay good rates. Both countries are hugely enormously vastly big, with millions of companies. Not all of them lack the business sense to figure out what a fair rate would be in your part of the world before contacting you
Anyway, quite a few of Chinese and Indian companies want to stand out quality-wise, their websites, manuals etc. included, and they want to be able t
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I have a couple of clients from China and India and they pay good rates. Both countries are hugely enormously vastly big, with millions of companies. Not all of them lack the business sense to figure out what a fair rate would be in your part of the world before contacting you
Anyway, quite a few of Chinese and Indian companies want to stand out quality-wise, their websites, manuals etc. included, and they want to be able to rely on you to help them enter or even dominate a market, very distant and different from their own. A competent linguist can be very precious to them, especially if they want to send a clear message they’re a high-quality supplier.
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Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:45
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
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I do answer May 11, 2012

I try not to ignore any request (you never know), and do answer with my normal rates. Of course I am very aware that the chances of having my rates accepted by Indian and Chinese companies are really low.

 
Marijke Singer
Marijke Singer  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 14:45
Member
Dutch to English
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I ignore messages May 11, 2012

When generic and not sent to me specifically. I also ignore them when they ask for my best rate. If they say that they can offer xx and this is below my standard rate but the job is interesting, I will reply.

 
The LT>EN Guy
The LT>EN Guy  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Lithuanian to English
Pitfalls of generalizing May 11, 2012

I would like to join in the sentiment of some of the responses here that generalizing can lead all too easily to prejudices.

Of course, as humans we are prone to generalize. This is in our nature, and in certain aspects of life it can have a certain value as it allows us to not think too much about unimportant aspects of situations we face. However, I think that treating one's fellow human beings with respect and dignity is way too essential to be considered unimportant in any situ
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I would like to join in the sentiment of some of the responses here that generalizing can lead all too easily to prejudices.

Of course, as humans we are prone to generalize. This is in our nature, and in certain aspects of life it can have a certain value as it allows us to not think too much about unimportant aspects of situations we face. However, I think that treating one's fellow human beings with respect and dignity is way too essential to be considered unimportant in any situation. And I think that perceiving someone as untrustworthy or not of interest because they work in a company from a certain region of the world falls short of the standard of treatment that I would like to receive myself if I were to write an inquiry to someone else. (By the way, would you think just as badly of an email from a company in China if it were signed by someone working there who has a European name and surname?) So, to me this is a much more basic thing than what is suggested by the interpretations in some other responses that such treatment might be (merely) unprofessional.

That said, of course, the sentiment I am expressing here is either felt or not by others. Hollow political correctness won't change anything. Having a template response about being busy (or something of the kind) that you employ in each case of contact by prospective clients form 'undesirable' regions might be slightly less rude than ignoring their emails outright. But, in the end, it is just a more refined facet of the same prejudice.

Before anyone feels the need to suggest that I am choosing to be blind to reality, I will preempt this by saying that in my experience, too, companies from certain areas of the world, as well as certain parts of the European continent itself (as reluctant as I am to word this in such a Eurocentric way), tend to be less reliable (in 'our' understanding) and to offer lower rates when compared to companies form certain other areas. There is no need whatsoever to deny this. Yet, as Lady Strauss and some others suggest, to assume that every company from there is the same would be simply not insightful enough. From far away, it is more difficult to see the internal differences in those markets and the exciting opportunities that this brings to us as service providers.

No secret about it: most of my clients are from Europe. This is not surprising given that I live in Europe and also given that a good share of my translations are documents by and/or for the EU. There is one particular country outside of Europe in relation to which I have the subjective impression that my clients from there have tended to have a lax attitude towards payment deadlines. Yet, obviously, I cannot allow myself to fall victim to my own generalization and ignore inquiries from that country. Why? For one thing, I did not go and conduct a thorough study of years of my accounting and banking records to see if my impression has any basis in plain facts and figures. And, secondly, it is all too easy for a couple of companies from that country to make a bad impression, which then gets (unjustly) applied to the whole translation market in that country. We are just too susceptible to cognitive biases. If one does business with, say, 20 European companies and with 2 [insert region here] companies, and 6 of the 20 European companies can be late payers at times, with the figure for the [insert region here] companies being 2 out of 2... You see where I'm going with that, right? And it's not just the arithmetic; it is also the human bias of idealizing our own environment. To share another story, once I did a small job for a client form India, and when the deadline for payment came and passed, no payment reached me. I assumed that they must be intent on not paying, and I did not feel like wasting time on writing emails about a 30 euro (or so) invoice. To put it more bluntly, I did not give that client a chance. And it was really wrong of me to do this! Some time passed, and I get an email in which the guy is apologizing to me because something had fallen through the cracks, and they had now discovered during a routine inspection of their records that they'd not made the payment to me. It was then made immediately. And--trust me--I have a couple of stories worse than that with regard to organizational gaps of European clients. Will I refuse any future requests from those particular European clients? Yes. Will I stop responding to inquiries from European clients, full stop? C’mon, now!

I think the most important thing is to always use one's informed judgment. Scam emails may come mostly from Africa, but would you seriously give an email like that more credit if it claimed to be coming from Switzerland? Didn't think so. Clients with low rates? I'm sorry, where is the Ministry of Justice story happening? Is it not the UK? Calling typical Chinese and Indian rates 'ridiculous'? Actually, I would feel more comfortable if we didn't. Are such rates utterly incompatible with 'our' economic reality? Most definitely, yes. But no need for derisive connotations. Why do we assume that a non-European company is intent on exploiting us with their low rates? How do we know that the scenario is not, e.g., the following: some [insert nationality here] entrepreneur somewhere is trying to make it in this world, just like we are. He/she sees an opportunity to expand into a new pair or market, and he/she goes and tries to find freelancers. If you reply courteously, that person will understand that you too are trying to make it in this world and cannot work for the rates they can offer. After all, let's not pretend that translation rates are widely available on the Internet for everyone unfamiliar with them to be able to compare. I like to believe that Proz is serious enough of a community for its non-newbie members to be able to judge the trustworthiness of a specific client from other--objective--factors rather than from where they come from! Be nice (you can be brief if you think they are not of much interest), state your rate, and see what happens. Check the message for anything suspicious, check out the BB, check out Google, make your decision. Simple, really.

Also, with regard to answering or not answering messages sent to several translators at once. I think that here we should also make individual judgments. I agree that in many cases you are less likely to get a job by responding to a "Dear Translator" message than to a "Dear Name" message. But I also think that we have to consider that the person writing "Dear Translator" messages might be a new PM, who hasn't yet gotten the hang of how things look from the translator's perspective, or even an experienced PM who is simply dealing with a new and promising language pair and does want to see many CVs. After all, what is really the difference between a PM ticking a few names on a joint email, and a PM copy-pasting the same text into individual emails and then copy-pasting your name into the one meant for you? Or do we get offended if they contact more than one translator?(!) I really do wonder why members here so often use the forums to express almost militant views against group messages. Are you super busy with finishing a project? Are you having a day with a higher-than-usual number of "Dear Name" requests? Yes? Great, of course, put the "Dear Translator" ones off to the side. But if it is a slow stretch and you will not respond because you find it offensive that the PM didn't praise your impressive profile in a personalized email, then I don't really get it.

I think that as people who must think in entrepreneurial ways, we will all agree that we have to stay open to as many opportunities as we can. I don't know about the rest of us here, but if tomorrow brings me a legitimate opportunity from a country that some of us frown upon in general, I personally will be more than happy to take it. And I will not mind if some others decide to stay out of my competition

Have a great day/evening, everyone!


[Edited at 2012-05-11 22:18 GMT]
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Robert Forstag
Robert Forstag  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 09:45
Spanish to English
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India May 12, 2012

I've honestly never received anything but ridiculous offers from India, so I simply do not respond if the ridiculous rate is stated up front, even if the e-mail is personally addressed. I hardly consider doing this a breach of ethics.

Another genus of e-mail that is a waste of my time is from fledgling authors who are looking for dirt-cheap translations of their books. I usually do (briefly) reply in such cases, but the combination of the gap in expectations and their evident poor
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I've honestly never received anything but ridiculous offers from India, so I simply do not respond if the ridiculous rate is stated up front, even if the e-mail is personally addressed. I hardly consider doing this a breach of ethics.

Another genus of e-mail that is a waste of my time is from fledgling authors who are looking for dirt-cheap translations of their books. I usually do (briefly) reply in such cases, but the combination of the gap in expectations and their evident poor judgment is definitely a turn-off.

Then of course there are those solicitations that include the code words "best rates" and "competitive rates." I typically don't respond to those either.

All in all though, my "ignoring" is not geographically based.
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Yasutomo Kanazawa
Yasutomo Kanazawa  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 22:45
Member (2005)
English to Japanese
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Me too! May 12, 2012

Paula Hernández wrote:

India and China, their rates are ridiculous.


Yes, India and China are top on my list.

I do not want to generalize, but I also ignore offers from agencies who try to negotiate rates even though my rate per source word is clearly written on my profile. I learned from the past that negotiating leads to nothing but a waste of time, because they are NOT willing to pay you the rate you're offering (I understand the client is trying to make a compromise, but still...), waste of time and a lot of energy and from my experience, these cost-cutters are the most demanding type of clients (top notch quality, correct layout, asking for proofing without extra cost, you name it).


 
DZiW (X)
DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
+ ...
no India, PRC, CIS May 13, 2012

Working as a freelancer many my colleagues and I tend to avoid notoriously 'exotic' origins with even more exotic demands. To be more specific, I came to conclusion than it's not worthy for our group to deal with India, PRC or CIS because it's more like nervously eating our heads off.

In most cases all those 'possible' offers, orders, demands, nuances, issues, excuses and pretexts were at least suspiciously very similar, that's why I strongly believe that majority of clients from t
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Working as a freelancer many my colleagues and I tend to avoid notoriously 'exotic' origins with even more exotic demands. To be more specific, I came to conclusion than it's not worthy for our group to deal with India, PRC or CIS because it's more like nervously eating our heads off.

In most cases all those 'possible' offers, orders, demands, nuances, issues, excuses and pretexts were at least suspiciously very similar, that's why I strongly believe that majority of clients from the countries in question has formed their own accepted 'workflow' in its allegedly final flawed form, unfortunately.

Why, occasionally my people and I did accept orders from there, but it was only when we were absolutely sure, the client was an individual or one who was positively different.

For instance, how it come that one quite big and respected Moscow agency had already delayed payment for a couple of months and stated that if the translator didn't translate 'a few more pages from Appendix'--about 30 pages free of charge--which originally weren't in the order then the whole work would be not paid for... Indeed, those new pages should be also rechecked and revised several times, and the translator had to wait another couple of months again!

Or how one could like American Express from China? Or post-MT from India? Or how interesting is paying via middlemen, say, 'you invoice company A (?), it pays to company B (?), which in turn pays us, then when we have money we will pay company B and it will return the money to company A'; why? Let alone 'free tests' for tens of pages or changing/missing requisites in the letters and the 'official' sites. But most interesting is when the phone stops answering and the mail keeps bouncing with the mail delivery message '550 User not found' and so on.

Although I can visit a few our local 'insolvents', I don't bother dealing with them either, because it has very little to do with freelancing, IMO.
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Laurent KRAULAND (X)
Laurent KRAULAND (X)  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 14:45
French to German
+ ...
Same here May 13, 2012

Yasutomo Kanazawa wrote:

Paula Hernández wrote:

India and China, their rates are ridiculous.


Yes, India and China are top on my list.

I do not want to generalize, but I also ignore offers from agencies who try to negotiate rates even though my rate per source word is clearly written on my profile. I learned from the past that negotiating leads to nothing but a waste of time, because they are NOT willing to pay you the rate you're offering (I understand the client is trying to make a compromise, but still...), waste of time and a lot of energy and from my experience, these cost-cutters are the most demanding type of clients (top notch quality, correct layout, asking for proofing without extra cost, you name it).



I feel that being annoyed with negotiations when there is nothing to negotiate (except accepting the usually low rates offered by some outsourcers) is a complete waste of time.

What I have ready at hand is a template with rates, payment conditions and software I use.


 
Radian Yazynin
Radian Yazynin  Identity Verified
Local time: 16:45
Member (2004)
English to Russian
+ ...
My latest experience May 14, 2012

Only because I was approached personally, I replied to an agency from China with my price offer to their concrete request stating a concrete subject matter, after which I received another letter with a sample text and repeated request for my "best" price. Then that trade ended up with their long silence. Indeed, this makes you simply ignore other such letters and save time for better things.

 
Nicole Schnell
Nicole Schnell  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:45
English to German
+ ...
In memoriam
Yes. May 14, 2012

I stay clear from offers from a variety of Middle East countries because you never know which bank embargo, sanction or blocked internet is going to happen next.
In general I feel uneasy about any new offers from countries, where none of the currencies that I accept are used or none of my familiar languages are spoken or where my chances to enforce legal rights in case of non-payment are close to zero. It's not worth the risk.


 
Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 14:45
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Yes, I do. May 14, 2012

There are some countries on each continent I never work(ed) with. It's not about my subjectivity or prejudice, it's just simple statistics regarding the kind of offers I have been receiving from such countries over the last years. I know that with people from certain countries there will always be issues on the level of management and pricing/payment.

[Edited at 2012-05-14 11:52 GMT]


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 14:45
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@Nicole May 14, 2012

Nicole Schnell wrote:
I stay clear from offers from a variety of Middle East countries because you never know which bank embargo, sanction or blocked internet is going to happen next.


Good point sadly.


 
Miguel Carmona
Miguel Carmona  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 06:45
English to Spanish
End client's China headquarters thought my minimum fee was unacceptable May 14, 2012

Several years ago I was contacted by a USA branch of a Chinese company (industry). They wanted information about my specialties and rates for translations from English into Spanish.

In my response I indicated my per word rate, but I forgot to mention my minimum fee for small jobs. My contact said that he would contact their China headquarters to check whether my rate was acceptable. After several days, this person emailed me saying that headquarters had accepted my rate and that th
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Several years ago I was contacted by a USA branch of a Chinese company (industry). They wanted information about my specialties and rates for translations from English into Spanish.

In my response I indicated my per word rate, but I forgot to mention my minimum fee for small jobs. My contact said that he would contact their China headquarters to check whether my rate was acceptable. After several days, this person emailed me saying that headquarters had accepted my rate and that they had a job (a small file was attached) and he asked me to please proceed with the translation.

I immediately realized that the file's small word count qualified for my minimum fee, so I emailed back my contact to inform him.

He replied saying that, again, he would need to check with the bosses.

Again, after a few days he got back to me, but this time only to tell me that their China headquarters had found my minimum fee unacceptable.

I am sure I quoted an average minimum fee for an established Eng>Spa freelance translator in the USA, neither too high nor too low.

Most probably they just had a one-off little project and wanted to pay a very small amount of money, but besides that, probably in ancient China they had more efficient management systems that this company has in the Internet era.

I hate to generalize, but they left me with a funny idea about China for the rest of my life.
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