Random rants

A note to certain translation agencies, and we know you know who you are:

Play nice.

Seriously.

You never know when you might, truly, need the services of a particular translator again. Or when a particular translator might post all sorts of thinly veiled references to you and/or your agency all over the interwebs, even, and often, copies of your uncivil, illiterate emails.

While most of my interactions with agencies have been most pleasant, I have seen enough of the other to know how prevalent such bad behavior can be.

Pay.

Promptly, as agreed and…fairly.

And, speaking of fair:

There’s another one of those terribly insular, self-congratulatory threads going on over at the Lesser Portal wherein the Big Boys and Girls are asserting that it’s only the “unprofessional”, incompetent translators who whinge about plummeting rates and shady agencies. These are the translators who assert that they always demand, and receive, at least 15 cents/word, and they have more work than they could handle in a lifetime. Whilst apparently spending more than half their waking hours hanging out at said Portal.

Whatevs, as we say over at my favourite virtual bar [CAVEAT: not for the faint of heart or those without the sensibilities of a difficult 13-year old]. Let’s just assume that the Big Boys and Girls have simply reached the point where they now actually believe they really are those grandiose avatars they so merrily confabulated.

Oddly enough, those Boys and Girls also tend to engage in vicious, humiliating and irrelevant catfights that more than reveal the extent of their various pathologies.

In the real world, real jobs are being posted for 3 cents/word, and agencies are contacting me offering 4 cents [a princely sum, they suggest, and owing to my 12+ years experience, sterling references and the fact that they’re hoping I might really be a thoroughly certifiable idiot].

In the real world, rates are plummeting, and we all know why.