I HATE Proofreading!
It just irritates me to proofread someone else’s lousy translation. It’s one of the jobs that I always tend to reject.
I am currently proofreading a translation from English into French, and the target text reeks of translation.
I mean come on: even Google Translate would know that “billions” in English is “milliards” in French! We don’t say “10 billions de dollars”!
I’m at a loss for words…
My client’s first condition was that my translation would be written in “French as in France”. My first impression was: Why would they say that? Of course it would be written in perfect French. After translating a (paid) sample text, they were ecstatic. They later sent me a text translated by someone else (prior to my handling the project), asking me to proofread it, which I did, although it’s not my favorite thing to do lol! Only then did I understand their condition and the way they actually said it haha!
Fellow language service providers: what is the one service which you don’t feel comfortable providing to your clients or which you enjoy the least? I’m curious to know!
isabelsanllehi
Sometimes I have refused a translation for the ridiculous rate they “could” offer. Later, the same client comes desperate to me with a google translation to be entirely retranslated. Then he accepts my rates. It is a thing to discuss about among our colleagues, as we should try to fix a minimum rate for pair languages, so everyone would have jobs. Now there’s a lot of fraud among people “being translators” and this makes quite a lot of harm to our career.
Rania
You’re absolutely right but I highly doubt a fixed rate among colleagues would work. It’s a free market.