There is no point in working for people who are not the kind of people you want to work for

 

I will cut a lot of slack to a direct client because, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, direct clients are different from agencies …. they pay more. They can basically treat me any way they want and I am unlikely to protest … as long as they keep paying me about twice as much as what an agency is typically paying.

But I do not have a whole lot of patience with translation agencies. Here is a recent exchange of e-mails between Mad Patent Translator and a translation agency. The exchange ensued when I dared to ask the agency about an invoice which was at that point almost a month past due.

**********

(The last name of the agency coordinator and accounting department person omitted).

1. My initial e-mail from me to them:

Subject: Past Due Invoice No. xxxx from Steve Vitek

Dear Ms. C.:

Based on my records, no payment has been received so far for the attached invoice.

Could you please let me know when will I receive the payment?

Steve

2. Their first response:

Hi Steve,
I have forwarded your message to
accounting@besttranslationsever.com

They will follow up with you asap.
Thanks and best regards,
Kristin

3. The response of their accounting person next day, about 20 hours later:

Sorry Steve,
We had no record of this.
It is being processed for payment.
John

4. My response to John from accounting:

You had no record of an invoice for a translation that you received and confirmed?
How is that possible?

Steve

5. John’s response was very brief:

That is correct. Accounting had no record of the invoice.

6. So I said:

So how do I know that I will get paid next time if I work for you again when my invoice never even makes it to your accounting department?

Steve

And John from accounting said:

Always send your invoices to accounting@besttranslationsever.com.

7. So I said:

It is probably safer not to work for your company.

Steve

8. To which Kristin said:

Gentlemen,

I looked back to my files for November.
The translation was rec’d on the 14th.
There were omissions in the file that were not corrected and rec’d until the 18th.
The invoice was rec’d on the 14th.

I failed to forward the invoice to accounting immediately.
I didn’t forward it to accounting immediately on the 14th because of errors/omissions in the file.

I apologize for not forwarding the invoice.  I was never my intention to “not pay Steve” it was an oversight.

Steve apologized for errors/omissions.  I assume he didn’t mean to send a file with omissions.
John has said the check will go out Saturday.

I think everything is back in place.
Thank you and kind regards,

Kristin

9. To which I said the following:

“I didn’t forward it to accounting immediately on the 14th because of errors/omissions in the file.”

Oh, I see.

So it’s basically all my fault. That’s why your agency is being so extremely polite about a past-due invoice.

Next time, if I make a typo or skip a few words (“errors/omissions”) while trying to decipher the gibberish and abbreviations of some doctor, I might not get paid at all.

Good to know.

Steve

10. And here is the last response from Kristin:

Hi Steve,

I am sorry you are taking things this way.
I have apologized for not forwarding the invoice right away. Sorry.
John is paying the invoice and the check is going out on Saturday.
That is all that can be done at this point.

Thank you for your professionalism.
Best regards,
Kristin

***********

Instead of continuing the back and forth with the agency, which was making me more and more furious, I decided to put the e-mails in a block post, while preserving the anonymity of the translation agency.

All they had to do was to say, Steve, we’re sorry, we somehow overlooked your invoice, it will be mailed in a few days … and everything would be peachy. That is how a normal, decent person would react. That is how I would react if I forgot to pay a translator.

But instead they just treated me like a piece of garbage because that is how they normally treat all translators.

“Thank you for your professionalism”? What the hell does that mean? I suppose it means that I am “a professional” if I don’t mind waiting for the payment 2 months instead 1 month, which is a very long time already.

I am pretty sure that they will call on me again because these translations are part of an effort to gather medical data about certain types of patients, and this was the third translation from the same source that they sent me so far over a period of a couple of years.

It is not that easy to find a translator who can do this kind of work, although, of course, it can be done. I am not irreplaceable, although I am not nearly as easily replaceable as a translation agency.

What do you think, should I continue working for them?

They are so damn arrogant …. that they don’t even realize how arrogant they are! They think that what they are doing is perfectly normal and acceptable and Mad Patent Translator is being irrational again.