A Dream Or a Nightmare, the Choice Is Ours

“My boss recommended I reach out to you for translation of the attached document. The file is in Japanese and needs to be translated into English. I was hoping you would be able to provide me with some sort of a quote for the translation of the document.

Please let me know your rates for this and also your availability.”

This was an e-mail received from a translation agency a few days ago. It was clear to me that the agency coordinator, or project manager (PM) as they are called, had absolutely no idea what was in this “Japanese document”. Whenever PMs call something “a document,” which is most of the time, they do so because they don’t know what’s in it. Naturally, how could they know what’s in the “document” when the “document” is in a foreign language? They are just PMs and nobody should expect them to actually have some understanding of the “documents” that they manage.

Because the PM did not ask me for “my best rate,” I answered the e-mail by quoting a price, per word rate, and turnaround time. (It is best to simply ignore requests for a “best rate”).

The time was 4: 30 PM. There was no answer that day. Maybe they only work until 5 PM, I thought, like normal people (read: non-translators) do.

There was no answer the next day in the morning either. I was thinking of asking the Project Manager, who had no way of even estimating the cost of the project without the assistance of somebody like this Mad Patent Translator, whether her mother never taught her that it is polite to thank people when they do something for you, especially if they do it for free. But then I figured, to hell with them, I have better things to do.

But the PM finally answered this MPT, after almost 24 hours:

“Hi Steve,

Thanks for the reply on this.
Do you mind me asking what the specific amount of English words is based on?

Of course it is quite difficult to determine a word count for the Japanese [No, it is not very difficult if you know what you’re doing], without manually going through each page. Also in regards to the rate of 0.XX cents per word this seems a little high compared to other vendors, would it be possible to do this for between 0.XX-0.XX cents per word?”

(They wanted me to translate it, but for about 15% less than what I normally charge to translation agencies, which is quite a bit lower than what I charge to direct customers).

So I answered thusly:

Hi [name of the PM]:

Oh well, if you can’t afford me, that’s OK too.

And don’t call me “a vendor,” I don’t sell hotdogs.

Have a nice life!

S. V.”

Why would I want to teach them how to estimate the word count in English for Japanese patents when they can’t even pay my rate? Since the method that I use in fact has several caveats (because the word count depends on the type of the document and the kind of words and characters that the writer is using,) I am not sure that they would be able to understand it anyway.

I expected that the only response to my short e-mail in which I protested the application of the crass capitalist term “vendor” to a translator would be a frosty radio silence after such a cheeky e-mail, but contrary to my expectation, the following response appeared in my mailbox within a few minutes:

Hi Steve,

My apologies if I offended you by using the term vendor, I did not mean for it to come out in such a way that was demeaning. [How did she expect it to come out then?, I wonder].

Of course we try to source the best available price for our clients, and after discussing this with my boss, he has assured me that your rate of 0.XX cents per word would be more than acceptable for such an accomplished translator. [Accomplished or not, I’ve got bills to pay].

This project has not yet been given the go ahead, but if it does are you still available and willing to work on this document?[There is a comma missing in this e-mail.]

Please let me know when you get a chance and again my deepest apologies.
Best,

[name of the Project Manager]

With a chuckle, or a snigger, or a cackle or whatever other name can be used for this particular activity that I enjoy so much, I graciously accepted both the apology and the offer of the job, should it pan out, (the apology was accepted unconditionally, the job conditionally,) as follows:

“Apologies accepted. At this point I have work for about a week, but I will try to fit in your translation if the project is a go.”
Best regards,
S. V.”

In every negotiation, everything depends on who needs whom more. The size, income levels, ethnicity, skin color, gender …. none of these things matter nearly as much as whether you need the other party more than they need you.
I could certainly use the particular translation that was offered to me in this manner, subject to approval of the end client, of course, because I will have quite a few additional bills to pay on top of the usual ones that I have to pay every month: such as airplane ticket from Norfolk to Bordeaux and back next month because I will be going to the IAPTI III Conference in Bordeaux in a few weeks. I have not bought the ticket yet, and this patent translation job would basically pay for it.

But I don’t like to haggle and be treated like some kind of cheap domestic help who may charge no more than what the next cheap domestic help factotum is charging.

There are in fact thousands of translation agencies offering the same thing (“translations”) to customers, big and small, who need to have “documents” translated, generally because these customers can’t make money without a really good translation. And there are probably only about a dozen translators living on planet Earth who are experienced enough and know both Japanese and English and who can translate a long, complicated biotechnology patent so that both the agency and the translator will be paid for the translation, and so that the end client can go on making money based on the information provided in it.

My life would be a nightmare if I allowed thousands of PMs working for thousands of translation agencies to treat me as just another “vendor” among dozens or hundreds of other “vendors”. I would have to haggle about the price and live in fear that even if I give in, my price might still be higher than what other “vendors” are willing to take, and I would have to work long hours, including on Saturdays and Sundays, without any additional compensation for overtime.

Or life can be a dream, or as close to a dream as it is possible in real life, if I am in charge of the terms under which I sell my experience, my skills and my time to people who are in need of the same, because to a translator, being able to do the kind of work that I do at rates and at a pace that I consider fair is a dream come true.

UPDATE
Two weeks later I received the same long patent for translation from the same translation agency at the rate that was in my original e-mail response.

For some reason, a different project manager was assigned to handle the project.