Last paragraph should be:

I’d love to translate something into ‘African’ one day and be a fly on the wall when the agency is explaining to their client why the end user can’t understand a word of it.

My pet peeve is when a job is posted with ‘African’ as the source or target language. And to top it all, my language combination is French, English and my mother tongue, Afrikaans, which many job posters presume must be ‘African’ spelled incorrectly. So off they go and send job posts with English > Afrikaans in the header, when they really need Chironga, Zulu, Swazi, Swahili or even Urdu! (The latter is not even an African language…)

At first I sent these ignoramuses the link for the Ethnologue website, explaining that there are hundreds of African languages, and that most of these languages are region-bound, not country-bound. I think I got one or two thank you’s. And silence from the rest.

These days I don’t even waste my time and ignore these posts. Still sometimes, the job poster gets upset when nobody responds and harasses you with email upon email.

I’d love to translate something into ‘African’ one day and be a fly on the wall when the agency ising explain to their client why the end user can’t understand a word of it.

And before readers take me for another whining freelancer, we have to recognize that as, Rob said above, we freelancers need to be committed to our “ground rules.” I know from personal experience if I take on a project and am not 100% comfortable with the client’s deadline and payment terms, then odds are that not only will I not end up submitting a high quality end product, but I could easily end up both annoyed at myself and resentful of the client. But do I really have any cause to resent the client when I have agreed to do something despite the warning lights going off in my head?

This is especially important for all of us to remember in the current economic climate, where I have heard frequent discussion from other freelancers who are facing a lower volume of work when compared with this time period last year. Of course, for those of us who rely on agencies for the bulk of our work, we need to recognize that agencies are no stranger to the downturn. That does not mean that I am willing to take on a 10,000 word project due within 24 hours (if only!), but neither should it mean that I judge the PM on the other end of the phone.

All that said, venting is a very healthy practice and given that so many of us work in physical isolation from one another, perhaps virtual gathering place such as Corinne’s blog are the best places for it.

PJD

-MT

Yet another one: “Could you read these 3 documents containing 20 pages worth of instructions in order to translate about 100 words? This client has very specific requirements…”

I had a client who didn’t want to pay for spaces xD I never did have to actually take the spaces out for him to realize how ludicrous it was, we decided that my quoted price was fair WITH spaces…

I once worked for an agency who sent automatic queries. The info about wordcount was a bracket, with the smallest one being 0-2000 words. Often the tasks turned out to be no more than 200-300 words, but you had to log in to their site to find out. Furthermore, they required you to log in to their web interface and from there to their FTP site to download the files for assessment.

When I pointed out how much time I had to spend on just finding out whether I want to take the job or not and asked if they could send the text, or at least include the exact wordcount and subject field in the automatic query, the response was that all that information was available in the project folder on the FTP.

And they wondered why I never accepted any job offers…

Another pet peeve of mine is when jobs are announced in categories like “web site localization” or “education & teaching”. Well ok, it’s a web site – but it makes a whole lot of difference if it’s a social networking site or a web site marketing industry machinery… Or whether it’s a 4th grade history book or corporate specific training in processes for account controllers…

Re. Victor’s point, I often now reply with “48 hours from when I get the go-ahead” to avoid that “but you said Thursday”, “yes but that was on Monday, it is now Wednesday” problem.