I have been keeping an eye on the local job boards over the past few months (104.com.tw, 1111.com.tw etc) and noticed that this company repetedly advertises for native English speaking translators, editors and proof readers.
According to their profile page they are the only governement accredited translation agency in southern Taiwan, and are also a member of the American Translators Association.
Has anyone worked for this organisation, or had any dealings with them?
Never heard of them. Since they’re looking for a part-time translator, I assume it’s case-by-case. I would personally try working with them once or twice, seeing if I get fair treatment, and then deciding whether to keep working with them.
Two ProZ feedback items, both from the same day, and six months away from any jobs posted on ProZ…I’d be wary about taking that as a recommendation. They may be fine, they may be awful, but I wouldn’t rely on that information to make a judgement call. Take a small job if anything and see how they pay and treat freelancers before committing to more.
The rule of thumb these days with new clients is “never give a customer more credit (completed work) than you can afford to lose.” Ah, the old days are gone.
I was recently invited to an interview with this company and would like to share my experiences here.
Firstly, after submitting all of my documents late on a Friday afternoon I promptly received a telephone call and the offer of an interview. Although I thought that this was an extremely positive sign at the time, I now realise that this fast response should have been a warning shot.
Over the weekend I was assigned a short sample translation and proofreading project to be completed by the first thing on Monday morning. The piece of Chinese source text was rather complicated and a little bit outside of my comfort zone, however it was less than 300 source characters so I wasn’t too fussed. I sent my samples off and started to prepare for my first ever Chinese interview (all of my other interviews in Taiwan have been Buxiban BS kinds of interviews).
On the day of the interview I entered a large and modern office that was suspiciously empty (I counted 7 people in total). The interview lasted for 1 and a half hours, which I was told by my Taiwanese wife is rather a long time by Taiwanese standards. I received some good feedback on my sample translation and proofreading documents, and then the sales patter started. After a lengthy introduction from the business owner I was asked a lot of questions about my family, their jobs and any other social connections that I may have. I answered all of these questions obligingly. After more talk on how the company is so well connected around the world, as well as talk on all of their successful projects, I was offered what amounted to a sales position (they called it 業務人員）。I was offered NT$10,000 per month with a sales target of NT$200,000 per month. Bearing in mind that I thought I was applying for a translators position I was a little surprised, however I kept digging for more information. As it turns out, I would only be required to proofread the translated documents that would be translated by a Taiwanese translator (who I also had to find).
I was told that my job would be to sell their businesses services (including translation services) to companies in the global marketplace. Therefore, I was expected to contact companies in England and offer them the company’s services. After asking about the company’s operations in Mainland China I was told that English companies should not go directly to Mainland China to do business because Chinese people cannot be trusted. Instead, they should use the services of their company to complete their transactions.
At the end of the interview I left with a big smile on my face, however at the bottom of my heart I felt very disappointed. Of course, they still have many other candidates to interview so I need to wait until Wednesday to hear if I have been successful or not, however either way there is no sign of any translation work coming my way.
I was recently invited to an interview with this company and would like to share my experiences here.
Firstly, after submitting all of my documents late on a Friday afternoon I promptly received a telephone call and the offer of an interview. Although I thought that this was an extremely positive sign at the time, I now realise that this fast response should have been a warning shot.
Over the weekend I was assigned a short sample translation and proofreading project to be completed by the first thing on Monday morning. The piece of Chinese source text was rather complicated and a little bit outside of my comfort zone, however it was less than 300 source characters so I wasn’t too fussed. I sent my samples off and started to prepare for my first ever Chinese interview (all of my other interviews in Taiwan have been Buxiban BS kinds of interviews).
On the day of the interview I entered a large and modern office that was suspiciously empty (I counted 7 people in total). The interview lasted for 1 and a half hours, which I was told by my Taiwanese wife is rather a long time by Taiwanese standards. I received some good feedback on my sample translation and proofreading documents, and then the sales patter started. After a lengthy introduction from the business owner I was asked a lot of questions about my family, their jobs and any other social connections that I may have. I answered all of these questions obligingly. After more talk on how the company is so well connected around the world, as well as talk on all of their successful projects, I was offered what amounted to a sales position (they called it 業務人員）。I was offered NT$10,000 per month with a sales target of NT$200,000 per month. Bearing in mind that I thought I was applying for a translators position I was a little surprised, however I kept digging for more information. As it turns out, I would only be required to proofread the translated documents that would be translated by a Taiwanese translator (who I also had to find).
I was told that my job would be to sell their businesses services (including translation services) to companies in the global marketplace. Therefore, I was expected to contact companies in England and offer them the company’s services. After asking about the company’s operations in Mainland China I was told that English companies should not go directly to Mainland China to do business because Chinese people cannot be trusted. Instead, they should use the services of their company to complete their transactions.
At the end of the interview I left with a big smile on my face, however at the bottom of my heart I felt very disappointed. Of course, they still have many other candidates to interview so I need to wait until Wednesday to hear if I have been successful or not, however either way there is no sign of any translation work coming my way soon.[/quote]
It irritates the f&ck out of me when companies like this pay money and get listed as an American Translators’ Association corporate member. Not that the ATA is all that. But it would be more if idiots like those couldn’t get in.
[quote=“Milkybar_Kid”]After declining their offer of a sales position they then offered me a few cases of Chinese to English translation on a freelance basis.
So it’s not all bad news.
[/quote]
Seeing how things have developed, I wouldn’t be surprised if they offered you a lot of proofreading cases (or what they define as being proofreading cases). What sometimes (too often) happens, is that non native speakers of English, often the in house translators who are paid very little, translate the source text. The translation will normally be awful. The agency then finds a native speaker of English to do the “proofreading”. The “proofreader” may get paid a standard proofreading rate (which is normally around half the price of a standard translation). But they end up having to severely restructure the whole thing, if not re-translate from scratch. This is the better scenario. The worst scenario is when they just run the source text through Google translate or whatever and then hand it to the proofreader. The whole point of this is that the agency avoids paying the full fee of the initial translator, but still gets a native speaker of English involved somewhere along the line.
I have fallen victim to both cases, so now I only agree on rates after I’ve seen the work (it’s quite normal to see the work before hand). If they won’t allow me to see the work, I let them know that if it’s been done by a native speaker of English and just needs proofreading (problems with spelling, punctuation and other minor things), then that’s what they’ll be charged. If I need to restructure anything from 30 - 60%, then the fee will be somewhere between that of proofreading and translating. If I need to do a lot of restructuring or re-translate the piece, then they can either pay me a full translation fee or find someone else. You’d be surprised that in most cases I do get the higher rates when I point out how bad the original translation is.
And taking “polishing” work really disincentivizes agencies from hiring, well, people who could do the work right the first time around. I will not ever accept “polishing” work unless the work was written in English originally by a Chinese speaker (like a doctor publishing a paper, or something like that.) Not if it was part of a translation workflow. It’s usually not hard to tell.
To the OP -
I’m not sure about Bai Nian, but generally Taiwanese agencies pay really badly.
If you try some of the foreign agencies on ProZ, you should be able to get significantly higher rates (at least NT2.5-NT3/character, compared to NT1 offered by local agencies)
This is an interesting question. I always count the Chinese characters, not the English output which I can’t accurately predict, and usually end up charging around NT$3 after negotiation.
I believe I am worth a lot more than that.
However, the tricky thing is that when a translator puts the rate too high, it scares off basically everyone but government offices, leaving the translator out of work and causing the client to look for a cheaper (and usually very questionable) alternative.
I charge my rate because it’s where the market leaves me. I’m comfortable declining any offer below it, but can’t charge above it if I want to keep the work coming in.
My Taiwanese classmates are lucky because they can do translation into both languages. The few (local) Taiwanese I know who have a native or very very near-native grasp of English can charge exorbitant amounts for CE translations because if they don’t get the case, there will be more fish in the sea – swimming in both directions, no less. I don’t have that luxury because I’m not willing to take a real commercial case from E to C (the previous ones I’ve done have been for my company or friends).
Why should I care where the agency is located? Working for a Taiwanese agency or a foreign agency is all the same to me.
NT$3 is more than adequate to make a decent living, at least if you are based in Taiwan…
Most agencies is Europe don’t have problems paying 3.5 - 4 NTD per ST character. I normally charge around 0.07 - 0.09 GBP for regular translations. But I’'ll drop my rate to around 0.04 GBP (around 0.08USD) for localisation projects, as they tend to contain tens if not hundreds of thousands of characters and a great deal of repetitions. Either way I don’t bother with local agencies.
One good thing about freelancing is that when you work with a new agency you can try for a better fee. I hardly do any work for the first agencies I worked for because it was easier negotiating higher fees with new agencies than asking current agencies for a raise. Ever since I started freelancing my fees have only gone up. If you look on ProZ.com you will see there are thousands of translation agencies worldwide. If you’re just starting out get whatever experience you can, but do try to raise your fees at some point. It’s good for your bank account and profession as a whole.
I agree with that, but the number of reputable case-handlers seeking Chinese to English is relatively low. I haven’t taken any cases from China, and maybe that’s where I’m going wrong, but I’m pretty well acquainted with the major translation firms in Taiwan and I just can’t push my rate up any higher.
I haven’t been able to find a large supply of translation jobs coming out of the US, since those are usually out of English and I suspect outsourced to China, TW, or HK anyway. Americans don’t seem to put a big emphasis on this job.
I’m talking about FOREIGN translation agencies, not Taiwanese ones. If you can get NT$2 in Taiwan it’s not bad. Which is sad, because that’s what it was in 1995.
And yes, outsourcing is killing the C>E market (and E>C too, probably, though I don’t play in that sandbox). Quality schmality, my secretary can fix the typos. Who cares if the meaning is correct?
Is http://www.proz.com/ the best source for finding freelance translation help in Taiwan? I’ve been using a service in the US which is affordable, and quick, but their rates come at the expense of quality (my needs are small anyway). It would be nice work with a human from time to time.
