I was just contacted by a potential client who wants me to do a sample editing for her company, but I’m reluctant to spend 3 hours of my time.
“If you don’t mind, I propose that you can provide the 1st proofreading service to attached file. If the final edit can match well with the writing style my company request, we can meet to discuss for long term service.”
I don’t normally do this for clients I have NEVER met.
What would you do?
Kenneth
Not a chance, standard for that stuff is they send me a sample and I send back a costing and estimated time taken. Depends whether you need the work, or need to maintain the relationship, though. You could limit it to a very small amount of text?
Thanks, Buttercup.
That’s pretty much what I did. Since I don’t know them from Adam (or Eve), I am surprised that they would take this route to get work done. I did request that I met the potential client first, but that was rejected as inappropriate. Which for me is quite weird. I don’t really do business online with people I haven’t met first. I would like to do the work but the reality is that if the pay rate required is too low (it likely would be), it wouldn’t be worth my time to do it…
So I highballed the estimate and told her I’d be happy to provide samples of writing if required.
Kenneth
I don’t know, I’m not in Taiwan, so maybe the market situation is different, but if you behave like you are competing for work, it doesn’t put you on a good footing.
btw, if you are doing a ‘final proofread’, your ‘writing style’ should be immaterial. 
A ‘Taiwan proofread’ - aka ‘a complete rewrite including research’. There’s no such thing as a ‘first proofread’ - they’re talking about a comprehensive first copy edit and possibly even a content edit, which costs more than double what a proofread does, where I work. Doesn’t sound like it would pay well …
Yeah, I read the “writing style” comment as odd too.
Bottom line is they either trust you can do the work or they don’t. Samples and references should suffice.
I don’t know. Makes sense to me. Some editors significantly reshape pieces they work on, some clients expect as much. More likely though that they’re looking for a thorough rewrite.
Also, I do business online with clients I’ve never met all the time. Usually they hear of me through a friend of a friend. No biggie so long as you ensure that you’re not going to get burned too badly.
A full first edit is, however, a ridiculous request. Give 'em a half-page and a highball estimate, and arrange payment before returning the work if they seem too dodgy.
A half page is reasonable to me. I won’t do more, though. I often get 20 pages or so with a similar request attached, to which I respond that they can get the first half-page free and anything after that will be charged. I also make very clear that a first proof costs a shitload more than subsequent polishing – usually they’re expecting to pay proofreading costs for first editing. They soon get the message. They just don’t know any better, most of the time. Best thing is to just refuse work from inside Taiwan unless you’re absolutely gagging on the cash – the pay here is about a fifth of what you can get pretty much anyplace else, I’ve found. France tends to be not bad. The Brits also tend to pay fairly well – two hours from Britland pays me the same as about eight hours from a local client, unless they know what’s what. And they wonder how editors are so crap here! I’ve lost a lot of work by suggesting that the client is really looking not for an editor but a sophomore English student. OOOH! That really tends to get on their wick – “but we is are ploffeshionelle!” But its true.
Jaboney,
“Also, I do business online with clients I’ve never met all the time.” I don’t. There’s no particular reason why not, I just don’t. I did get burned once with a client for other work who never paid up for finished work. But that happens: it wasn’t a concern. Since this client is only a few miles away from me, I’d just jump in the car to go meet them. No commitment, no hassle.
Anyway, I had another look at the document, and decided that it would need extensive rewriting, which I could do, but to do as a ‘sample’. Not a chance.
I sent her the email, asked if she wanted samples instead, quoted an hourly rate and told her how many hours it would take (likely more… but I’m willing to throw in a little extra)…
Why? Because I sense that from the email exchange there is a bit of power struggle going on here: she wants to cast me as the ‘needy’ employee looking for work, I as the teacher considering her as the student wanting to learn. I may be reading a little too much into this (perhaps Loretta would see this, too).
But not wanting to meet me and saying “If you are ok with my proposal, …” sounds like she wants to have the negotiation power by choosing to stand back and set the terms. So I called her on that.
If she replies positively, I’ll do her a quarter/third page of the article, post it in a google document, and a link at the end to a blank email to me requesting a meeting or a payment, and let her take it from there. In fact I’ve already edited 10% of the article to that end.
We’ll see what happens.
Kenneth
Hmm. Cogs are whirring, I’m hearing ‘outsourcing’ … Probably wouldn’t go down too well if I got busted, though. 
Hmm. Cogs are whirring, I’m hearing ‘outsourcing’ … Probably wouldn’t go down too well if I got busted, though. [/quote]
They’d catch you – I’ve done work from your lot before I think. Oxford academia, at least. It was esoteric and they hassled me about petty frivolities, I recall. I don’t do pettiness very gracefully.
Three hours? I’d do the whole thing, and then bill them for it. If they want more, they have to settle up first. If they take it and don’t pay, well, it’s three hours. I spent three hours chiselling ice out of my fridge this week (and broke the bloody thing in the process).
if i worked for three hours, i could buy a new fridge.
I’d work for an hour or for a few pages, just to show the difference between their expectations and wht they really need. that’s enough work to give away for free as a sample, and enough to judge your ‘style’ from.
as BC says, there’s a question of style in a proofing job?
But chiselling ice is more fun than editing Chinglish.
I don’t think your average Taiwaneser makes a distinction between proofreading and completely rewriting. It’s all “take what I give you and make it into correct grammars”
So, er, in what way are they qualified to have opinions about your style?
And how many people have received multi-page samples to work on? How much of the job are they trying to get done for free?
i have in the past few years received about three or four requests for long up-front ‘samples of your work’. I did the first one, which I never got paid for, so now I just don’t.
I don’t send them pre and post versions of other papers I have done in the past, because that’s a violation of the unsaid contract between my clients and me for confidentiality, but i do sometimes refer them to a paper that has been published if they want to see my style. If it’s in a good journal like Science or Cell, then they can also get impressed by that fact too, though it’s hardly the fault of my editing that it got there.
I can also remember a job ‘interview’ that consisted of editing a series of papers. I did not get the job, though the work was done well enough, I thought. Then I noticed that the same ad appeared in the paper for months, which makes me think they used this scam to get cheap editing for years.
And how are they qualified to comment on my style? Beats me, but you never know just who is running the company, do you?
[quote=“urodacus”]
I can also remember a job ‘interview’ that consisted of editing a series of papers. I did not get the job, though the work was done well enough, I thought. Then I noticed that the same ad appeared in the paper for months, which makes me think they used this scam to get cheap editing for years.[/quote]
Man that’s one dirty scam. Should be a blacklist for those type of companies.
I wouldn’t touch that job with Snadman’s dick.
Do you have a resume with former employer/clients available for reference?
That should be all they need.
What kind of windfall does this gig represent, anyway?
I’ve had tons of these guys want me to do a “test document” or see “samples”.
Either way, I told them to get stuffed (with one exception, I’ll get to that in a minute), if they embark upon an arrangment with me and it turns out I have no skills (?), they should be able to spot that in the first page I produce, at which time they can terminate the deal, and as for samples, well, almost none of what I write/edit/work on is material that ends up in the public domain, it’s all proprietary, so fuck that.
The ONE time I agreed to “audition” was when I was about 2/3 through the interview process for a major position with theworld’slargesttechnologycompany co., and the work was highly specialised, and they asked that I do a revision on a document.
That was, I thought, fair.
So I did it, they were happy, and I got the gig.
But I’d call that an exceptional case, it was a megacorp, we were well into the process, and, like I said, the work is highly specialised.
You have to know that the field of freelance/contract writing/editing in Taiwan is frought to the fucking gills with misconduct, malfeasance, and just plain larcenous business practice at the best of times.
I mean on the part of the clients.
Handing over free work with a smile is like walking into the interview bent over with your pants around your ankles, carrying an open Economy size jar of Dr. Loob.
I would consider this kind of request a harbinger of bigger, badder pains in the rump further down the road.
Wow. There’s an urban legend in the translation community that shady operators who somehow land a one-off document in a language they rarely do will divvy up said document among 10 or 20 prospective freelancers and ask them to do a free sample in order to evaluate them as potential “approved contractors.” They get the samples back, cobble them together, and pocket the entire fee for the job. Sounds like you got caught in a variation of this scam.
I never do free samples anymore, though I did when I was first starting out. The joke among the freelance translators I consort with electronically is that free samples never actually lead to jobs. They’re like the free samples of sausages on a toothpick they offer you in the supermarket; nobody actually marches directly over to the sausage section and hunts down the very brand of sausage that they just scarfed down, because nobody really cares enough to expend the precious brain synapses and calories required to discern and remember the differences between the various brands of sausage.
We’re basically just sausage, we translators and editors.
Oh, wasn’t editing Chinglish one of Dante’s circles of hell?
I don’t do free samples. EVER. If they have my name, it’s because someone likes my work well enough to recommend it to someone else. I charge, even if it’s just one paragraph.
I did two tests (a grammar test and an proofing test) and an assessment of a manuscript to get my job. Different situ, because they wouldn’t have used my assessment and because this was my first editing job so I had no pro level CV or sample work. The book will be on the shelves next year. 
Reading this most interesting thread, I am getting the impression that you guys are getting paid way more for editing a page than I am for writing one. 
Bcup, congrats on the book. Always a giddy moment no matter what the content.