Tag: broker

The Abnormal Requirements Many Freelancers Accept

The thought has occurred to me that, with a number of years having elapsed since the large players in the translation brokering industry transformed the lives and drastically lowered the earning power of freelance translators by imposing technology requirements, there might be freelance translators who, having experienced nothing different, think it is normal to:

  • need to use a specific software product to receive translation work,
  • need to bid on jobs on a reverse-auction click-work platform in order to get work, which these days might not even be translation work, or
  • need to log onto a specific platform and translate a document on that platform, while being monitored by the entity purchasing their efforts on that hamster wheel.

None of the above is at all normal, and all are quite foreign to relationships with direct clients that are translation consumers.

The above are merely requirements imposed on freelance translators by translation-brokering agencies that do nothing more than purchase and resell translation. Because those brokers are now in the process of moving rapidly away from ordering translation from professionals, freelancers need to quickly devise a plan B, and agencies are extremely unlikely to play a part in that plan.

The road forward is not going to be easy, but staying where you are isn’t going to end well, although it certainly will end.

Some more ideas for translators are provided on the parent website.

How exciting: A clueless interpreter broker in the US

Sometime around 2005, I received an inquiry for deposition interpreting from what appeared to be a one-person broker in the US. Although I have almost never worked for brokers, in a moment of weakness (and because she agreed to my high fee) I accepted the assignment. What ensued was a good demonstration of the value that most brokers do not and cannot add to the process of deposition interpreting.

After much effort, with scant case information from the broker (because she had scant information), I was able to discover what case the deposition was for; the broker didn’t know and probably didn’t care. I discovered on my own what law firms were involved and contacted the relevant attorney who would be examining the witness. Surprise; it turned out to be the CEO of an airline here in Japan. An additional surprise was that it was the CEO of an airline involved in a different case with an airline client of mine, although the involvement did not represent a conflict that would preclude me from interpreting for this deposition.

When I told the broker who the deponent was, the reaction was “How exciting!” This is a good demonstration of how brokers for interpreting services can operate without any knowledge of, or interest in obtaining information about the specific cases for which they are brokering interpreting services.

I never heard from that broker again, and that was just fine with me.