A way to benefit from Rush Hour Jobs! Thread poster: Gopinath Jambulingam
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For a translator or a translation agency, it is often a challenging task, whether to accept or turn down a voluminous translation job with a tight turn around time. It is noteworthy that such rush hour jobs are on the increase.
Considering the cut-throat competition in the industry, it is hard to blame the translation agencies and freelancers, who also encourage such practice. It is often the economic survival that subject them to be more submissive to such rush hour job offers. ... See more For a translator or a translation agency, it is often a challenging task, whether to accept or turn down a voluminous translation job with a tight turn around time. It is noteworthy that such rush hour jobs are on the increase.
Considering the cut-throat competition in the industry, it is hard to blame the translation agencies and freelancers, who also encourage such practice. It is often the economic survival that subject them to be more submissive to such rush hour job offers. On the other hand, clients always ignore the fact that "translation" is a creative job, and not a simple “typing” job. The point is that, even well-experienced translators require an energetic mind so as to deliver an error-free, desirable quality translation. Unfortunately, the translators' community is often caught in between devil and the deep sea, and they find it next to impossible to "call it a day" when they really want to.
Recently i am given to understand by one of our LSPs (Language Service Providers) that he has a policy with regard to rush hour jobs. For any jobs that require work between 10.00 pm and 6.00 am (IST) he used to add 20% extra to his normal translation rate.
Although it is obscure as to how many clients will come forward to shed that extra amount, i can say in confidence that when you dare to take such a step, it turns out that most of the rush jobs can indeed, wait another day, or even the next couple of days or weeks. Hope you agree with me!! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Neirda 
China
Local time: 15:24
Chinese to French
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| I'm sure many do that already | Dec 11, 2014 |
Without getting on poetic high horses, it's a side effect of modernization & globalization altogether that brought huge changes in the translation business – among many others businesses. More people in the business, less professionalization, much much more contents being translated globally too, which means more work, but also from more diverse sources. Big topic truly. I'm not even quite sure all translators even nailed those changes already.
You say that rush hour jobs are on ... See more Without getting on poetic high horses, it's a side effect of modernization & globalization altogether that brought huge changes in the translation business – among many others businesses. More people in the business, less professionalization, much much more contents being translated globally too, which means more work, but also from more diverse sources. Big topic truly. I'm not even quite sure all translators even nailed those changes already.
You say that rush hour jobs are on the increase, I'd say that a general trend of wanting and getting everything right here right now is on the increase. And to this, most people on every side replied “yes, sure, let's do that” a while ago already. That's a decade old trend there, and you can't blame trends, unless you like to fight the tide but that's a funny hobby. You can't even blame the people responsible for the trends.
What you can do is, either say yes too, or understand what makes you special enough so you can say “no”. Or at least “meh”. Well, you could also starve/change jobs, indeed, but let's assume that's not your option.
As for myself, (and here you can stop reading my boring babble since every pair is different anyway), experience showed that a good share of “rushed” jobs are actually distrustful clients who just automatically assume that by Time, people just mean “Time*2 + naps” because they just accumulated so many bad experiences before me. I can work with that. When I explain that a failing a deadline would be like a sacrilege for me, then when they see it, they get more relaxed with future deadlines.
Then a good part is just people who simply don't, and won't, understand that a good translator is someone who received a long and costly training, therefore who values his time and won't accept to work under any condition. Some just don't care, not everyone needs quality over speed after all. Obviously I don't catch that business, but do I really care.
Anyway, I'm sure many fellows already apply this kind of “extra time policies”. I don't, because the languages I work with nest on one side of the planet and the other. It just wouldn't make sense for good business. As I said, every pair has its own sets of realities. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Standard in most professions/industries | Dec 11, 2014 |
Gopinath Jambulingam wrote:
Recently i am given to understand by one of our LSPs (Language Service Providers) that he has a policy with regard to rush hour jobs. For any jobs that require work between 10.00 pm and 6.00 am (IST) he used to add 20% extra to his normal translation rate.
Although it is obscure as to how many clients will come forward to shed that extra amount, i can say in confidence that when you dare to take such a step, it turns out that most of the rush jobs can indeed, wait another day, or even the next couple of days or weeks. Hope you agree with me!!
Car-towing services, medical services, extra hours in 9-5 jobs, night shifts...
I wonder why it wouldn't be in translation. More than anything, it deters people from requiring tight deadlines when they are not needed.
Philippe
| | | | Balasubramaniam L.
India
Local time: 12:54
Member (2006)
English to Hindi
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SITE LOCALIZER | I had one client who specifically asked me to charge rush rates | Dec 14, 2014 |
In my case, I had a client, who regularly sends me work, who was very apologetic about sending a rush job with "due yesterday" kind of deadline, and encouraged me to charge rush rates.
As a policy, it might be a good idea for translators to have rush rates and communicate them to clients.
Also, due to the translation industry being global with clients in one time zone and translators in another, what may be absolute rush to the client, may actually be a more comfortably... See more In my case, I had a client, who regularly sends me work, who was very apologetic about sending a rush job with "due yesterday" kind of deadline, and encouraged me to charge rush rates.
As a policy, it might be a good idea for translators to have rush rates and communicate them to clients.
Also, due to the translation industry being global with clients in one time zone and translators in another, what may be absolute rush to the client, may actually be a more comfortably placed deadline for the translator.
For example, some areas in the US are about 12 hours behind Indian standard time, so a translator based in India gets roughly half a day more over the deadline set by the client, which is often sufficient to complete comfortably (in a non-rush manner) mid-sized jobs.
This sword can cut the other way too, though. Clients in Japan, for example, are about 8 hours ahead of Indian time, and they get jittery when they wake up in the morning (a good 8 hours before you do in India) and find that the job has not yet been delivered. So in their case, deadlines becomes shorter than they actually are. ▲ Collapse
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| Another (regional) perspective | Dec 14, 2014 |
This thread is a few days old, however I want to add something here in case other translators (esp. newbies) find it in future.
I work in a fairly standard European language pair (DE>EN), and in my case, most of my clients are European (although sometimes I get work from the U.S.). 90% of my clients are in a certain time zone, and for various reasons, I have decided that my work hours will correspond with the typical work hours in that time zone.
If I am asked to work o... See more This thread is a few days old, however I want to add something here in case other translators (esp. newbies) find it in future.
I work in a fairly standard European language pair (DE>EN), and in my case, most of my clients are European (although sometimes I get work from the U.S.). 90% of my clients are in a certain time zone, and for various reasons, I have decided that my work hours will correspond with the typical work hours in that time zone.
If I am asked to work on a project that, for whatever reason - rush, high volume, holiday, my own personal schedule - would require me to work "overtime"* (work during hours I'm not normally at my desk), I ABSOLUTELY add a surcharge to my normal rates.
Depending on the individual circumstances, the amount added may be anywhere from 30-200%, and/or it might be pro-rated by time worked during normal hours vs. overtime work.
I also agree that translators need to learn to simply say "NO" in situations where working overtime or working the amount of overtime requested is likely to diminish the quality of the final translation.
Nevertheless, the message that I want to get across here is that, in my experience, surcharges are very normal for European language pairs (although I can't comment on practices in other markets, language combinations, and/or geographical areas), even when working with agencies. Some clients will accept, some will not, and as pointed out above, some will realize their "urgent situation" is not quite as urgent as they thought.
But a surcharge IS fairly normal, and I would guess most charge more than 20% extra.
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*"rush hour" is a bit confusing, as this implies a time of day when many people are all trying to do the same thing at once - like drive home. I think in this case clearer terms would be "working overtime" working on a "rush project" or performing "rush work".
[Edited at 2014-12-14 21:10 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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