About the author: Sladjana Jana Paripovich is professional editor and translator for NMbooks Australia, working in Serbo-Croatian<>English and Serbian<>English. She lives in Melbourne, Australia.
While
global economy has helped many legitimate businesses expand, it has also
allowed a rapid proliferation of tiny, bogus businesses that defraud clients
and contractors. This trend is particularly strong in the international
translating market. Anyone can create an appealing, convincing website, pose as
an agency, and defraud thousands of translators worldwide.
There are several
types of infamous translating agencies:
Those who are founded by amateur translators, starting up, unaware of the
ethics and standards of the profession, aiming at establishing their business
long term.
Those who are not translators, amateur or professional, who exclusively recruit
from translators’ directories, databases or yellow pages, and who are
exclusively there to get rich fast, short-term. They often include
‘looking good’ agencies, with some convincing names and titles.
One person agencies, the most notorious type, founded by someone who has a
sound knowledge of information technology put to the purpose of defrauding
other agencies and translators. More often than not, the same person would have
created a number of websites, each with a different name, each purporting to be
a translation agency.
They set the translation rates down, disseminate substandard work to their
clients without being aware of it, defraud contracted translators, and use
translators’ directories to obtain translators’ emails, solicit
their CVs for client theft, then sell emails to marketing agencies, and spam
translators with dubious offers. They do not understand the profession, have
not made any personal investment in obtaining the education, skills and
accreditation, seek fast profits, and lack ethics.
What can you do: check the properties
(Message Source) of their emails, read their emails carefully, check for the
tone, spelling, grammar, the message itself, the closing; check their website
for the same, check all their sections but most importantly their ‘About
Us’ or ‘Our Team’ section and ‘Contact Us’
section; give them a call or email them with some tough questions and watch
their punctuality and the substance of their reply. Your questions should first
address their verifiable physical address and business registration number,
their professional memberships or associations, the qualifications and
accreditations of their translators, their payment and non-payment policies,
their legal team or the name of the institution that would mediate
disputes/complaints, and the maximum timeframe for their reply or payment. If
you are asked to do a sample translation, agree to only a paragraph of two
different texts. Non-negotiable. If they need a page or two, refer them to the
websites offering free translation software.
Unsolicited Solicited Emails:
The reason I say
unsolicited solicited emails is that
by providing your contact details (including emails) in translators’
directories you have agreed to be contacted by potential clients. Therefore,
any emails you receive would (in part) be solicited. However, you will also
receive a lot of emails that are simply mass spam mails, and hence unsolicited.
Most of them would ask if you are interested to be added to the sender’s
translator database, or seek quotes, or your particulars including a current
CV. Most of your particulars would already be in the directory so it should
alarm you. You won’t hear from them again for a while but you will start
receiving a lot of other spam in the weeks to follow.
Defaming the Infamous: most reputable
translators and agencies feel strong about exposing the wrongdoers. The law of
defamation is supposed to protect people's reputations from an unfair attack or
bad exposure. In practice its main effect is to hinder free speech and protect
powerful people or fraudsters from scrutiny. There are
two types of defamation: oral (called
slander) and published (called libel).
Examples: you tell someone that your
agency evades tax (a slander); you write a letter to your local newspaper (a
libel even if not published). Anything that injures a person's reputation can
be defamatory.
How to avoid
defamation suits: always state facts not conclusions, let the readers draw
their own conclusions; send a copy of what you plan to publish to people about
whom you are writing or who might sue (if there is no reply, it’s
unlikely they will successfully sue later; if they complain, request
specifics); ensure there is a sound base of people asserting similar claims.
Three ways to defend: what you said was
true; you had a duty to provide this information; you were expressing an
opinion.
Note:
India
still doesn’t have an anti-spam legislation, but you can contact the TRAI
(Telecommunications Regulatory Authority India) regarding the spam originating
from India.
E Facilities Management and Solutions provides language services in Indian and Foreign languages. The service includes translation, transcription, interpretation, voice over, proof reading, website localization, software localization, multi lingual website development. Many of the top Fortune 500 comapanies have selected E Facilities Management and Solutions as their preferred translation vendor. Some of our clients are eBay, Yahoo!, I-Flex Solutions, Reliance Energy, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Infomarex. We also work in liason with other Translation agencies in Germany, USA, France and UK. The company is affiliated to the Central Institute of Indian languages - Ministry of Human Resources Development, Department of Education - Government of India.
