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Proz publishing the ads with exploitative rates
Thread poster: Sandesh Ghimire
Sandesh Ghimire
Sandesh Ghimire  Identity Verified
Nepal
Local time: 17:36
Nepali to English
+ ...
Apr 17, 2015

Dear All,
I am wondering why Proz gives space to the ads with exploitative rates. I few days ago there was an ads which offered a rate of of less than $0.01 followed by another having rates from "$0.025 to $0.03 . These are only few examples out of the plethora of them.

Just curious.
Thanks

[Edited at 2015-04-17 03:53 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-04-17 03:55 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-04-17 04:06 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-04-17 15:40 GMT]


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 12:51
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
My two cents Apr 17, 2015

Ours is a free market and I like it that way. I do not think Proz.com is in a position or under any obligation to impose a certain minimum rate level.

Promoting healthy rate levels is our duty as professionals: never accept abusive job proposals, and if you so wish, report your rate to low-pay posters so that they know what the market rates are really like.


 
Woodstock (X)
Woodstock (X)  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 12:51
German to English
+ ...
Welcome to Proz, Sandesh Apr 17, 2015

Low rates have been a hot topic since I joined in 2007, and even before then, probably back to the beginnings of the website. Proz is in the business of offering opportunities without judgment about the rates. It's up to the translators to decide whether they will work for such pittances or not. You may not agree that it is a good or fair policy, but there are no hard and fast rules about minimum or maximum rates offered here. This is a US-based website that is accessed and used from all over th... See more
Low rates have been a hot topic since I joined in 2007, and even before then, probably back to the beginnings of the website. Proz is in the business of offering opportunities without judgment about the rates. It's up to the translators to decide whether they will work for such pittances or not. You may not agree that it is a good or fair policy, but there are no hard and fast rules about minimum or maximum rates offered here. This is a US-based website that is accessed and used from all over the world, cost-of-living varies from country to country, and translators' rates vary right along with them, so it would be very difficult - if not impossible - to set rates under those circumstances. And believe it or not, there are some people who work for peanuts for whatever reason, but the choice is yours. I'm not justifying the policy, just explaining it. I stopped letting it bother me long ago.

If you decide to read extensively in the forum posts, you can learn a lot about rates and how to find clients who are serious and pay fairly, and ignore the jobs looking for cheap, unprofessional labor. Even experienced translators like you can probably find interesting new facets of our profession discussed there. Proz is a great resource for all kinds of information relating to the language services business, and I have never regretted paying my membership dues. Some will disagree, and have their own good reasons to do so. Luckily, you are free to make up your own mind!

You can get the best results by searching the Forum on rates or finding good clients in the "Money Matters" and "Getting established" sections.

Start here --> http://www.proz.com/?sp=forum&action=SearchForum&advanced=y

Good luck!
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Richard Foulkes (X)
Richard Foulkes (X)  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:51
German to English
+ ...
Because it's a crowdsourcing site, so that is its raison d'être... Apr 17, 2015

In other internet-based shocks, there are tweets on Twitter, photos on Instagram and information on Wikipedia...

Nowhere else on the internet are you a click away from more of your direct competitors. What do you think is going to happen?

Sorry for the sarcasm but the daily barrage of low rate threads drives me to distraction. Complaining about low rates on proz is a lot like complaining about the heat in a sauna.


 
Sheila Wilson
Sheila Wilson  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 11:51
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
Only paying members see those rates Apr 17, 2015

I agree with the others' comments but would add that a couple of years ago ProZ.com did go some way to avoid displaying low rates to everyone. Before, it was clear that low rates were being offered, and newbies (translators and clients alike) got the impression that such rates were "normal". Now, display of rates is restricted to those paying members who choose to see them.

 
Vadim Kadyrov
Vadim Kadyrov  Identity Verified
Ukraine
Local time: 13:51
English to Russian
+ ...
Have you seen the rates at Apr 17, 2015

oDesk and freelancer.com? You will reconsider your opinion about rates here.

[Edited at 2015-04-17 10:40 GMT]


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 12:51
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
These are not "ads" Apr 17, 2015

Sandesh Ghimire wrote:
I am wondering why Proz gives space to the ads with exploitative rates. I few days ago there was an ads which offered a rate of of less than $0.01 (details at [url removed on request of moderator])...


These are not "ads" but job offers. ProZ.com has no control over the rates indicated on job offers, and can only play an informative role, by e.g. allowing translators to see what the average rates in their language combinations are, so that they can decide for themselves whether they accept these jobs as-is, or try to negotiate higher rates.



[Edited at 2015-04-18 12:44 GMT]


 
writeaway
writeaway  Identity Verified
French to English
+ ...
You can also quote countless other translation crowd-sourcing sites Apr 17, 2015

Vadim Kadyrov wrote:

oDesk and freelancer.com? You will reconsider your opinion about rates here.

[Edited at 2015-04-17 10:40 GMT]


But once upon an ever so brief time, Proz seemed to be a cut above the rest. Now it's just one of the many.
And judging by the incredible number of daily low(er-est) rate job offers, outsourcers looking for translators who are willing to work for bottom-of-the-barrel rates seem to find what they are looking for on Proz.
Plus as Samuel pointed out, these are not 'ads' but actual 'job offers'. Best rates and CAT tools are usually the main requirements. That says it all imo.


 
brg (X)
brg (X)
Netherlands
I am not sure that this is a free market. Apr 17, 2015

Because once you have seen job offers of 0.01 (of whatever currency), then 0.04 seems heavenly well-paid. (whereas, in my country, 0.12-0.18 would seem reasonable).

If proz does not have any power over these low rates, then proz is the main factor of these low rates. Guilty by lack of activity.

And thus this market is not free but dictated, indirectly, in some sense.

Just my two cents.


 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:51
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Counter-intuitive Apr 17, 2015

houtberg wrote:
If proz does not have any power over these low rates, then proz is the main factor of these low rates. Guilty by lack of activity.
And thus this market is not free but dictated, indirectly, in some sense.

So if ProZ does nothing, and allows the market to take its course, then the market is not free.

But if ProZ were to interfere and regulate the market by forbidding some jobs, the market would then be free?

I'm having difficulty following that line of argument.

Dan


 
Fiona Grace Peterson
Fiona Grace Peterson  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 12:51
Italian to English
Free market Apr 17, 2015

In the words of the great Martin Luther King:

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."

Calling 0.01 the result of a "free market" is a bit of a cop-out, in my opinion. Feeding the bottom-feeders smacks of cowardice, of saying that "somewhere in the word, professional translation services are worth that little."

Aside from costs
... See more
In the words of the great Martin Luther King:

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."

Calling 0.01 the result of a "free market" is a bit of a cop-out, in my opinion. Feeding the bottom-feeders smacks of cowardice, of saying that "somewhere in the word, professional translation services are worth that little."

Aside from costs of living in country A or country B, the same effort is made the translate the words for tender. Why should professionals in Nepal be considered of lesser standing just because it costs less to live there than it does in Germany? One of the Western countries that does nothing to hep people in that country achieve higher standards, preferring to pillage them instead. Because it's worth their while economically.

Personally I'm tired of this "free market" BS. It's cowardice and a refusal to stand up for a position which would defend our profession and give it the prestige it deserves. ProZ could easily refuse to publish these ridiculous rates. But it won't. Because it goes against its own interests.
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Francis Murphy (X)
Francis Murphy (X)  Identity Verified
Canada
Local time: 08:51
French to English
Proz.com can do better than this ... Apr 17, 2015

These very low rate offers/solicitations are, IMHO, just an attempt to find the occasional translator who will take on a job at a ridiculously low price. The poster may expect to hear from two or three people out of many thousands who see the posting. As such, the posting has much in common with junk mail ads for pills and sex aids. As a paying member of Proz.com, I find these postings intrusive and they clutter up the legitimate landscape. They should be filtered out. Proz.com makes a big ... See more
These very low rate offers/solicitations are, IMHO, just an attempt to find the occasional translator who will take on a job at a ridiculously low price. The poster may expect to hear from two or three people out of many thousands who see the posting. As such, the posting has much in common with junk mail ads for pills and sex aids. As a paying member of Proz.com, I find these postings intrusive and they clutter up the legitimate landscape. They should be filtered out. Proz.com makes a big thing out of a translator's subcribing to the Proz.com "Professional Guidelines". We should expect the same professionalism from Proz.com management. All they need to do is apply some guidelines to the postings. This would show that Proz.com is solidly on the side of professional translators and professional agencies.Collapse


 
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:51
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
Free markets enable those translators... Apr 17, 2015

Fiona Peterson wrote:
Personally I'm tired of this "free market" BS. It's cowardice and a refusal to stand up for a position which would defend our profession and give it the prestige it deserves. ProZ could easily refuse to publish these ridiculous rates. But it won't. Because it goes against its own interests.

Agreed, it goes against ProZ's interests. If you or I want to do things differently, we are welcome to set up a rival site, just as ProZ's founders did. This is, after all, a free market...

If translation were not a free market, if it were heavily regulated in the way that the market for legal or accounting or medical services is regulated, then translators in China, or India, or Nepal would almost certainly be locked out of it. And so, incidentally, would be many other potential translators in developed countries. Do you still feel that the free market for translation is BS?

The barriers to entry are very low in translation. That means that the range of practitioner skill and experience is very wide, and there is less prestige attached to translation because "anybody can do it". Today, I'm a journalist. Tomorrow, I'm a translator.

That just doesn't happen for the professions mentioned above. If I haven't spent years acquiring very specific qualifications, I can't claim to be a doctor, barrister or chartered accountant without serious consequences. There are no free markets for such skills: they are carefully controlled. And more social prestige is attached to those professions - rightly in my (humble, of course) opinion.

Personally, for translation, I prefer less regulation. Indeed, if it were not for the free market in translation I wouldn't be working in the industry - and neither would those translators in Nepal.

Regards
Dan



[Edited at 2015-04-17 13:51 GMT]


 
Fiona Grace Peterson
Fiona Grace Peterson  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 12:51
Italian to English
@Dan Apr 17, 2015

My point is not that the market should be regulated, rather the position that ProZ chooses to occupy in it. Of course these rates exist; saying they don't is like sticking our heads in the sand.

What I consider unacceptable is the fact that a supposedly "professional" translation website passes off acceptance of these rates as "the dictates of a free market". I think it would be noble - and doable - to set a minimum rate below which it will not publish jobs, because s
... See more
My point is not that the market should be regulated, rather the position that ProZ chooses to occupy in it. Of course these rates exist; saying they don't is like sticking our heads in the sand.

What I consider unacceptable is the fact that a supposedly "professional" translation website passes off acceptance of these rates as "the dictates of a free market". I think it would be noble - and doable - to set a minimum rate below which it will not publish jobs, because such rates do not constitute what professional translation services are worth in ANY part of the world.

Not saying these rates don't exist. Simply don't pander to them, because that's tantamount to accepting them. And there are plenty of other sites willing to do just that.



[Edited at 2015-04-17 15:01 GMT]
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Recep Kurt
Recep Kurt  Identity Verified
Türkiye
Local time: 14:51
Member (2011)
English to Turkish
+ ...
Excellent idea! Apr 17, 2015

Fiona Peterson wrote:

...I think it would be noble - and doable - to set a minimum rate below which it will not publish jobs, because such rates do not constitute a what professional translation services are worth in ANY part of the world...


Excellent idea!


 
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Proz publishing the ads with exploitative rates







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