| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | Poll: What are the main causes of stress in your job as a translator? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Two quick polls in a row on the same subject. What's going on?
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To me, translation is a low-stress occupation. All the things listed by the poll author are my conscious choice. One source of mild stress used to be a consistently poor quality of the translations I received for editing/proofreading, so I stopped doing that altogether. By the same token, I never do post-editing. Other than that, well, maybe some clients' and colleagues' misconceptions about quality - but I won't cry foul about that anymore.
[Edited at 2022-05-30 18:59 GMT]
| | | | | Dealing with clients | May 30, 2022 |
with a certain sort of clients.
Managers of one-off XXSmall super-secret over-confidential projects are true walking stress. They wander in the dark, and the linguistic dark is the last of their many 'twilights'.
[Edited at 2022-05-30 09:14 GMT]
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| Other translators | May 30, 2022 |
Right now, I'd say dealing with previous translations is the most stressful part of my job.
Even on the rare occasions that they're any good, they mean a lot of extra work tying everything in.
Today, I'm asking myself yet again why I still choose to fill gaps with bits and bobs from agencies that send a memory full of incorrect and inconsistent matches, resulting in unexpected and unpaid extra work. Aaaaaargh!
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:45
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Non-payers and scanned PDFs or PDFs with tables etc. | May 30, 2022 |
Non-payers: it's stressful to find out that after you've done a translation, the client who asked you to do it is trying to not pay. I have a way of forcing them to pay, and in the end they always do; but it's an unnecessary added stress to my life.
Scanned PDFs or PDFs with tables etc.. In this case the stress comes not at the end but at the beginning, before I even accept a job and begin the translation. With the client waiting, I have to quickly assess whether I'll be abl... See more Non-payers: it's stressful to find out that after you've done a translation, the client who asked you to do it is trying to not pay. I have a way of forcing them to pay, and in the end they always do; but it's an unnecessary added stress to my life.
Scanned PDFs or PDFs with tables etc.. In this case the stress comes not at the end but at the beginning, before I even accept a job and begin the translation. With the client waiting, I have to quickly assess whether I'll be able to convert the PDF they sent me into a usable Word file. If I can't, I then have to tell the client I can only do the translation if they provide the conversion. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. This is all stressful because it takes a lot of time without even knowing if the job will go ahead or not. ▲ Collapse
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Difficult and/or boring texts.
| | | | | Ignorant Clients Who Make Unreasonable Requests/Emotionally Unbalanced Clients | May 30, 2022 |
I get extremely annoyed when a prospective client asks for "free" samples of umpteen words, which could take as long as a day to produce, esp. since I have translated a large number of books for other clients anyway. My attitude is "just contact my previous clients", since more than a few of them are listed on my CV anyway. Other than that, a woman who was acting as a PM for a publishing company hired me to do two book translations. She told me how great the first one I did for them was, but whe... See more I get extremely annoyed when a prospective client asks for "free" samples of umpteen words, which could take as long as a day to produce, esp. since I have translated a large number of books for other clients anyway. My attitude is "just contact my previous clients", since more than a few of them are listed on my CV anyway. Other than that, a woman who was acting as a PM for a publishing company hired me to do two book translations. She told me how great the first one I did for them was, but when I was about three-fourths of the way through the second one, all of a sudden, right out of the blue, she showed up in my inbox, even though I hadn't been in contact with her for more than a few weeks, and sounded like she was going off on some kind of totally psychotic (maybe she was) rant, and like a total screwball. But I figured she was trying to get me to react in a way that could justify her not paying me. Sure enough, after I submitted the second translation, there were other red flags that she was going to try to duck out of paying me. I didn't respond to any of that, since I had moved on to my next project and didn't have time for such nonsense. And as far as I'm concerned, I never do. After waiting about a month, after which I still hadn't been paid for the second book (I already had received payment for the first), I was fortunate enough to find the general address of the publishing company itself. I wrote to them and they, unlike that PM they hired, proved to be quite ethical, and I had the money in my bank account before the week was out.
[Edited at 2022-05-30 14:51 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-05-30 14:54 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-05-30 14:56 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-05-30 14:58 GMT]
[Edited at 2022-05-30 17:57 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Richard Jenkins 
Brazil
Local time: 09:45
Member (2006)
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Funnily enough, I have just received payment from a very difficult customer that I have decided not to work for again. It's simply not worth it.
Imagine doing work at the beginning of March, but not even receiving a purchase order for this work until the end of May and therefore not being able to invoice or plan for payment. Luckily, I did get paid, so no harm done, but when a customer is this disorganized, my advice is to dump them. Find customers that respect your payment requirem... See more Funnily enough, I have just received payment from a very difficult customer that I have decided not to work for again. It's simply not worth it.
Imagine doing work at the beginning of March, but not even receiving a purchase order for this work until the end of May and therefore not being able to invoice or plan for payment. Luckily, I did get paid, so no harm done, but when a customer is this disorganized, my advice is to dump them. Find customers that respect your payment requirements and don't keep you hanging on until it suits them. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 13:45
French to English
Now that I only work with decent clients who know how long it takes and pay well and promptly, the main cause of stress for me is the very rare hiatus without any work. I know that more translations will come, but I can't help but think nobody loves me any more, and panic and start wondering if I should have made myself a website after all.
| | | | Sadek_A
Local time: 16:45
English to Arabic
+ ...
| Makeover required! | May 30, 2022 |
The whole current, flawed you-translator-take-all-the-risks-while-I-sail-unharmed freelancing model, where the "I" stands for any person/entity not appreciating (neither money- nor health-wise) translator's value in their success.
| | | | Chié_JP
Japan
Local time: 21:45
Member (2013)
English to Japanese
+ ...
| replacement with post edit request | May 30, 2022 |
It is truly painful to deal with MT written by real half-wits (sorry for strong word), humans are at least more sensible even if they make mistakes. It can harm my skill by making compromise all day, so if there are no other job than MT I will certainly quit my career. All other pains like paperwork and multi tasking can be mitigaed, but I simply can not stand even making very small interaction with idiot MT. I always asked for intellectual job when becoming a linguist and hoped to grow that ski... See more It is truly painful to deal with MT written by real half-wits (sorry for strong word), humans are at least more sensible even if they make mistakes. It can harm my skill by making compromise all day, so if there are no other job than MT I will certainly quit my career. All other pains like paperwork and multi tasking can be mitigaed, but I simply can not stand even making very small interaction with idiot MT. I always asked for intellectual job when becoming a linguist and hoped to grow that skill. ▲ Collapse
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| Unexpected labour | May 31, 2022 |
Tom in London wrote:
Scanned PDFs or PDFs with tables etc..
Taking Tom's point a little further, when I find myself spending longer on the reformatting of a single complex table (i.e. recreating it from scratch) than on the entire translation, and as a consequence my whole work schedule is thrown off.
That doesn't happen very often, but I have one of those jobs right now. I told the client in advance I would be charging extra for the formatting, but it's not going to be enough to cover the time involved.
Oh well.
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 13:45
Spanish to English
+ ...
Mainly high workload, but not just juggling the work to meet deadlines. In my case, it's more about achieving a work-life balance, which is often difficult when life gets in the way.
| | | | | Payment delays | May 31, 2022 |
Unstable workload, multitasking and tight deadlines are manageable, but having to give somebody a hard time to receive your past-due hard-earned money is infuriating. Some people think deadlines are for translators only. Being ignored and having to remind about the same thing 2-3 times to get a result is also very irritating.
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