Poll: Are you successful when it comes to translation tests for a potential new project/collaboration? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Are you successful when it comes to translation tests for a potential new project/collaboration?".
View the poll results »
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 12:20
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
I'm not often asked to perform translation tests since I work mostly for long-standing customers. But until now I have passed all the tests I have been asked to do.
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I haven’t been asked to do a translation test for a long time, but I think I have passed all the translation tests I have done over the years. Now and then, though I have received an e-mail saying that my test was approved, work never materialized. Some translation tests seem to be doomed to the same fate as NDAs. I see these tests as a good investment and they go both ways: the way it is handled is usually a good indicator of how organized the potential client is….
| | | | Iulia Parvu 
United Kingdom
Local time: 11:20
Member (2022)
English to Romanian
+ ...
Most clients don't come back with a reply regarding the tests, but I guess that's caused by my fees, not the quality of the translation. And I never follow up on those conversations because the lack of response gives me an idea of how that client works.
However, no one has gotten back to say I failed.
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Usually. I did a test for one oof my former employers and failed. Some prospective clients use a model translation and depend on that model to test the translation. My favorite client gave a text to translate and paid me for it.
| | | | Ventnai
Spain
Local time: 12:20
German to English
+ ...
I think some agencies go around collecting them. The last time, I gave an agency all my information, CV and rates and they asked me to do a test translation. I did it but they came back and said it was good but asked if I would consider dropping my rates to receive a greater volume of work. I declined.
| | | | Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 13:20
Member
English to Turkish
| Depends on the evaluator | Feb 21 |
In my language pair, where the jobs are far and few between (talking about European translation market) and the agencies are using their Turkish freelance translators as evaluators instead of relying on the impartial judgment of a third party who's supposed to be free of financial conflict of interest, you're totally at the mercy of the evaluator. If he's a complete c***, who doesn't want to share the precious agency jobs with a newcomer, you have no way of passing the test even if you've done a... See more In my language pair, where the jobs are far and few between (talking about European translation market) and the agencies are using their Turkish freelance translators as evaluators instead of relying on the impartial judgment of a third party who's supposed to be free of financial conflict of interest, you're totally at the mercy of the evaluator. If he's a complete c***, who doesn't want to share the precious agency jobs with a newcomer, you have no way of passing the test even if you've done an excellent work. He would just strike out your carefully crafted sentences, filling the text with track changes, explaining that "'north of the border' is translated too literally, it's meant to be Scotland as it is located north of England. Terrible, terrible translation!", and the agency will take his word for it. Even if you've demonstrated his malicious intent and managed to convince the vendor manager that the evaluator was too harsh on you, and finally completed the onboarding process, you'll never hear from that agency again as your competence has already been called into question.
[Edited at 2024-02-21 07:16 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 12:20
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Baran Keki wrote:
In my language pair, where the jobs are far and few between (talking about European translation market) and the agencies are using their Turkish freelance translators as evaluators instead of relying on the impartial judgment of a third party who's supposed to be free of financial conflict of interest, you're totally at the mercy of the evaluator. If he's a complete c***, who doesn't want to share the precious agency jobs with a newcomer, you have no way of passing the test even if you've done an excellent work. He would just strike out your carefully crafted sentences, filling the text with track changes, explaining that "'north of the border' is translated too literally, it's meant to be Scotland as it is located north of England. Terrible, terrible translation!", and the agency will take his word for it. Even if you've demonstrated his malicious intent and managed to convince the vendor manager that the evaluator was too harsh on you, and finally completed the onboarding process, you'll never hear from that agency again as your competence has already been called into question.
[Edited at 2024-02-21 07:16 GMT]
True with agencies. I did the same thing with a direct client’s paid test, not using the word “malicious”, but explaining the checker just reworded most of my sentences into fully synonymous sentences, when none of it was necessary or called for. The client (direct client) came back and informed me that I was right and they had ditched the proofreader.
This kind of scenario/outcome could never happen with agencies and their proofreading processes. They just find a peanut proofreader (0.01) they know nothing about and follow their word.
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Baran Keki
Türkiye
Local time: 13:20
Member
English to Turkish
Lingua 5B wrote:
True with agencies.
It seems I misread the question.
| | | | Luis M. Sosa
Ecuador
Local time: 05:20
Member (2018)
English to Spanish
+ ...
| Some test are paid | Feb 21 |
Some tests are paid, some others not. Although translation test are fun to some extent (specially if they are paid), I have now come to think that some outfits use them to train/improve/strengthen their machine translators/LLMs.
| | | | | Pretty successful, but I never got a chance to answer | Feb 22 |
These surveys just don't respond, so I don't get to see the overall breakdown. Tests for bids are a special case because the award usually still goes to the lowest bidder so I can't guarantee my test (the test I've done for my company) will take the prize, and still they did a couple of times. Talking about tests for collaboration, I think I've passed them successfully over 90% of the time. When I get to review other people's tests, most of the time all I need to do to illustrate their mistakes ... See more These surveys just don't respond, so I don't get to see the overall breakdown. Tests for bids are a special case because the award usually still goes to the lowest bidder so I can't guarantee my test (the test I've done for my company) will take the prize, and still they did a couple of times. Talking about tests for collaboration, I think I've passed them successfully over 90% of the time. When I get to review other people's tests, most of the time all I need to do to illustrate their mistakes is to cite passages from my own translations for the same test I passed long ago, word for word: those who fail either never reply or reply saying things like they have nothing to counter it with (as did one guy just lately) ▲ Collapse
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