Poll: What usually makes you decline a translation job? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "What usually makes you decline a translation job?".
This poll was originally submitted by Khurram Shahzad. View the poll results »
| | | | Liena V. 
Latvia
Local time: 18:59
Member (2014)
French to Latvian
+ ...
All of those (and some more) have been reasons to decline jobs in the past, but I've only been working with regular or already familiar clients lately, so rates and subject matter are not an issue, also deadlines can almost always be negotiated and I only decline if I am really unavailable and there is no way to make it work.
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Some years ago, I would decline a job mostly because I was too busy. These days, it will be because I’m no data annotator…
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 17:59
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
I only get 2 types of job offers:
- Offers from my existing customers with whom I've agreed on decent rates (well over 95% of all the offers I receive).
- Random job offers through Proz from the usual suspects, that I simply ignore.
So if I decline a job, I only do that because I'm already too busy.
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| Subject area or the kind of job, then rates | Feb 4 |
Three or four years ago, the most frequent reason I turned down jobs was that I did not have time.
I could sometimes fit in a small job for an attractive client, but I tried to be realistic. Rushing harms quality, and I would not want to waste time discussing quality issues - I had to deliver a good job.
Hopeless rates could be a reason for refusing a job - I wrote regularly to tell agencies I was too busy working for clients who paid far more than they were offering.... See more Three or four years ago, the most frequent reason I turned down jobs was that I did not have time.
I could sometimes fit in a small job for an attractive client, but I tried to be realistic. Rushing harms quality, and I would not want to waste time discussing quality issues - I had to deliver a good job.
Hopeless rates could be a reason for refusing a job - I wrote regularly to tell agencies I was too busy working for clients who paid far more than they were offering.
Those were the days! People tried to write proper English, so I ignored cultural differences and minor errors; correct English was my job, and I could not do better myself in their language after all.
Now mails come offering so-called jobs in language pairs I do not mention in my profile - or whole lists of languages unrelated to mine. They seem to assume I can use specialist software that I do not have, and the work involved may be nothing to do with actual translation. I delete them immediately.
I do not always get as far as discussing rates, but mails 'looking for resources', or beginning with
'Dear,
Just to confirm your availability ... '
get the same treatment.
I still get an enquiry now and then in reasonable English, asking realistically for a price and time horizon, but the job is often a scanned document or a 'dead' PDF that AI cannot handle. It cannot handle certification either! ▲ Collapse
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Lieven Malaise wrote:
I only get 2 types of job offers:
- Offers from my existing customers with whom I've agreed on decent rates (well over 95% of all the offers I receive).
- Random job offers through Proz from the usual suspects, that I simply ignore.
So if I decline a job, I only do that because I'm already too busy.
I was about to say "Bad reputation", then I read this answer and I remembered I never decline those ridiculous spamming agencies. I simply ignore their emails.
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