| Pages in topic: [1 2 3 4] > | Too many secrets (What if there are too many translation agencies?) Thread poster: Mario Chavez (X)
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Mario Chavez (X) 
Local time: 06:00
English to Spanish
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This is a point-of-view posting asking for different viewpoints.
I wanted to bring up the topic of translation agencies (no one in particular, just the lot of them). For some reason, I couldn't post under “Translation agencies.”
A recent posting by a colleague in Germany regarding a schedule of discounts imposed by an agency got me thinking: What if there are too many translation agencies anyway?
This thought is not as crazy as it sounds. Case in... See more This is a point-of-view posting asking for different viewpoints.
I wanted to bring up the topic of translation agencies (no one in particular, just the lot of them). For some reason, I couldn't post under “Translation agencies.”
A recent posting by a colleague in Germany regarding a schedule of discounts imposed by an agency got me thinking: What if there are too many translation agencies anyway?
This thought is not as crazy as it sounds. Case in point, what I've seen happening among translators in Argentina, where I grew up. It seems that some translators do one of the following after receiving their BA diplomas as sworn translators:
1. Get an in-house translation job (a very small minority);
2. Teach languages;
3. Set up an agency with a former classmate;
4. Go out to work as a project manager for a local agency;
5. Start slowly translating for a number of clients.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with any of these approaches, but jumping to form a translation agency is not my favorite. For any of us with some years of full-time experience, we've contacted —and been contacted by— different kinds of agencies, big and small. After a while, we know whom we like to work with.
I'd rather point students to working as junior project managers for a number of advantages I'm not getting into at this time.
Let's say you agree with me that there are too many agencies. What things can we do about it?
By the way, the title of this posting, “Too many secrets,” is from a favorite movie of mine, Sneakers. Look it up.
[Subject edited by staff or moderator 2017-12-22 03:20 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Robert Forstag
United States
Local time: 06:00
Spanish to English
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| Too many agencies - and too many translators | Dec 19, 2017 |
Mario Chavez wrote:
This is a point-of-view posting asking for different viewpoints.
I wanted to bring up the topic of translation agencies (no one in particular, just the lot of them). For some reason, I couldn't post under “Translation agencies.”
A recent posting by a colleague in Germany regarding a schedule of discounts imposed by an agency got me thinking: What if there are too many translation agencies anyway?
This thought is not as crazy as it sounds.
Not crazy at all, at least to my mind. I would only add that there are too many translators as well!
More to the point, too much work being done by freelancers is going through agencies (agencies that seem to increasingly function as mere brokers). In a market oversaturated (i.e., in the major language pairs) with freelancers, this “translates” into depressed rates – and less work and income for those unwilling to “get with the program” and do rush and weekend jobs involving heavy formatting for low rates and payment in 60 days.
For the translation market to regain some semblance of sanity, the numbers of both translators and agencies need to fall drastically.
So what to do?
Individual translators need to find ways to procure work from direct clients. This is easier said than done, but some translators manage to do it. Another idea is for individual translators to form consortia and market their services through a dedicated website. On a more massive scale, there seems to be a place for an “agency-free” website along the lines of proz.com (but with restrictive membership requirements).
[Edited at 2017-12-20 11:21 GMT]
| | | | Kevin Fulton
United States
Local time: 06:00
German to English
| A surfeit of agencies | Dec 19, 2017 |
Mario Chavez wrote:
What if there are too many translation agencies anyway?
Of course there are too many agencies, and not many of them are making money relative to the size of the market.
The Internet and globalization have reduced the barriers to entry for translators and agencies alike. The result is increased competition among the bit players in the business, leading to lower, or at best, stagnant rates for most market segments, and, consequently lower profits. Even the giants in the industry have a net profit of about a cent per word (multiplied, of course by hundreds of millions of words per annum!).
Despite the spate of mergers in recent years (Multilingual News generally reports the larger mergers, not the business failures), the shake-out predicted a dozen years ago hasn't happened. As one agency fails or gets merged, new cockroaches materialize to feed on the remaining crumbs. Proz lists over 62,000 translation agencies. Even if 90% of such entries are no longer valid, there are simply too many players to provide sustainable revenue for more than a few hundred competing agencies.
There are no economic protections in an unregulated industry. In most countries, anyone with a computer and Internet connection can be a translator. Anyone who knows a half-dozen translators can set up an agency (there may be some registration barriers – where I live anyone wishing to operate as a business has to pay a small registration fee every few years).
I believe that it is still possible to make a sustainable living as a translator, but anyone contemplating starting an agency should consider psychological counseling.
| | | | Robert Forstag
United States
Local time: 06:00
Spanish to English
+ ...
Kevin Fulton wrote:
As one agency fails or gets merged, new cockroaches materialize to feed on the remaining crumbs.
An arresting image indeed....
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Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 06:00
English to Spanish
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TOPIC STARTER | A surfeit indeed | Dec 19, 2017 |
Kevin Fulton wrote: Mario Chavez wrote:
What if there are too many translation agencies anyway?
Of course there are too many agencies, and not many of them are making money relative to the size of the market. The Internet and globalization have reduced the barriers to entry for translators and agencies alike. The result is increased competition among the bit players in the business, leading to lower, or at best, stagnant rates for most market segments, and, consequently lower profits. Even the giants in the industry have a net profit of about a cent per word (multiplied, of course by hundreds of millions of words per annum!). Despite the spate of mergers in recent years (Multilingual News generally reports the larger mergers, not the business failures), the shake-out predicted a dozen years ago hasn't happened. As one agency fails or gets merged, new cockroaches materialize to feed on the remaining crumbs. Proz lists over 62,000 translation agencies. Even if 90% of such entries are no longer valid, there are simply too many players to provide sustainable revenue for more than a few hundred competing agencies. There are no economic protections in an unregulated industry. In most countries, anyone with a computer and Internet connection can be a translator. Anyone who knows a half-dozen translators can set up an agency (there may be some registration barriers – where I live anyone wishing to operate as a business has to pay a small registration fee every few years). I believe that it is still possible to make a sustainable living as a translator, but anyone contemplating starting an agency should consider psychological counseling.
Greetings from NE Ohio. I see you're a Déjà Vu X user as well.
Two of my favorite long-term solutions are painful ones: regulate the market and raise the bar on admission to translation courses or tracks within language or translation programs at colleges and universities. But even some of the translators suffering from the evident oversupply of translators and agencies will rabidly oppose regulation in any shape, way or form. Especially in our country (America).
There's at least an example of regulation: a colleague of mine, a Spanish conference interpreter and translator living near Toronto, Canada, is certified to perform translations. As I understand it, only a government-certified translator can perform on many instances in Canada.
Regarding the excess of translators: it's not always the translator's fault. Access to university education is too easy, and not just for language service careers. I believe a vicious circle has been created with the proliferation of translation courses. Those programs have a monetary incentive to overpromise and highlight the good parts of our profession while downplaying or ignoring the tough ones.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for university education and for translation programs that are responsibly designed but subject to some sort of quota system.
| | | | Jean Lachaud
United States
Local time: 06:00
English to French
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| Longevity of agencies | Dec 19, 2017 |
Several fellow translators beat with to-the-point answers.
It would be interesting, to say the least, to know the average longevity of all these agencies.
Me, I believe most of them are the illustration of the famous quote: "How to make a small fortune with a translation agency? Start with a big one."
| | | | ahartje
Portugal
Local time: 11:00
Member (2006)
German to Portuguese
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| What is going on? | Dec 19, 2017 |
What are you afraid of? How is it possible that someone with his university degree is calling for quotas now? How would you have felt 20 years ago, when you were anxious to start your university studies?
And what about the translators, who did not study translation or languages?
I am mainly working in the technical field and prefer to work with other technicians than a "language passioned" person, who believes that this passion helps her/him to understand a hydraulic s... See more What are you afraid of? How is it possible that someone with his university degree is calling for quotas now? How would you have felt 20 years ago, when you were anxious to start your university studies?
And what about the translators, who did not study translation or languages?
I am mainly working in the technical field and prefer to work with other technicians than a "language passioned" person, who believes that this passion helps her/him to understand a hydraulic system or an electric wiring scheme.
We certainly do not need more walls, restrictions, limits or quota! From my experience, clients know well to distinguish a bad from a good translator, so do a good job and you will succeed as translator...with/without a translation degree/passion or whatsoever. ▲ Collapse
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 06:00
Member (2008)
French to English
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Robert Forstag wrote:
So what to do?
Let the market take care of it. If there are too many agencies, some of them will go bust and disappear. If there are too many translators, the need to pay their bills will make them move on. For both agencies and translators, those who are able to find a profitable niche will prosper.
Same as in any sector.
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Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 06:00
English to Spanish
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TOPIC STARTER | Um, not the market solution again | Dec 19, 2017 |
John Fossey wrote: Robert Forstag wrote:
So what to do?
Let the market take care of it. If there are too many agencies, some of them will go bust and disappear. If there are too many translators, the need to pay their bills will make them move on. For both agencies and translators, those who are able to find a profitable niche will prosper. Same as in any sector.
I disagree. I'm a capitalist but a moderate one. Some areas of the economy can't be left to the market to work things out. I would dare estimate that the current state of affairs —lower translation rates— is in gran part due to the unregulated nature of the markets where translation agencies and translators operate. For a valid comparison, we can look at type designers. Before professional typesetting begat desktop publishing in the early 1990s thanks to cheaper PC clones, typeface (oh, okay, font) designers worked for independent font foundries, which produced a number of fonts for their corporate clients. Now that everyone with MS Office on Windows thinks they can just point and click on any font to make a document presentable, there are tens of thousands of fonts out there and fewer and fewer font foundries making decent money (along with the type designers).
Just like translating a document takes a certain sense of craft, a dab of artistry and creativity and a vast knowledge of languages and the world, designing a font (or a typeface) requires a great deal of education and training that goes beyond a piece of software with 200 fonts in it.
In some nations, notaries public are a highly respected profession, they make decent money and are as esteemed as lawyers. Why? Because their profession is regulated. You can't just grab a rubber stamp and call yourself a notary public (well, not you personally). Regulations exist in marketplaces for the protection of both the consumer and the provider of goods and services.
[Edited at 2017-12-20 00:12 GMT]
| | | | Mario Chavez (X)
Local time: 06:00
English to Spanish
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | I have an answer | Dec 19, 2017 |
ahartje wrote:
What are you afraid of? How is it possible that someone with his university degree is calling for quotas now? How would you have felt 20 years ago, when you were anxious to start your university studies?
And what about the translators, who did not study translation or languages?
I am mainly working in the technical field and prefer to work with other technicians than a "language passioned" person, who believes that this passion helps her/him to understand a hydraulic system or an electric wiring scheme.
We certainly do not need more walls, restrictions, limits or quota! From my experience, clients know well to distinguish a bad from a good translator, so do a good job and you will succeed as translator...with/without a translation degree/passion or whatsoever.
Twenty six years ago, I was in college studying to become a sworn translator. In 1984, when I enrolled in that School of Languages, the university had admission quotas and registration fees. Because the new government (after the junta governments of the 70s and 80s) wanted to appease college kids, they did away with the registration fees (university is free!) and the quotas (anybody with two legs and a mouth can now be admitted to college!). The result? Overcrowding, overworked professors, lower teaching quality. I saw it with my own eyes. I lived through it.
But me and my classmates were the last cohort to be admitted through an entrance exam (an exam which the university got rid of due to government and far left-leaning college unions). I passed the exam because I trained for it for months, so did my other classmates. Our professors told us from day one that “this is not a school for learning languages, but a school for sworn translators.” Like notaries public, sworn translators in many countries have to be certified by the provincial government in order to discharge their duties. The problem there is not regulation but an indiscriminate approach to college admission, with its long-term damaging results.
Just like not everybody who likes anatomy is cut out to become a doctor, not everyone can be an architect, a translator, X-ray technician or marine biologist. The first marketplace where competition should occur is the market of knowledge —college, or university.
| | | | | The market has failed | Dec 19, 2017 |
John Fossey wrote:
Let the market take care of it.
IMHO the market failed to do so. As free, online, immediate machine translation evolved, I expected it to cleanse the marketplace from lo-grade amateur translators. Why would anyone pay to have something that can be obtained for free?
No point in detailing my sources here, but I have reason to believe that translation done for HALF of Proz's average community rates are quality-wise equivalent to Google Translate's raw output. And yet there are agencies offering to pay less than that for human translation!
The only reasonable explanation that occurs to me is that they want to have someone to BLAME for the poor quality, and are willing to pay - albeit little - for this privilege.
John Fossey wrote:
If there are too many agencies, some of them will go bust and disappear.
The reason why there are still too many agencies in this deregulated market is that, too often, one agency outsources to another, which outsources to a third one, and so on. The person actually doing the job is paid with the crumbles that remain after each of those agencies in the chain of supply has munched on what the oblivious end-client has paid.
I call them file-pushers. They merely push files back-and-forth, making a profit on it.
Years ago I exchanged a few e-mails with a very pleasant gentlemen in India, who admitted to be a file pusher. He wrote in horrible English, however he managed to explain me his setup. He merely routed translation jobs of all kinds from one translation agency to another, and made a US half-cent per word profit on these. He said he never opened any files, and the sheer volume he handled enabled him to afford a quite enviable lifestyle in his country.
Does he count as an agency? There must be hundreds or thousands like him.
John Fossey wrote:
If there are too many translators, the need to pay their bills will make them move on. For both agencies and translators, those who are able to find a profitable niche will prosper.
How can an end-client differentiate a translator from a bilingual individual who "makes translations now and then", and nonetheless poses as a translator on Proz and similar portals? A few of them have a one-page web site too.
Al they'll know about the translation is how much it will cost. In too many cases, they'll only know the translation they received was awful after they become the laughing stock of the market it was intended for in social media.
[Edited at 2017-12-20 09:52 GMT]
| | | | Daniel Frisano
Italy
Local time: 12:00
Member (2008)
English to Italian
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I swear this is the first time in my life that I see a group of providers wondering if there are too many clients in the market.
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Robert Forstag wrote:
Another idea is for individual translators to form consortia and market their services through a dedicated website. On a more massive scale, there seems to be a place for an “agency-free” website along the lines of proz.com (but with restrictive membership requirements).
While this in theory should be feasible, in reality there would have to be someone coordinating work at this website service, since a vast majority of direct customers, or at least the interesting, higher-volume ones, will need multilingual services. I entirely agree though that a market gap exists for websites to join together groups of good-quality translators.
| | | | | Poor management as a translator and as an agency | Dec 20, 2017 |
What I have seen often is translators that fail to manage their business correctly and keep working for bad payers and unreliable small agencies. At one point in time, they begin to feel cheated and decide that they will now become agencies and make some money out of squeezing other translators, without improving their management and negotiation skills. As a result, some markets have an outrageous number of agencies that pay atrocious rates and drive more translators to become more awful agencie... See more What I have seen often is translators that fail to manage their business correctly and keep working for bad payers and unreliable small agencies. At one point in time, they begin to feel cheated and decide that they will now become agencies and make some money out of squeezing other translators, without improving their management and negotiation skills. As a result, some markets have an outrageous number of agencies that pay atrocious rates and drive more translators to become more awful agencies.
At some point in time, translators have to learn to stop working for bad payers and unreliable little agencies in favour of professional agencies that have better management and negotiation skills and are capable of achieving better rates from customers and better pay for translators. We would be far better off with more healthy, professional agencies, and more quality-conscious translators that feel pride in what they do. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Robert Forstag
United States
Local time: 06:00
Spanish to English
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| An "agency-free website" would have to start with just one language combination. | Dec 20, 2017 |
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT wrote: Robert Forstag wrote:
Another idea is for individual translators to form consortia and market their services through a dedicated website. On a more massive scale, there seems to be a place for an “agency-free” website along the lines of proz.com (but with restrictive membership requirements). While this in theory should be feasible, in reality there would have to be someone coordinating work at this website service, since a vast majority of direct customers, or at least the interesting, higher-volume ones, will need multilingual services. I entirely agree though that a market gap exists for websites to join together groups of good-quality translators.
Thank you for your comments, Tomás.
The kind of website that I have in mind would have to start with just one combination (i.e., in both directions). After gaining a certain footing, it could then expand to other language combinations.
For the kinds of multilingual jobs that you refer to, I think that big agencies fit the bill just fine (at least for now).
It is the other 97% or so of translation jobs that the agency model really doesn't seem to serve all that well - and for which there exists an opening for a different kind of model.
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