Pitfalls of the translation business

Pitfalls of the translation business
-When a translator to whom you subcontract a project does a poor job and refuses to either refund his payment or revise his work
-When the client who bought such work complains several months later, demanding a refund, even though that is not covered under terms of the correction policy
-Late payments: sometimes clients do not pay within the two-week terms or send a down payment almost a day before translation project is completed; meanwhile you have to dig into your own company pocket to pay the translator. Sometimes clients pay a month late.
-Calculating net income before tax time, and realizing your expenses have decreased your profits again this year
-Waiting for 30 pages to print up on Fax machine, then the client bails out because he can’t afford the pay for the translation
-Waiting all day to set up a translation project, then the secretary or office worker who has set up the translation purchase for his company has delayed project to shop around for lower prices, a cheaper translator or agency
-Spending $400 on Google Adwords, and not one click converts to a conversion to sale
-Under-quoting a project, then having it accepted, and then realizing you would only earn a 1% profit margin
-Over-quoting on a project and losing it, even though you could have still earned $600 at least if you reduced the total
-Spending all day in the office waiting around for client calls or emails when the weather is great and getting nothing , then on the weekend having to work on a rush project, while the weather is even better and all your friends are out having fun.
-The isolation of staying in the office, communicating with people via email, phone and fax, seeing documents and invoices but not real human faces
-Strain on the eyes and neck from moving them from dictionary to computer screen to printed out copy of source text
-Strain on fingers, wrists, neck and shoulders from typing all day
-The client doesn’t give correct address to send translation and you have to resend it at post office
-Having to revise and correct a certified translation and have it notarized and mailed again
-When an interpreter says he is “certified” and the court rejects his invalid or expired interpreter certification card
-Getting ripped off by Russian clients in Los Angeles
-Having such clients go past you directly to translator or interpreter, paying him or her, and not paying your agency
-When translators steal your clients , eventually, and there is nothing you can do about it
-When clients call up and don’t have either Internet or your email address or anyway to contact you or send translations or receive your mailing address; because someone jotted down your agency number and that is the only form of contact they have with your agency
-When you quote 20% standard below translation industry rates and theclient still complains that it is too expensive
-When a client starts using a non-native speaker to do their translations because you raised your rates 5% after two years..
-You lose a $20,000 project from long-time client because you raised your rates a small fraction after 3 years…and they expect the same rates as before….

You know you're a translator when….(a group on Facebook)

1- You get the same empty stare after answering the question "What do you do?" or "What do you study?"

2- People tell you "So... Translator... You just study a foreign language? You work as a teacher, right?"

3- People ask you how to say something in a different language, because a translator is supposed to have learnt the whole dictionary by heart.

4- You admit you suck at maths.

5- You know how to use Trados, Wordfast, etc.

6- Sleeping is not as important as deadlines.

7- You realize that you can't avoid learning new things all the time with each text you translate.

8- You know Alicia Zorrilla.

9- You learn to loathe gerunds and false friends.

10- You're aware of issues such as gender and political correctness, which no one around you seems to care about.

11- You frequently have nightmares in which you're chased by Saussure, Chomsky, Halliday or Pinker.

12- You find certain words, expressions or translations utterly amusing... Yes, you laugh at words.

13- You have fun translating proverbs or idioms literally, such as "putting was the goose".

14- You finally learn how to use proper punctuation.

15- You find yourself looking up a word in the dictionary and you know you've already looked it up a thousand times before in your life.

16- You have run out of insults because this peculiar word seems to be nowhere in the world, but in the text you need to translate.

17- You find out how much money you've spent in books or photocopies and you realize you could be a millionaire if you had saved up all that money.

18- You can remember making weird noises to yourself, just because you were practicing your Lenis Voiced Dental Fricative.

19- You know that the same meaning is hidden in these two sentences: "It's rude to point" and "Deixis is rude".

20- You know that the Spanish words "interface" and "interfaz" are not synonyms.

21- You can hold a coherent conversation with a colleague about derivational morphology or passive and middle voice.

22- You can list all the differences between unergative and unaccusative verbs, and you know the difference between a creole and a pidgin.

23- You know the difference between PRO and traces, and ECM and subject/object control verbs.

24- You know the different countless types of Spanish polysemic "se".

25- Drawing trees is the worst thing that can ever happen to you, because it no longer means pencils, branches and leaves, but subject, tense phrase and wh- movement.

26- You no longer distinguish weekends from the other days of the week, since weekends are no longer equated to leisure time, relaxation, happiness and glory.

27- You know how useless the RAE dictionary is, but you learn to cope with it.

28- You've got so used to working on your own, that sometimes you think you have a phobia for crowds.

29- You've resorted so many times to all techniques for keeping you awake for hours, that you've become an expert on the caffeine content of ALL drinks.

30- It doesn't matter how hard you try to achieve the best translation, there's always going to be someone who will disagree and would suggest changing absolutely everything.

31- You must refrain yourself from slapping people on their faces when you hear them producing horrible ungrammatical sentences.

32- You find yourself surrounded by too many women and few men.

33- You're starting a band called "Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously", and your hit song is "I'm a lonely NP".