I have translated many hundreds of thousand words for TransPerfect over the course of several years. As evidenced by my ever-increasing rates and TransPerfect’s continued patronage during that time, I understand that mine was quality work.
I worked on a split job in September 2009, for which I was paid in November of 2009. Incidentally, if you do quality work, split jobs are almost never worth the hassle. If one of your fellow translators performs poorly, the end client will often have a bad feeling about the entire job. He or she may not even be told it was split.
In January of 2010, a person with whom I had never communicated before sent an email to me which said, in part:
“Unfortunately the client has come back with some negative feedback and is now refusing to pay his invoice. We will therefore need to cancel yoru [sic] invoice for this job. I understand it is both an unfortunate and exceptional situation but we are looking to salvage the relationship and ensure that we continue receiving work from this client.”
Subtext: The relationship with me be damned. Anyway, I figured that since the invoice was already paid, it was an internal accounting matter that was not my concern.
In April and May of 2011, I translated and billed TransPerfect for two jobs, which were accepted and forwarded to the client without complaint. The invoices were not paid. According to sources at the company, these new invoices were being offset against the old cancelled invoice from 2009. Using what is apparently the terminology used in-house for this behavior, a project manager explained that TransPerfect was “docking my pay.”
Translators beware. TransPerfect will treat you variably as an independent contractor or an employee, depending on how it suits the company’s needs in any given situation.
Coda: I still receive emails from TransPerfect project managers begging for my assistance with jobs that are difficult to place. After the stink I’ve raised with people at various levels of the company regarding the ongoing lack of payment, I can’t believe I’m not banned. Either TransPerfect is really desperate for quality translators, or their internal communications system is completely ineffective.
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