Incompetent client employees vs. common sense - agree to change, argue your point, or do both? Thread poster: Adieu
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Adieu 
Ukrainian to English
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A PM today forwarded me some condescending feedback from a client in Eastern Europe who was clearly under the impression that "study" was coarse US English colloquial slang and demanded changes.
I politely sent the PM some screenshots with search result numbers and examples on the US FDA site (since the target language was US English and the topic was clinical trials) and the PM appeared to agree with me, but wanted the changes made anyway.
What would you do?
... See more A PM today forwarded me some condescending feedback from a client in Eastern Europe who was clearly under the impression that "study" was coarse US English colloquial slang and demanded changes.
I politely sent the PM some screenshots with search result numbers and examples on the US FDA site (since the target language was US English and the topic was clinical trials) and the PM appeared to agree with me, but wanted the changes made anyway.
What would you do?
Apologize and act like you messed up?
Just agree halfheartedly without the initial argument?
Argue your point but do as asked? (As I did)
Argue more?
Something else?
Also, what's the goal here? The "truth"? Convincing the PM that you were actually competent the first time around, but also willing to follow any kind of instruction? Or rather to show that you're a minimal-hassle service provider who just says "yes sir sorry sir"?
[Edited at 2021-11-19 11:40 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 05:35
Member (2008)
Italian to English
| Adieu
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | This one is more complex | Nov 19, 2021 |
I do several language pairs through the middleman. This pair has the least business and the pushiest end clients. I only accept it when I have nothing better to do or it is a really juicy job.
I've already accumulated quite a list of fun demands from them.
My personal favorite is their misconception on how addresses work:
Me/"wrong": 123 Abc St., City 45678, Country
Their "truth": 123, Abc Str., 45678, City, Country
And you'd ASSUM... See more I do several language pairs through the middleman. This pair has the least business and the pushiest end clients. I only accept it when I have nothing better to do or it is a really juicy job.
I've already accumulated quite a list of fun demands from them.
My personal favorite is their misconception on how addresses work:
Me/"wrong": 123 Abc St., City 45678, Country
Their "truth": 123, Abc Str., 45678, City, Country
And you'd ASSUME that this would be based on their national format or their recipient's national format, but NO, they don't use extra commas in their country and don't correspond with any Germans at "Strasse" addresses.
[Edited at 2021-11-19 12:00 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Have you considered… | Nov 19, 2021 |
… extrapolating this to a global trend? 😉
I’d do two rounds of telling them they’re wrong, then give them what they want if it’s not incorrect and too much work, and then cross them off my Xmas card list.
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It's so frustrating. I'm speaking from experience. There's the client who is going to pay you and there's also your professional pride. Not to mention your reputation. Put the accent on the term "professional". This is going to be easier said than done, but you need to keep that word uppermost in your mind. What is happening might feel like a personal slight but it's not. When the heat diminishes, it is easier to situate this event firmly into its professional context.
The agent is... See more It's so frustrating. I'm speaking from experience. There's the client who is going to pay you and there's also your professional pride. Not to mention your reputation. Put the accent on the term "professional". This is going to be easier said than done, but you need to keep that word uppermost in your mind. What is happening might feel like a personal slight but it's not. When the heat diminishes, it is easier to situate this event firmly into its professional context.
The agent is indeed in the middle. Remember that is precisely their job and their problem. Then there is the end-client who the agent wishes to satisfy. I think it helps to bear in mind that once you have supplied your work, you already have no control over how it might be worked and re-worked beyond recognition anyway. A great argument for anonymity, by the way. Had that happen too. Bad s***!
So, what did I do? To start with, I tried to meet the end-client's request. It boiled down to Frenchifying a text I had translated from French and re-injecting all the standard false friends, the classic mistakes that even good non-native speakers get wrong and a host of other structural and terminological choices, ones that no native speaker would ever make. The tell-tail signs that stand out a mile off. It was a five-page job. By the end of the first page, I had already spent tons of extra time on it and it hurt. I was quite busy at the time.
I finally screwed my Shakespearian courage to the sticking ground (reference, reference ) and sent a page and a quarter back to agency. With a multicolour set of revision marks and more bubble comments than Elon Musk even hope to pay for if he wanted to, I said that this Frenchification revision would be undertaken with pleasure on the following terms:
- my normal hourly rate would be applied (pointing to the actual cost already run up in terms of time)
- each hour started would be invoiced in full
- that payment would be immediately forthcoming
- I would receive an undertaking from the agency that my name would never, ever, be connected to this "translation".
On the translation's outward journey, the agency had had the piece proofread in-house by a native speaker before my translation had been sent. On its return flight, it was simply ping-ponged to me, unfettered and un-contested. This meant that the agency was not supporting its proofreader's opinion either. The agency had been pushing me to reduced my rates.
I only received a couple more jobs from them and I never heard from them again.
I was paid fairly sharply for the work done, so they were clear on that and always had been. However, this episode showed that the agency was not really acting in a middle neutral position but cow-towing to clients to the extent that they would happily tarnish my reputation rather than theirs. It was time we ceased working together.
I sometimes wonder what the native French-speaking high-ranking government official had seriously thought about the crap they wished me to produce. They had also sneaked in 100 or so extra words and significantly altered parts of the text too, so that really was cheating. Naughty, naughty!
[Edited at 2021-11-19 14:47 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Stand your ground | Nov 20, 2021 |
Adieu wrote:
What would you do?
"Dear PM,
"Your client is wrong. I am right. That's what you pay me for.
"If you wish to change that arrangement, please let me have your detailed proposal. ..."
Many years ago I had a first-time direct client who gave the text I'd worked on - a mixture of translation and editing, as I recall - to a German colleague to check. Apparently, the German found a number of possible errors, including incorrect usage of the definite article, "the". (Yes, really.)
I suggested to the client, who seemed like a reasonable bloke otherwise, that if he wasn't satisfied, he shouldn't pay me for the work, and that he should send future Greek-English translation jobs to his pet German and not bother me again.
Profuse apologies followed, and out of that unpromising start a solid professional relationship developed, along with a personal friendship that has lasted until today.
| | | | Kay Denney
France
Local time: 06:35
French to English
My strategy is to compromise.
I produce a comparison of my text and their modified one, and for each modification flagged, I add in a comment.
I seek out a couple of instances where I really don't care that they've subbed in a synonym and I add a comment to the effect that "this is merely a synonym without any significant difference in meaning (with links to dictionary definitions), you can do what you like".
I try to find one fairly near the beginning of the text, so that th... See more My strategy is to compromise.
I produce a comparison of my text and their modified one, and for each modification flagged, I add in a comment.
I seek out a couple of instances where I really don't care that they've subbed in a synonym and I add a comment to the effect that "this is merely a synonym without any significant difference in meaning (with links to dictionary definitions), you can do what you like".
I try to find one fairly near the beginning of the text, so that they can quickly see that I'm not just determined to be right at all costs.
I find that when you concede a few minor points, they're all the more prepared to listen to your arguments for the points that you don't want to concede.
I give links to back up everything I say. When it's a matter of usage rather than terminology, I include screenshots of my googling to show that the expression I've used is far more common than the one they want, which only crops up in the English page of French websites.
It takes time - if the document is more than three pages long, I'll only do it for the first three pages, although I might also flag serious mistakes that have been introduced later in the text.
I find that it's well worth taking the time: you show that you take their comments seriously, that you really do want the text to be as well-written as possible. It might not be worth my while to spend that much time on that text, but I'm doing it with a view to fostering a trusting long-term business relationship. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Something else | Nov 20, 2021 |
Adieu wrote:
What would you do?
Apologize and act like you messed up?
Just agree halfheartedly without the initial argument?
Argue your point but do as asked? (As I did)
Argue more?
Something else?
[Edited at 2021-11-19 11:40 GMT]
Something else.
A (non-native) PM once, who checked my translation, insisted that I should "translate" the word "school". Funny thing is that the Dutch word for "school" is ......... "school". We invented the word!
So, if what I sent them is correct, I tell them they can make the change(s) themselves. I was not hired to deliver messy translations.
[Edited at 2021-11-20 15:01 GMT]
[Edited at 2021-11-20 15:02 GMT]
[Edited at 2021-11-20 15:16 GMT]
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Peter Motte
Belgium
Local time: 06:35
Member (2009)
English to Dutch
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Adieu wrote:
I do several language pairs through the middleman. This pair has the least business and the pushiest end clients. I only accept it when I have nothing better to do or it is a really juicy job.
I've already accumulated quite a list of fun demands from them.
My personal favorite is their misconception on how addresses work:
Me/"wrong": 123 Abc St., City 45678, Country
Their "truth": 123, Abc Str., 45678, City, Country
And you'd ASSUME that this would be based on their national format or their recipient's national format, but NO, they don't use extra commas in their country and don't correspond with any Germans at "Strasse" addresses.
It might have to do with parsing rules in databases, but they obvioulsy didn't state that.
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