Charlie Bavington

Professional French to English Translator - Business and I.T.

Bringing a pragmatic eye to meeting your needs

Archive for the ‘agencies’ Category

A recent poll on LinkedIn asked if we check the reputation of a potential client before we respond, & I replied that I did not. For me, it is a question of spending time & effort where & when it’s needed. My usual first response to an unsolicited approach is positive but non-committal.The detail depends […]

Monday, January 16th, 2023 at 18:04 | Comments Off on Diligence on new clients
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This year thus far appears to be the year, in some quarters, of getting mighty indignant about the evils of post-editing machine translation (PEMT). Might as well stick my oar in. It’s been a while. There seem to be two basic angles of attack employed by those getting their knickers in a twist about PEMT. […]

Friday, June 26th, 2015 at 10:43 | 12 comments
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A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted that “Last year, agency began introducing very tight deadlines. Last week, agency sent mass email about increase in missed deadlines. Coincidence?”.  That is only half the story. I gather this agency has quite ambitious plans for expansion.  One tactic it seems to have adopted in the last year […]

Wednesday, November 5th, 2014 at 00:41 | 9 comments
Categories: agencies, business
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Like many (most?) of us, I tend to, at the very least, treat email not addressed to me personally as a low priority, shall we say. Fortunately, my email client enables me to see a) the first few words of the message, so I can read the “Dear xxxxx” bit, and b) whether the email […]

Tuesday, May 20th, 2014 at 09:17 | 3 comments
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I was recently led to reflect on my first steps in finding clients. In the case in point, I was led by the nose by an apparently notorious WUM/troll, but genuine cases arise often enough for me to wish I already had my own “story”, as it were, written down. And so now I have. […]

Monday, February 25th, 2013 at 16:18 | Comments Off on In the beginning…
Categories: agencies, business
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Following on from my post two days ago (in which I wondered whether the scope of confidentiality could usefully be reduced in a translation context), the question is, given a great deal of the information translators receive is deemed confidential, does using Google Translate (GT) equate to disclosure of confidential info? On disclosure, in an […]

Friday, November 16th, 2012 at 10:57 | Comments Off on Rage Against The Machine
Categories: agencies, business
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Another flurry of comment of late on the evils of MT, especially Google Translate (GT). Plus there were, I think, a couple of conferences on the subject of MT this autumn, judging from my Twitter feed. I found myself in something of a peculiar position in this regard. I don’t actually use MT myself out […]

Wednesday, November 14th, 2012 at 11:37 | 2 comments
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Quite a distracting week for those following the MoJ / ALS saga (I’m just going to assume you know what that is!). It changes the shape of this post, initially drafted several days ago. I first heard about the matter when I was asked (in Aug 2011) to help draft a petition which finally emerged […]

Friday, March 23rd, 2012 at 01:09 | Comments Off on … And Justice For All
Categories: agencies, business
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A new, yet also old, outrage has come to my attention of late. It’s new, inasmuch as the penny only really dropped yesterday that the delightful, relatively newly-created private-sector quasi-monopoly on court-related interpreting in the form of Applied Language Solutions’ love-in with our own glorious Ministry of Justice (sic) includes a further affront to my […]

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011 at 10:57 | 2 comments
Categories: agencies, business
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(This was originally an article I posted in my Articles section in April 2009. I recently got involved in another discussion about tests and I haven’t posted since my holiday – yes, thanks, it was splendid – so here it is, tweaked just a tad.) Ah, indeed, tests, and the payment or otherwise thereof. An […]

Friday, September 23rd, 2011 at 00:53 | 9 comments
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