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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
(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 […]