One Hour Translation Blog

Like in every other profession one of the problems faced by translators (particularly the freelance kind) is unreliable clients. Have you ever burnt your fingers doing translation work for unknown agency / client and felt sorry later? Has your payment been delayed / not paid at all? Has the client changed the specs midway through a project or raised frivolous quality issues and put you into hardship? If you have been cheated doing translation work, you need not despair, for help is at hand.

There are translation client rating services available on the internet that can help you in checking the creditworthiness of a prospective client before you start the work. These websites maintain database of translation agencies and others utilizing translation service. The reliability of these agencies is rated in terms of their on time payments, repeat vendors etc. and is made available to members. This service is provided free of cost by some sites and for a nominal annual fee by others. Some of the websites and their details are briefly discussed below:

1. Payment Practices: This is one of the oldest in the business and maintains a database of over 6345 translation agencies worldwide with over 5520 responses and 373 comments on them. The agencies are rated through a reliability score which is graded in terms of delay in making payments, higher the score lesser the delay. Another method of grading is the translator approval score which indicates the willingness of a translator to work with the client again. These two scores are used to evaluate the agencies by the prospective service provider. Membership entails an annual fee.
2. The Blue Board from ProZ.com provides a searchable database of language job outsourcers with feed back from service providers. A service provider rates an outsourcer through a ‘likelihood of working again’ index. The records are made available to other members. Free membership provides limited access to an outsourcer’s record while paid membership gives unlimited access.
3. Translators Café.com maintains a directory of translators, interpreters and translation agencies. It provides a lot of statistics regarding the language combination that are in demand, rates, jobs, etc as provided by members. Membership is both free and paid for with the latter enjoying more privileges.
4. World Payment Practices Free (WPPF) is a Yahoo group that provides payment practices list for translators to find more about the payment routines of agencies / employers / customers. This moderated group is only for reports, questions and answers about agencies.
5. Translation Directory.com provides a list of blacklisted outsourcers based on translators’ response for a fee. However the genuineness of the claims has not been independently verified.
6. Translator Client Review list is another site which provides a free one month trial membership for new members. Not much detail about the working of this website is available currently as many pages are under construction.

The above is only a sample list of websites providing rating of outsourcers of translation that can serve as guide in choosing the right agency.