Just to make today more ridiculous, i heard from a company that wanted to hire me for cultural consultations but then asked me to fill in a whole NDA and complete pages of paperwork, only to surprise me with "a translation test" that would be many hours of free copy writing.🤡
why do i need to translate ads and product descriptions for three different brands for you into chinese and back-translate them and justify my translations for you to hire me as a consultant? what are people taking these days?
The amount of paperwork is always inversely proportional to the amount of work they give you. If they won't short cut the process after the NDA, it's probably not worth persisting.
i told them to stop contacting me as soon as they surprised me with the translation test. i literally have a message on my website for people to stop contacting me about unpaid work so i really don't appreciate people trying to be sneaky about it...
also it's extreme overkill to have a 5 page translation test that involves extremely complex and time consuming ad localization for commercial brands, just for giving cultural consultations
i have been invited to translate whole books based on translation tests that are 1-2 paragraphs long
I'm just about to sign a contract to co-translate a book and the client doesn't know me from Adam and hasn't worked with my partner before. No test translation, nothing. Because they trust our experience, and respect our time.
"we don't know the difference between cultural consultation and translation work so we're going to ask you to complete a 5 page translation test just to confirm you know chinese and can consult for us"
