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Why do some job posters restrict their jobs to ProZ.com members for the first 12 - 24 hours?
Thread poster: Angel Llacuna
Katalin Szilárd
Katalin Szilárd  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 15:49
English to Hungarian
+ ...
Relevant post Feb 13, 2018

Sheila Wilson wrote:

Katalin Szilárd wrote:
Sheila Wilson wrote:
Any professional who can't afford a measly €100 or so a year is clearly doing something wrong.

Dear Sheila,

This whole thing is not about €100. First of all it is an ethical question and second it is about billions of $ or € (not per person but as a whole) that we cannot earn because we are hindered.


I know from other posts that you're having some sort of problem with using ProZ.com. But posting this here is really clouding the issue. I believe your problems are being investigated by staff and comments on them belong elsewhere on the site.



I'm not the only one who has "some sort" of problem with proz.com (many of us have). I talked with outsourcers who also experienced weird things since a year.

Posting it here in this thread is very relevant, because a non-paid member asked a question and he should know both sides of the coin: he should know the issues of paid members before giving him any answer that may lead him to feel that he may miss something not to be a paid member.
Many people were very happy to be paid members and this has changed a while....
This is one of the reasons why my post is relevant here.

Also my post was an answer to your answer to Bernhard.


[Edited at 2018-02-13 21:07 GMT]

[Edited at 2018-02-13 21:08 GMT]


 
José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 11:49
English to Portuguese
+ ...
In memoriam
The deafult settings Feb 13, 2018

I think that free users being prevented from bidding for 12 hours as the default option for job posters is a fair business decision by Proz, as they obviously have costs, and should be entitled to promote the sale of paid membership. And yet, Proz is generous enough to allow the job poster - if they prefer so - to waive that restriction, and accept bids from everyone immediately. Of course, free users will have to pay $1 for each bid they submit, which is quite fair.

I get the impre
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I think that free users being prevented from bidding for 12 hours as the default option for job posters is a fair business decision by Proz, as they obviously have costs, and should be entitled to promote the sale of paid membership. And yet, Proz is generous enough to allow the job poster - if they prefer so - to waive that restriction, and accept bids from everyone immediately. Of course, free users will have to pay $1 for each bid they submit, which is quite fair.

I get the impression that another default setting is "MUST have Trados"... otherwise you'll never know who is posting this job! This one is so dastardly pervasive on the Proz job board, that I think it must be waived at least twice before the job poster can get rid of this imperative requirement. Amazingly, I don't see such stubborn demand for any other CAT tool, ever!

As this second - presumably default - setting became obstreperously pervasive, I chose to step down from paying member to free user, until the day SDL offers to pay 80% of my Proz membership. (Making the setup clear, I use WordFast.)
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Daniela Duarte
Daniela Duarte
Brazil
Local time: 11:49
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Non-member Feb 14, 2018

Hi,
The 100 dollars membership does make a difference when you have to apply the currency conversion.

Here in Brazil 1 Dollar is equal to 3,15 Reais, so I think is not necessary to go any further.

Sheila Wilson wrote:

Angel Llacuna wrote:
Being a paying member of proz does not make a translator any better, or more trustworthy or professional than another one who is not a member.

on the ProZ.com site - job board, Blue Board, etc - payment should give translators one hell of an advantage. Otherwise, what's the point in paying?

There's nothing to stop any professional translator paying and getting the same advantages (or any "hobby" translator, for that matter). Any professional who can't afford a measly €100 or so a year is clearly doing something wrong. The ROI of simply paying can be borderline in the commonest pairs - after all, you'd still be a small fish in a huge pond - but the ROI of paying AND getting to the top of the directory list for your specialisations AND giving clients who find you here all the right messages as to your worth can be enormous. Check out the Site Guidance Centre for more information on that.


 
Angel Llacuna
Angel Llacuna  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 15:49
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
This also intrigues me Feb 14, 2018

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:

...........

I get the impression that another default setting is "MUST have Trados"... otherwise you'll never know who is posting this job! This one is so dastardly pervasive on the Proz job board, that I think it must be waived at least twice before the job poster can get rid of this imperative requirement. Amazingly, I don't see such stubborn demand for any other CAT tool, ever!


Why translation agencies are so keen on the mandatory use of Trados ?


 
Lincoln Hui
Lincoln Hui  Identity Verified
Hong Kong
Local time: 22:49
Member
Chinese to English
+ ...
There are Feb 14, 2018

Amazingly, I don't see such stubborn demand for any other CAT tool, ever!

MemoQ requirements are quite common for centrally-managed projects, but in most cases the client provides a remote license for the duration of the work. Same goes for Memsource and other cloud solutions that require a certain tool which is available for free.


 
Kay Denney
Kay Denney  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 15:49
French to English
it's their default software Feb 14, 2018

Angel Llacuna wrote:

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:

...........

I get the impression that another default setting is "MUST have Trados"... otherwise you'll never know who is posting this job! This one is so dastardly pervasive on the Proz job board, that I think it must be waived at least twice before the job poster can get rid of this imperative requirement. Amazingly, I don't see such stubborn demand for any other CAT tool, ever!


Why translation agencies are so keen on the mandatory use of Trados ?


A lot of agencies put everything through the Trados mill whether or not there's any point. These agencies often have a "Mother of all TMs" too, as if one day they could simply use that to translate everything and do away with those pesky translators entirely. Number of times I've had to explain that you shouldn't be subjected to segmentation for a press release about a swank new hotel ... agencies that don't understand, don't get much work out of me. I do use translation software when the agency provides me with a floating licence, but I'm not prepared to buy any, since it's the agency that reaps the benefit of the reduced price for repetition.


 
José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 11:49
English to Portuguese
+ ...
In memoriam
Perhaps an attempt to impose thoughts Feb 14, 2018

Angel Llacuna wrote:

Why translation agencies are so keen on the mandatory use of Trados ?


History was never a favorite subject of mine in school. My barely passing grades in it are evidence that it was not just because of one or another teacher. Therefore my take on this may be wrong.

However I see a pattern...

One had to be or become a Christian to stay alive during the Spanish Inquisition.

One had to join the Communist Party to have a safe and decent lifestyle in the Soviet Union.

The message they are attempting to drive home now is that one must buy Trados to have a chance as a translator.


 
Katalin Szilárd
Katalin Szilárd  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 15:49
English to Hungarian
+ ...
It is a very interesting train of thought Feb 14, 2018

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:

Angel Llacuna wrote:

Why translation agencies are so keen on the mandatory use of Trados ?


History was never a favorite subject of mine in school. My barely passing grades in it are evidence that it was not just because of one or another teacher. Therefore my take on this may be wrong.

However I see a pattern...

One had to be or become a Christian to stay alive during the Spanish Inquisition.

One had to join the Communist Party to have a safe and decent lifestyle in the Soviet Union.

The message they are attempting to drive home now is that one must buy Trados to have a chance as a translator.


Some days ago this came to my mind, although not concerning Trados, but the whole industry.
Now they say: to stay alive you have to do MT post-editing. And using threat also plays a big role just as in the other 2 examples you mentioned.

About memories: the more information you give about your online security on your profile, the more vulnerable you are. And MT is based on large quantities of memories ...



[Edited at 2018-02-14 11:17 GMT]


 
Katalin Szilárd
Katalin Szilárd  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 15:49
English to Hungarian
+ ...
A strange job board experience Feb 14, 2018

A year ago there was a clinical trial related job in the job board. It seemed to be interesting and I applied. But I also mentioned in my message that I'd like to know more about the specific project to be able to send an accurate quote. No reply. I checked the guy on LinkedIn, wrote there, no reply. I sent them an email to their email address, no reply. Then I didn't bother any more.

Now out of the blue exactly 1 year later (as I said better than never lol), he was sending out a ki
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A year ago there was a clinical trial related job in the job board. It seemed to be interesting and I applied. But I also mentioned in my message that I'd like to know more about the specific project to be able to send an accurate quote. No reply. I checked the guy on LinkedIn, wrote there, no reply. I sent them an email to their email address, no reply. Then I didn't bother any more.

Now out of the blue exactly 1 year later (as I said better than never lol), he was sending out a kind of mass email to translators to ask them to review these pharmaceutical translations. I asked him to send me the text for a review and the sample was very likely done by machine. As if the text had been put together from different relevant memories, but the source was different than the translation. So the whole translation was useless. I told him that this was probably a machine translation and this is a crap, this needs to be translated without using the translated text he had sent me. I didn't hear back from him, probably he found a victim to do this job for the rate he wanted.




[Edited at 2018-02-14 13:57 GMT]
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Katalin Szilárd
Katalin Szilárd  Identity Verified
Hungary
Local time: 15:49
English to Hungarian
+ ...
A question to DZiW Feb 15, 2018

Hi DZiW,

I checked your profile and would like to ask you something:
You wrote: "Please, no service requests via ProZ."

Do you know that on your profile you do not have any other contact options other than via proz?

Bests,
Katalin


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 15:49
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
There are two good reasons for it Feb 15, 2018

Angel Llacuna wrote:
Why do some job providers restrict their offers to [paying] members of Proz.com until some certain hour?


Because that is the only option that ProZ.com offers to initially reduce the number of offers. Not all clients want to be inundated with offers immediately. Only once the initial bunch of offers appear to be unsatisfactory, do such clients want to receive other offers. The question then becomes: by what criteria does one restrict the offers initially? ProZ.com chose the paying versus non-paying criteria.

Another criteria that ProZ.com could have chosen might be native versus non-native speaker (i.e. non-native speakers may quote after 12 hours), but that would have led to abuse, because declaration of nativeness works on the honour system and there are many translators who would gladly declare themselves native even if they are not, just to beat their colleagues to the job.

Also, there has got to be some incentives for people to pay money to use ProZ.com. That is why paying members get special privileges.

It has often been said by people from all camps that the bulk of jobs that you'd get from ProZ.com comes through directory searches and not through the jobs posting system, so the disadvantage to non-paying members of having to wait 12 hours is smaller than one might expect at first glance.


 
Lingua 5B
Lingua 5B  Identity Verified
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 15:49
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
Investment into the site. Feb 15, 2018

These are paying members, they are investing into the site and as such are given priority. However, I fail to see how that's a vouch of quality, verification etc. There are many non-paying members who have been verified? In any case, I don't see anything uncommon when priority is given to the people who are investing more (I support that).

Re. "instant" access: If there is one job and 20 paying members accessing it, how that's "instant" for any of them? It should be exclusive to you
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These are paying members, they are investing into the site and as such are given priority. However, I fail to see how that's a vouch of quality, verification etc. There are many non-paying members who have been verified? In any case, I don't see anything uncommon when priority is given to the people who are investing more (I support that).

Re. "instant" access: If there is one job and 20 paying members accessing it, how that's "instant" for any of them? It should be exclusive to you to be instant, IMO. There's not much of "instant" factor while you are waiting for an outsourcer to process 20 bids looking for the cheapest one.
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writeaway
writeaway  Identity Verified
French to English
+ ...
Jobs for paying members only with no access at all for non-members (ie non-payers) Feb 16, 2018

The past several days, I've noticed a new trend in job announcements: the jobs posted are restricted to those who pay and non-payers never get a look in.
I personally don't care, but what I do resent is the way Proz is trying to sell the status of payer as indicating some sort of better translator compared to those who don't pay. I was a member (meaning I paid, according to current Proz terminology) from 2003 until last August 2017. I am currently not a member of Proz (i.e. a non-payer).
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The past several days, I've noticed a new trend in job announcements: the jobs posted are restricted to those who pay and non-payers never get a look in.
I personally don't care, but what I do resent is the way Proz is trying to sell the status of payer as indicating some sort of better translator compared to those who don't pay. I was a member (meaning I paid, according to current Proz terminology) from 2003 until last August 2017. I am currently not a member of Proz (i.e. a non-payer).
Once upon a time, we paid in order to help Henry keep the site afloat. All translators, payers and non-payers, on the site were referred to as members and treated with respect by the site and translator colleagues. In fact some of those who never paid were among the best and most helpful translators Proz has ever had.
I don't find it upsetting not having access to jobs posting as main requirement a CAT tool and demanding my CV, best rate or willingness to work for 5 or 6 cents a word. If an outsourcer buys the line that payers are superior translators, then that's not the sort of outsourcer I'd like to work with anyway.
My only real objection is the way the marketing staff at Proz are trying to devalue/debase the translation ability of translators who don't pay. I suggest they look closely at how many now "non-members" used to be payers and ask themselves why so many people have stopped paying.
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Angel Llacuna
Angel Llacuna  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 15:49
English to Spanish
TOPIC STARTER
we make decisions for the client Feb 16, 2018

Samuel Murray wrote:

Angel Llacuna wrote:
Why do some job providers restrict their offers to [paying] members of Proz.com until some certain hour?


Because that is the only option that ProZ.com offers to initially reduce the number of offers. Not all clients want to be inundated with offers immediately. Only once the initial bunch of offers appear to be unsatisfactory, do such clients want to receive other offers. The question then becomes: by what criteria does one restrict the offers initially? ProZ.com chose the paying versus non-paying criteria.


Why do not let the job posters to choose that initial filter instead of proz making that decision for them ?

[Edited at 2018-02-16 11:12 GMT]


 
José Henrique Lamensdorf
José Henrique Lamensdorf  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 11:49
English to Portuguese
+ ...
In memoriam
Wrong assumption Feb 16, 2018

writeaway wrote:

My only real objection is the way the marketing staff at Proz are trying to devalue/debase the translation ability of translators who don't pay. I suggest they look closely at how many now "non-members" used to be payers and ask themselves why so many people have stopped paying.


It's a matter of buying a privilege.

Envision this... a cinema, theater, stadium, whatever, sells supposedly expensive tickets with numbered seats. These paying "sponsors" will occupy their places and, say, 10 minutes before the event begins, they'll let in for $5 anyone who is outside, and wants to watch it. These latecomers may sit on any vacant seats they find. This doesn't imply they couldn't afford the full rate; they merely chose not to.

There is no innuendo anywhere that someone who is not a Proz (paying) member is by any means a worse or otherwise lesser qualified translator. Likewise, there is no inkling to a Proz paying member being a better or otherwise more qualified translator; evidence of this being the very existence of the PRO-tag program.


 
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Why do some job posters restrict their jobs to ProZ.com members for the first 12 - 24 hours?






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