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Poll: What are the main causes of stress in your job as a translator?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
Robin LEPLUMEY
Robin LEPLUMEY
France
Local time: 17:38
English to French
+ ...
Other May 31, 2022

I used to stress out when my main clients got quieter than usual. But now more than ever, the worst part of my job is having to work for unethical or environmentally unfriendly companies. Or maybe just having to work at all. The world is f****d up and I just sit there translating marketing bullsh*t several hours a day while I should be enjoying life with my wife and kid. Is this my quarter-life crisis?

[Edited at 2022-05-31 14:38 GMT]
 
Muriel Vasconcellos
Muriel Vasconcellos  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 08:38
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
PDFs, fancy formatting Jun 1, 2022

There's nothing worse than a PDF resulting from an OCR scan of a printed document. Next worse is trying to squeeze a translation into a box that's too small and formats that go crazy when the translation is longer than the original.

Philip Lees
Tom in London
 
Wolfgang Schoene
Wolfgang Schoene  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 17:38
Member (2007)
English to German
+ ...
Days Jun 2, 2022

having only 24 hours as I could live with 36 hours days easily.
 
Merab Dekano
Merab Dekano  Identity Verified
Spain
Member (2014)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Payment delays + “text killers” Jun 3, 2022

Payment delays + “text killers”

When payments are delayed more than a week, I can’t stand it. It makes me nervous no matter what the amount is (the very fact that I am not paid on time what I am supposed to be paid).

Another thing is the phenomenon of “text killers”. Fortunately, it only happens occasionally. Imagine you translate a text. It’s edited and the editor is happy. Then, during the final stage (say, QA), some “text killer” “professional” bu... See more
Payment delays + “text killers”

When payments are delayed more than a week, I can’t stand it. It makes me nervous no matter what the amount is (the very fact that I am not paid on time what I am supposed to be paid).

Another thing is the phenomenon of “text killers”. Fortunately, it only happens occasionally. Imagine you translate a text. It’s edited and the editor is happy. Then, during the final stage (say, QA), some “text killer” “professional” butchers the text so badly that you only see track changes (digital blood) in the file that was perfectly fine. Of course, 90% of the changes are preferential and 9% are errors that the “text killer” introduced ex novo. The problem is that you cannot tell the client to just ignore those; you need to go through the changes one by one and explain the absurdity of the situation… And it takes time, but more so – stresses you out (stress + anger).

Another thing that was stressing me out was “tight deadlines”, but save very few exceptions, I simply stopped accepting “same day/same hour” projects. Even though I can do it the same day, I just aske the client to let me deliver it next day in the morning (and usually do deliver the same day). ▲ Collapse


Becca Resnik
 
Jan Truper
Jan Truper  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 17:38
Member (2016)
English to German
... Jun 4, 2022

ProZ.com Staff wrote:
What are the main causes of stress in your job as a translator?



- Companies with bad business practices.

- Companies or their agents that do not clearly respect the difference between a freelancer and an employee (which can be either due to ignorance or wilful exploitation).

- Companies with kafkaesque elements in their systems.

- Incompetent or overzealous proofreaders (and companies that let such proofreaders thrive within their systems).



Unfortunately, one of my main subtitling clients (yes, that one) is ticking all of these boxes, forcing me to focus on greener pastures.
 
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Poll: What are the main causes of stress in your job as a translator?






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