Deadlines EDT (GMT -4) - When Europe is sleeping... Thread poster: Marina Steinbach
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Marina Steinbach
United States
Local time: 22:29
Member (2011)
English to German
Hi Colleagues,
I have been wondering, when most of the people in Europe are already sleeping, how fast I have to react to potential job offers like this:
Job description:
technical translation
ENG-DEU
800 words
Deadline: Thursday 25.8.11 12h (MEZ)
Poster country: Germany
Service provider targeting (specified by job poster):
Membership: Non-members may quote after 12 hours
Tech/Engineering
Preferred native lang... See more Hi Colleagues,
I have been wondering, when most of the people in Europe are already sleeping, how fast I have to react to potential job offers like this:
Job description:
technical translation
ENG-DEU
800 words
Deadline: Thursday 25.8.11 12h (MEZ)
Poster country: Germany
Service provider targeting (specified by job poster):
Membership: Non-members may quote after 12 hours
Tech/Engineering
Preferred native language: Target language(s)
Subject field: Engineering (general)
Quoting deadline: 25 Aug 2011 02:00 EDT (GMT-4) (GMT: 25 Aug 2011 06:00)
Delivery deadline: 25 Aug 2011 05:00 EDT (GMT-4) (GMT: 25 Aug 2011 09:00)
Contact method: Please submit your quote via ProZ.com by clicking the "submit quote" button below.
Well, my main focus is on the deadlines. How on earth could I possibly meet these requirements?
Do you just ignore such offers or do you stop sleeping?
Marina ▲ Collapse
| | | | Kevin Fulton 
United States
Local time: 22:29
German to English
| Rush jobs from new clients should be ignored | Aug 25, 2011 |
A good rule of thumb is not to take a rush first job as a first assignment from a client. These fora are full of accounts of translators who take an urgent job only to discover that all they get are assignments with ridiculously short deadlines.
I only take rush jobs from established clients who generally know that I don't check my e-mail until 7:00. Fortunately most of my agency clients are generally able to schedule reasonable deadlines, so "rush jobs" generally arise if an assig... See more A good rule of thumb is not to take a rush first job as a first assignment from a client. These fora are full of accounts of translators who take an urgent job only to discover that all they get are assignments with ridiculously short deadlines.
I only take rush jobs from established clients who generally know that I don't check my e-mail until 7:00. Fortunately most of my agency clients are generally able to schedule reasonable deadlines, so "rush jobs" generally arise if an assigned translator isn't able to complete a project due to illness or emergency. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 19:29
English to German
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In memoriam | I was about to write the same as Kevin | Aug 25, 2011 |
Any outsourcer who is not prepared to have a back-up in case the original translator falls sick, doesn't run his business properly.
Worst of all:
German outsourcers who never get the time zones right and believe that US translators have additional 6-9 hours, while it is the other way around.
| | | | Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 19:29
English to German
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In memoriam
Any outsourcer who thinks that "technical" encompasses just about everything, be it the mechanical construction of marine loading arms to nanotechnology and is convinced that any translator can do just about anything at the average 500 words/hour without any research and thus the translator is cool with translating 800 words plus quality check within 3 hours, no matter the subject matter, is a moron and should be avoided by all means.
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David Wright
Austria
Local time: 04:29
German to English
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| Rather odd question | Aug 25, 2011 |
The world just does happen to be divided into time zones.
As to such offers you have three options: ignore them, arrange your waking and sleeping times to correspond to those prevalent in western Europe (if that is where you get most of your work) or move to where MEZ is the standard time. I had a similar problem when i was in China for a while and would never have dreamed of complaining about it.
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 04:29
French to German
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Nicole Schnell wrote:
Any outsourcer who thinks that "technical" encompasses just about everything, be it the mechanical construction of marine loading arms to nanotechnology and is convinced that any translator can do just about anything at the average 500 words/hour without any research and thus the translator is cool with translating 800 words plus quality check within 3 hours, no matter the subject matter, is a moron and should be avoided by all means.
Those are the same ones who think that translations in the aforementioned specialties should be paid at a flat rate as low as possible.
"Just translate it!" - sure, man.
| | | | Nicole Schnell
United States
Local time: 19:29
English to German
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In memoriam | The issue and an example | Aug 25, 2011 |
David Wright wrote:
The world just does happen to be divided into time zones.
As to such offers you have three options: ignore them, arrange your waking and sleeping times to correspond to those prevalent in western Europe (if that is where you get most of your work) or move to where MEZ is the standard time. I had a similar problem when i was in China for a while and would never have dreamed of complaining about it.
One of my regular clients in Germany once asked me to take care of the daily coverage of a major international trade show & exhibition. Press releases were supposed to be translated brilliantly into English within hours. I cannot do this, I am not a native speaker of English, I replied. "But we need someone who can do this over night!!!," they said. Good grief...
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 04:29
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| That's life, I'm afraid | Aug 25, 2011 |
Marina Steinbach wrote:
800 words
Deadline: Thursday 25.8.11 12h (MEZ)
Quoting deadline: 25 Aug 2011 02:00 EDT (GMT-4) (GMT: 25 Aug 2011 06:00)
Delivery deadline: 25 Aug 2011 05:00 EDT (GMT-4) (GMT: 25 Aug 2011 09:00)
What is interesting is that (a) the time zone given in the "Deadline" field CET/MEZ (and right now the time zone in that region is CEST, i.e. one hour earlier), and (b) the deadline given in the "Deadline" field is different from the deadline given in the "Delivery deadline" field (the difference is 1 or 2 hours).
I think you should assume that the deadline is the earlier of the two, namely 11:00 CEST.
How on earth could I possibly meet these requirements? Do you just ignore such offers or do you stop sleeping?
You're in the US, which means that you won't be able to sleep tonight, if you do take this job. I'm sorry, but... what was your question?
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