There’s a very interesting post on test translations over here. I have my doubts about them myself, so was very interested to read this.
For the record, while I’ve not done as many test translations as Mr. Gerasimov, I have done my fair share and my experience has been pretty much in line with his, i.e. agencies inform me I am on their “freelance list” but I never hear from them again, or I get contacted with jobs well below my usual rates. Generally, I’m left wondering why I ever bothered. And then there was the agency who insisted on contacting me at 4.30pm every Friday for a period of about 6 months with a series of 5,000 – 6,000 word jobs due in for 9am the following Monday, even when I had told them that I didn’t work weekends… given I was usually working to my own COB deadlines on Fridays, I eventually decided I didn’t need the hassle and politely asked them to remove me from their database.
Nowadays, I demonstrate my abilities to potential clients in other ways, e.g. with references, extracts from prior translations (suitably sanitised), etc. and so far, all my clients have been happy with this. But overall, the advice I suggested in this post last year still stands, especially when it comes to doing test translations.
Finally, I don’t like plain old them-against-us posts, and it’s only fair to say that I can understand why agencies feel they need to ask for test translations. But there are loads of other ways to demonstrate your competence, and experience has taught me that nine-and-a-half times out of ten, test translations are a complete waste of time.
I’ve done test translations three times in the past, but twice I was paid for it, so I’m not sure it counts. One of the original texts was, however, of agonizingly poor quality style-wise, which stroke me as weird. I was worried that perhaps someone would evaluate my translation without seeing the original. However, at least I was sure that my translation was much better than the original text, while still carrying its meaning! Two of these test translations led to a single interesting project respectively, one to an agency membership which has provided me with quite a lot of work.
Today I was asked to do a medical test translation for someone who could not provide me information about the size of the actual project nor of the compensation. Normally I would not do a test translation in that case, but the text was only three lines (and not even complete sentences)! I expressed my doubts as to whether such a test can in any way prove the capability of a translator, but he insisted, so I thought “oh well”, since it only took me about two minutes and based on the tested content it seems like an interesting projects.
In some fields of translation it may be difficult to provide samples of past work, as almost all material is covered by NDAs or similar.
Nice post — I wish I’d seen it before I blogged about free trials here.
I think the best situation for the translator is to get new clients through introductions. When the client comes to you, you can be more confident that they’re serious about hiring you; and they’re usually more likely to give you a small paid job rather than a trial to test you out.
That said, I recently went against my own general rule of not doing trials, and took one for a job offer posted to a mailing list. To my surprise, the client has turned into a great source of work, and I’ve got some of my best work this year from them. So trials can work out sometimes.
Exactly! Then there’s the detailed rate sheets I’ve been asked to complete, (sometimes annually, even when I’ve not worked with the agency that year!), for random services that I’ll never hear of again… in 5 different currencies, wordcounts, etc. 😀
I guess it could be worse – at least I’m not the poor soul who has to enter all the info into a big, black hole of a database somewhere LOL!
Thanks for the comment!
I feel your pain. It’s not just test translations, but also the gazillions of pages of agency info and instructions that you are asked to read through…