Maxi,

I don't think we have a role of police of the translation profession. I think our role should simply be limited to warning people not to accept such low rate jobs and not to decide that, at a certain price, a job is good enough to be posted to the community.

Dear colleagues,

Thank to all for your input and just to be back to the subject. I don't think that we are trying to play the role of the police here. We are saying that we are not allowing the industry to be spoiled by people who care only about your rate and not about the quality.

What I first appreciated in TC was that it was a professional website, run by people who are really professional. You can tell when you notice that no linguist can offer less than 0.05$ in his profile and no job poster can enter into the system a rate less than 0.05$.

The terms of use of TC already talked about the matter, so we are not setting a new rule and we are not even discussing the importance of the matter. Technically, it is possible to check if a poster is breaking the rules of the site and the ad can be banned. As posts are deleted if they contain spams they also should be deleted if they break other rules such as the lowest rate.

I don't know for you colleagues, but when a client offers me a rate of $0.03 all what I can understand, is that this client is not interested in the quality and he would assign the job to any person that will deliver a text written in the destination language (no matter was the quality). I ignore him/her for sure. This is what I can initially do, but I also express and ask him to not return to me with any similar offers. We certainly can do more than ignoring. The point from this thread is to express some "anger" and a request to all such posters to stop "insulting" us.

Sofiene Addala

(Ed is actually the name of the job poster) 

More related threads:

Tsk Tsk Tsk 10.00 an hour

RE: Improving Job Posters' Obligatory Information

Inflation goes up, up, up and translation prices go down, down, down

Professional associations vs. antitrust

Also Post #124009

Originally written by Laurent Chiacchierini on November 21, 2008 12:09 PM I personally do not know any plumber who works through the Internet to repair leaks on your pipework,

Do you think, Laurent, the translators' work is easier because it is done over the internet?  I am not for fixed prices, this was just a possibility, not even  a very serious one. I just wish people had more self-esteem and did not work for $0.03/word, people who have sometimes years of education  working for fast food restaurant seasonal employees' rates. 

Originally written by Laurent J. Krauland on November 21, 2008 6:10 PM I don't see what can possibly be regarded as illegal when you create e.g. a groupment with commercial aims (in this case: producing and selling translations) having the status of a registered legal person and to say: "Groupment XYZ makes/sells translations for such prices". I may have misunderstood you, David, but this will not block translators who are not members of the groupment to make/sell translations at lower prices - and therefore fixing prices as described above is perfectly legal.

 

At least from a European viewpoint, the situation probably is not quite that simple.

One of the paramount anti-trust rules, Article 81 of the EC Treaty, basically prohibits, among others, "all agreements between undertakings, decisions by associations of undertakings and concerted practices which may affect trade between Member States and -- in particular those which -- directly or indirectly fix purchase or selling prices --".

This ban applies even if the entire market does not participate in such an agreement. A few exceptiions are listed in paragraph 3 though.

(This is not legal advice, just my less-than-well-informed understanding.)

Originally written by David Kallans on November 21, 2008 6:28 PM Thor, I may have misunderstood your posting, and apologize if I came off as gruff.  A categorical ban on offers would probably be fine, as there would be no price-fixing.

Thank you. No hard feelings. I could have explained myself more clearly, considering how active this thread has been today.