Got an editing job on a waterworks doc. It looks like a machine did the original. I can't imagine someone so lazy to actually turn a work like this into an agency, plus inconsiderate, considering the amount of work left for the editor.

What is a proper way to address this situation? I already agreed on a word rate, and this is taking up a lot of my Sunday.

On the brightside, I'm getting a great education on pier construction.

Did you do so after having carefully reviewed the source text?

In any case, your pay should be commensurate with your work. I repeatedly said that in:

"Improving" the quality of the source text,
Where does the extra mile start?,
When translating poorly written texts...

Jacek

Thanks Jacek, the links provided good information. I already pinpointed my fault of having not reviewed the doc. and establishing guidlines with the agency before I began.

There is another issue here: I honestly wonder if this translation was not handled by a program. It's better than the altavista translation, but they could have stuck it in a program and then did some minor editing before expecting me to handle the nitty-gritty. I could have solved this problem by charging by the hour, but since my services are not in sufficient demand, I have been too eager to accept projects and won't take the time to set groundrules. 

Was the rate they paid for it meant to be for human or for machine translators, do you know?

On the surface, they paid okay for proofing, but one: the work was at least 90% of a full-charge translation, and two: they quibbled over half-a-cent because they were on a "budget".

It all makes perfect sense now.