| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Poll: Are you dealing with more volume/requests for work "post-pandemic"? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Colin Smith
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:02
French to English
+ ...
| Perhaps, but.. | Aug 15, 2023 |
Ice Scream wrote:
But also because, like everyone else, they’re slow to embrace change.
If you have had a sharp drop-off in work, that says something about you and your clients, because this experience is not universal. Assuming the problem isn’t quality, you need different customers!
My clients are all the French/Luxembourg banks and several Paris/London law firms, via translation agencies. Not an easy client base to replace. They are certainly not slow to embrace change and began integrating CAT and then MT technology as and when it became usable.
These agencies have client-specific (and approved) TMs built up over the years, which are applied to new translations, the remaining text being done by the agencies' own MT engines for PE by the likes of me.
This being mostly boilerplate language, the MT parts are almost flawless whereas the TMs are riddled with human errors, (often due to a failure to understand the source text). Post-editing the MT now consists mainly in rearranging clauses and subordinate clauses so that they read more naturally in English (something that banks can easily do in-house, obviously). I have asked my agencies to send me the documents done entirely by MT but they think the TMs give them "consistency".
As someone else has commented here, the strange thing is that the big projects suddenly come back on stream for a few months, often more than I can take on, and then stop as abruptly as they started.
Sadly, as Andreas pointed out and as my client agencies have also admitted to me, these end clients no longer require high quality translation as we understand the term.
| | | | Kay Denney 
France
Local time: 13:02
French to English
Ice Scream wrote: Kay Denney wrote:
I earned too much money that year, so this year I need to earn less (or change my freelance status and pay more than double the tax). What a strange system. You’d think you would only pay the higher rate on the top slice of your earnings. And why would smaller businesses have a lower tax rate anyway?
Chris, I'm in France, where they have a proverb "why do it simply when you can make it complicated".
My status is "autoentrepreneur", which is a mini status where we don't pay much into the equivalent of National Insurance in the UK. It was set up for people to easily do a bit of freelancing on the side. Previously there were lots of people earning a bit of money with a side hustle, and the side hustles were on the black market. For the state to be able to collect tax on it, they realised that they needed to make it easy for people to declare their side hustles.
Bizarrely, they then set the earning threshold for this status high enough to make it worth while for poorly paid people like translators to use it for their main job rather than just for side hustles. Since you pay less than half the national insurance compared to other self-employed people using the system already in place, it makes sense to choose this status. Some will soon reach the threshold and move over to the that status, I personally don't intend to work any harder than now and I don't want the hassle of changing my status, especially given that there's much more paperwork involved. ^^
| | | | Aline Brito
Brazil
Local time: 08:02
Member (2020)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Before Covid, I worked both as a translator and teacher. Around mid 2020, translating became my full-time occupation.
Can't really compare.
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 13:02
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
| More volume than before Covid but... | Aug 20, 2023 |
During the pandemic, IT volume was higher (due to the shift to remote working),
and in fact the pandemic years (2020-2021) were some of the best years in my career in terms of revenue.
In my opinion, MTPE grew rapidly during that period.
In 2022 there was a natural decline in that area, while between 2021 and 2022
there was an increase in demand from other areas,
but then the war in Ukraine started and there was an immediate stop.
Now, with the ... See more During the pandemic, IT volume was higher (due to the shift to remote working),
and in fact the pandemic years (2020-2021) were some of the best years in my career in terms of revenue.
In my opinion, MTPE grew rapidly during that period.
In 2022 there was a natural decline in that area, while between 2021 and 2022
there was an increase in demand from other areas,
but then the war in Ukraine started and there was an immediate stop.
Now, with the recession, things are slower, but I still have more work than immediately before the pandemic,
thanks to regular clients and agencies, no new ones except one.
Finally, after the release of AI bots like ChatGPT end of 2022 something changed too,
I am still not sure what it is exactly, but for example a client of a boutique agency I collaborate with,
thought they could just use AI (but then changed their mind).
Again, I think things are currently moving slowly due to the recession,
so many people try to find less expensive translation solutions,
but this may be a temporary situation.
[Bearbeitet am 2023-08-20 08:27 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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