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Three translation agencies contacted us for MTPE and HT projects, all the same requirements.
Thread poster: Marc Svetov
Kerstin Wagenführ
Kerstin Wagenführ
Germany
Local time: 19:06
English to German
+ ...
Everything running smoothly! Jan 11, 2021

I was contacted by an agency located in Romania. They asked me to participate in the ISAAC project. I've been working for them since October 2020. The PMs are really friendly, supporting and professional. I received the payment even before the agreed date. No problems at all. I work within this project as a translator, MTPE and reviewer.

[Edited at 2021-01-11 14:55 GMT]


Nayoung Jin
 
Adieu
Adieu  Identity Verified
Ukrainian to English
+ ...
Mechanical Turkification of Translations Jan 11, 2021

Vadim Kadyrov wrote:

Here is the link to the job post I received once again from this Spanish agency (see the image attached).

It means that suddenly this MTPE job has turned into a translation task with penalties, etc.

So, we have: a translation task with 0.03 EUR per word, with no POs, some vague penalties for 'quality issues'.

IMG_20201217_191754


Next episode: "Translate this string for free to verify your biological humanity (CAPTCHA)"

[Edited at 2021-01-11 18:17 GMT]


 
Aline Amorim
Aline Amorim  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 15:06
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Hello @Marc Jan 22, 2021

Barbara Carrara wrote:

Aline Amorim wrote:
Yes! I am working in this project with three agencies. Boring thing is to keep creating different email accounts and I am registered on the project platform. Sometimes the subject of MT doesn't draw advantage from a business.


Do you mean you agree to do the job without carrying out any due diligence about any of the three agencies, and without receiving a PO before you started working on it, like Marc (rightly) suspects?

Not sure what you mean by 'Sometimes the subject of MT doesn't draw advantage from a business.' Not that it matters, really, as I think you are being taken for a ride. But if you'd like to clarify that bit, it might throw some more light on this very suspicious job for any other translators who may fall for it.

Adam D. was right to decline, IMHO. Better be safe than sorry.




I received PO of agencies and my first payment of an agency today.


 
María C Turri
María C Turri  Identity Verified
Argentina
Local time: 15:06
Member (2019)
English to Spanish
Got paid, huge discount Jan 26, 2021

Hello, colleagues! As I promised before, I'm following up on this so that you can all be aware of these people. I worked on this project for the agency from Dubai.

As I told you before, after sending my invoice I got a reply from their accounting department asking for my banking details when I had specifically indicated my rates applied only to payments made through PayPal. After that, I got another email from the project manager stating my translation had been reviewed and, due to
... See more
Hello, colleagues! As I promised before, I'm following up on this so that you can all be aware of these people. I worked on this project for the agency from Dubai.

As I told you before, after sending my invoice I got a reply from their accounting department asking for my banking details when I had specifically indicated my rates applied only to payments made through PayPal. After that, I got another email from the project manager stating my translation had been reviewed and, due to quality issues they had to apply a discount. I was supposed to get 93.44 USD and after the discount, my amount due was 37.38 USD. I asked to see the feedback for these quality issues and they told me the client had uploaded a report under "work reports" in the platform. There is nothing there suggesting ANY quality issues and I have not had any claims on the quality of my work in 15 years of full-time translation.

Today, they asked me for the updated invoice, saying they would pay 37.88, I told them I didn't send it because I had not seen the alleged quality review and that I would not consider my invoice as paid in full until I see it. A while later, I got that amount (37.88) on my PayPal account. I am almost certain that is all I'll ever get from this project. Luckily enough, I didn't spend that much time on it.
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Elena Feriani
Vadim Kadyrov
Lucas Trindade
KASPARS KIRSFELDS
 
Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule
Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule
Karoline Lechtape-Grüter
Karoline Lechtape-Grüter  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 19:06
English to Spanish
+ ...
Hello Feb 16, 2021

Today I received an email related to this project from the Dubai agency. After reading all the messages you have written above, I think I was right to be suspicious and ignore it. It does not look good, if anyone else has had a positive experience with the payment, please say something. I have only seen a couple of people (maybe 3) who have said positive things from the 5 pages of this thread.

Peter Shortall
 
Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule
Barbara Carrara
Barbara Carrara  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 19:06
Member (2008)
English to Italian
+ ...
They seem to be at it again Mar 1, 2021

A 'familiar' job post has just come up on the ProZ job board, with details including 'about 7 million words', with a 'Human Translation' part and an MTPE part'. Needless to say, 'budget is limited due to the large volumes'.
Job poster is from the UAE.
Need I say more?
Keep your eyes peeled!

Edited to add poster country (which isn't against the site rules, so I am not going to get squashed again. Hopefully.)

[Edited at 2021-03-01 17:20 GMT]


Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
P.L.F. Persio
Peter Shortall
Elena Feriani
writeaway
 
Armando Mendez
Armando Mendez
Mexico
Local time: 12:06
English to Spanish
+ ...
Similar contact Mar 3, 2021

I received a similar proposal today from an agency in London for an English-Spanish and vice versa for an HT & MTPE project. I have already looked for the e-mail addresses and the agency but have not found ANY information.

I think I'm going to reject the proposal thanks to this post although I want it to be legit. They offer $.09 per word and times are tough.


Peter Shortall
 
Marcelo Besser
Marcelo Besser
Brazil
Local time: 15:06
English to Portuguese
+ ...
How to whistleblow a scamming agency on Proz? Mar 3, 2021

I seem to be having a problem with this same MTPE / HT / ISAAC group. How do we denounce a organized, systematic scam by an agency to freelancers, here? Can Proz administrators be contacted?

Peter Shortall
Alessandra Sandrin
Adieu
 
Debora Perricone
Debora Perricone  Identity Verified
Ireland
Member (2015)
English to Italian
+ ...
Isaac project Mar 10, 2021

Giuseppe Bellone wrote:

I had already accepted the project MTPE and HT, the SAME as in the posts commented on above, for an agency a few days ago and was just waiting for the green light and start working.

All of a sudden, yesterday a second agency I had worked with in the past offered me the same project, but wanted me to create an account on the same platform which belongs to the first agency I had already accepted. Strangely enough the link posted by the second agency landed exactly on the platform of the first agency, i.e. the exact page with my username, my full account and so on. Quite strange, isn't it?
Of course I already have an account for the first agency, so all that rang a bell and I asked the second agency what was going on and for an explanation.
After TWO e-mails I am still waiting for a reply!


[Modificato alle 2020-12-10 20:54 GMT]


Hi Giuseppe,

Did you get a reply in the end from the agency? I am in the same situation and I don't know if I want to start this project or not as I am afraid it is a scam.

Thank you if you reply to me.

Debora


 
Bruna Bonatto
Bruna Bonatto  Identity Verified
Chile
Local time: 15:06
Member
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Rates Mar 13, 2021

Hello,

Just for curiosity, which rates have you been offered for this project, for HT and MTPE, respectively? I have heard of all kinds of rates.


 
Vladimir Pochinov
Vladimir Pochinov  Identity Verified
Russian Federation
Local time: 20:06
English to Russian
My experience with the ISAAC MTPE project Mar 20, 2021

I agreed to participate in this project (through a Spain-based agency) to see what MTPE/PEMT work was about.

In this particular project, you need to edit bits and pieces coming from different sources that range from abusive language with four-letter words and porno website language to incomplete phrases from legal contracts.

There is only one place on their platform that shows some total count:

hit_count

As you may see, the note says that "Hit availability is updated every 20 minutes." Presumably, the figure above stands for some "hits" available for post-editing rather than words. I understand that translators don't have any idea about the number of words to edit, although they negotiate a per-word (not per-hit) rate with the agency.

The rate is only mentioned on the Job Overview page on their platform (and it's a low one!). A translator can open his or her PO in a pop-up window and print it (or save it as a PDF file). However, my PO reads as follows:

Rate: Unspecified
Volume: 0 source words


Moreover, whenever I try to print it, I get the following error message:

An error occurred.
Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.


As for the hit count, I thought initially that this figure showed the number of words allocated to me for post-editing. However, I noticed at one point that this figure changed even when I was away for several hours. I started jotting down the value and it kept changing although I didn't work on the project. It seems this hit count represents the total volume available to all translators, similar to crowdsourcing platforms.

Last but not least, their QA procedure provides for heavy penalties on rather ambiguous and arbitrary grounds.

To sum up my investigation, I didn't like this MTPE experience at all and withdrew from the project.

====================

An update following the discussions with another participant in this project and with the PM.

1. I have found where I can see the number of words post-edited by myself.

2. The value in the screenshot above (8878) shows the total number of hits, i.e. segments, available to all translators. Therefore, the translator does not have any fixed number of words to post-edit by the deadline (it seems this is another crowdsourcing platform offering low rates but placing tough requirements).

My conclusion remains unchanged: Withdraw from the project and get back to good old translation per see.

[Edited at 2021-03-20 12:54 GMT]


Dan Lucas
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Peter Shortall
Elena Feriani
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
Vadim Kadyrov
Dalia Nour
 
Agnese Miraglia
Agnese Miraglia
Italy
Local time: 19:06
English to Italian
+ ...
My - currently pretty bad - experience with the ISAAC Project Mar 23, 2021

I am an English to Italian translator and I chose to try working on this project. They informed me that they'd pay me about a month after the batch was completed by the linguist team, as every linguist could work as much as they could, without any limitation.

I just had to correct any mistake made by the MT and the agency that hired me said that the MT was so good that I could've been able to correct more about 2500 words per hour. Obviously, most of the sentences were completely wr
... See more
I am an English to Italian translator and I chose to try working on this project. They informed me that they'd pay me about a month after the batch was completed by the linguist team, as every linguist could work as much as they could, without any limitation.

I just had to correct any mistake made by the MT and the agency that hired me said that the MT was so good that I could've been able to correct more about 2500 words per hour. Obviously, most of the sentences were completely wrong, so I definitely did less than 2500 words per hour - which was fine, I thought that possibly I was just unlucky and that I was getting the worst hits of all.

I focused a lot on this job for some days and - as per the agreed rate - I had to be paid more than 600 euros. The batch was completed and I received a mass email informing that some of us linguists had cheated and translated via another MT, and that the other linguists will have to work on some new hits.
As I said, I corrected much of the hits due to big translation mistakes made by the MT, so I was pretty sure I'd have new hits to work on. I checked the site just after receiving the e-mail and the task boxes for English to Italian MTPE had disappeared - the same task box which allowed me to check any feedback from the QA team. Only three of the 700+ hits I delivered were checked by the QA team before the task box disappearance. It's been a week now and I can't even see said task boxes. I can still see the Italian to English task boxes, which is of no interest to me. It's like they removed me from the Italian translation team, but kept me in the English one.

I am also receiving various e-mails regarding the new Italian to English batch, and I am replying to them informing the team of the disappearance of the English to Italian task boxes. I am also writing the woman who hired me regarding this. Just one agency member replied to me saying that it's a technical error and that they're working on to solve it - but why didn't they inform me, if that were the case?

By now I'm pretty sure that I won't get paid the job I did, and I couldn't be more disappointed. The agency that hired me also had a high score on Proz.com, so I trusted them.

I'll updated this post if I have news, but for now I suggest you not joining the project.
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Peter Shortall
 
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Three translation agencies contacted us for MTPE and HT projects, all the same requirements.







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