If I had a dollar for every translator… oh wait January 10, 2013
Posted by Jill (@bonnjill) in Business practices.trackback
“Translator Registration – Become a Verified Translator
To start receiving translation projects from Diamond Translation you need to Verify your account. Once you verify your account, our translators support team will review your application and certify you as a translator and a member of the Diamond Translation Community. If you have a Paypal account you will need to make a $1.00 payment (1 USD) using your account, so we can link your Paypal account to your profile and pay you for the translations (We will refund you those 1 USD along with the payment of your first translation).”
I sincerely hope no one who reads this blog falls for this. Better to miss a chance to work with a new client then to get stuck in an unpleasant situation where you don’t know what’s going on with your sensitive data. There are many other clients out there who seem much more trustworthy
Musings from an overworked translator 
I got the email to register for the company and thought it smelled fishy (0.10€word from an Italian agency seemed oddly high) so filed it without acting. Now you’ve confirmed it. Thanks for spreading the word.
Kind of registering at any ProZtitution sites in order to get f***ed.
Competent translators have no need to do cyber-streetwalking. There are a lot of decent client out there. Get in touch with them and they are smart enough to identify competent translators for their specific projects.
Tricky, tricky. Hey, nobody gives you anything. And if it’s to good to be true it’s, well, too good to be true.
In some jurisdictions (here in Ontario, for instance) this could even be illegal. Requiring payment in return for the prospect of future work amounts to a kickback.
I did not even get as far as reading that gem. The introductory e-mail saying Hello to nobody was enough!
http://wrightonthebutton.com/2013/01/09/every-language-pair/
It does sound very fishy! Never pay to work, even 1US$
Hey, if 10 000 people pay the dollar (why not euros if this company is indeed European?), that’s a nice amount for the agency.
Fact: a lot of unqualified translators are flooding the market and they are desperate for work, so they may indeed fall for this. I think they are the target here.
Thanks for the post, Jill. “We can offer you a rate of 0.12€/word for translation and 0.05€/word for proofreading.” Too good to be true, isn’t it? There are 2 dedicated threads on Proz. Believe it or not, some people have fell for it.