Where I've been
A quick programming note: I've been away for a while due to job-related issues. I've been experiencing a problem with one of the major translation agencies with which I work: one of the quality reviewers started harassing me and posting joke reviews of my translations, marking me down for ridiculous, "funny" reasons. To give an example: I translated a short biography from a martial artist who mentioned he had begun his training in 幼少, a word which can mean anything from "infancy" to "early childhood." I opted, naturally, for "early childhood" in my translating, but this was marked as a major error; I was told that I should have said he started training in his crib. In another job, I was docked for translating the word 合宿 as "training camp," despite translator resource Weblio listing over 50 examples of that very translation and the text outright stating that this was a camp to which employees were going for training. The scoring itself was also wrong; whereas two points (out of 10) are supposed to be deducted for "major errors," this reviewer has taken off as much as 9+ points for each "problem."
This started after I got hired by the agency last spring to tackle difficult, long-standing jobs on a part-time salaried basis (as opposed to independent contracting on a job-by-job basis, which is how translation usually goes), so I imagine this reviewer is perhaps unhappy that I and not his or her own preferred candidate received this promotion. (The reviews are consistently antagonistic and provocative in tone, so there is an apparent personal grudge at work here. I've since learned from employee interviews on Glass Door etc. that reviewers at this company will go after translators who are taking jobs they want.) Furthermore, this person at the same time suddenly made himself or herself practically the only reviewer scoring my work - they've done nine of my last 10 job reviews - so after almost four years of solid review scores in the high 8s to 10, I'm now clinging to the 7s or so.
My scores affect what jobs I can take, and the recent reviews have cut me off from the well-paying technical documents and scientific papers I used to tackle for the agency. (There aren't many translators who can do this work, as translators usually come from a liberal arts background and don't cross over into the STEM fields much.) I approached my supervisor about the situation, and she directed me to a form where I could request re-reviews. Apparently, though, in a flaw in the system, the initial reviewers are the ones who determine whether they screwed up enough to merit a second look at their scoring by another party. Thus, all my requests were summarily rejected, with the fields on the forms where the reviewer is supposed to justify his or her decision left blank.
I then contacted HR, giving a few brief examples of how the reviews were demonstrably wrong and violated company policy, and I requested that other reviewers score my word. The department, however, was extremely defensive and made it clear that it stood by my harasser annd would allow his or her behavior to continue. The HP rep refused to address any of the joke translation errors and claimed the whole scenario was my fault, because...well, because. I can't countenance that, so I left the position. My immediate supervisor was upset, because I was apparently doing a good job handling the tougher translations and keeping the queue in a problematic language pair moving, but there's nothing she can do about this situation.
The problem is that my work with this firm composed a good portion of my income, so I have to do a bit of work to reallocate my job workload. This involves building profiles, getting references (trickier than it sounds, as lots of agency translation work is handled under weird NDAs), editing sample translations to omit any info that could personally identify clients, etc. I'm secure financially for a good while, and I have other sources of work, so this is more a lengthy inconvenience than a huge blow. But it angers me that this reviewer was allowed to harass me for doing a good job, to play a practical joke with impunity and get away with clownishly incompetent reviews that wouldn't pass muster in a second-year Japanese class. Hopefully, though, this'll spur me to find more work with better-paying employers.
Anyhow, that's why I've been away.
This started after I got hired by the agency last spring to tackle difficult, long-standing jobs on a part-time salaried basis (as opposed to independent contracting on a job-by-job basis, which is how translation usually goes), so I imagine this reviewer is perhaps unhappy that I and not his or her own preferred candidate received this promotion. (The reviews are consistently antagonistic and provocative in tone, so there is an apparent personal grudge at work here. I've since learned from employee interviews on Glass Door etc. that reviewers at this company will go after translators who are taking jobs they want.) Furthermore, this person at the same time suddenly made himself or herself practically the only reviewer scoring my work - they've done nine of my last 10 job reviews - so after almost four years of solid review scores in the high 8s to 10, I'm now clinging to the 7s or so.
My scores affect what jobs I can take, and the recent reviews have cut me off from the well-paying technical documents and scientific papers I used to tackle for the agency. (There aren't many translators who can do this work, as translators usually come from a liberal arts background and don't cross over into the STEM fields much.) I approached my supervisor about the situation, and she directed me to a form where I could request re-reviews. Apparently, though, in a flaw in the system, the initial reviewers are the ones who determine whether they screwed up enough to merit a second look at their scoring by another party. Thus, all my requests were summarily rejected, with the fields on the forms where the reviewer is supposed to justify his or her decision left blank.
I then contacted HR, giving a few brief examples of how the reviews were demonstrably wrong and violated company policy, and I requested that other reviewers score my word. The department, however, was extremely defensive and made it clear that it stood by my harasser annd would allow his or her behavior to continue. The HP rep refused to address any of the joke translation errors and claimed the whole scenario was my fault, because...well, because. I can't countenance that, so I left the position. My immediate supervisor was upset, because I was apparently doing a good job handling the tougher translations and keeping the queue in a problematic language pair moving, but there's nothing she can do about this situation.
The problem is that my work with this firm composed a good portion of my income, so I have to do a bit of work to reallocate my job workload. This involves building profiles, getting references (trickier than it sounds, as lots of agency translation work is handled under weird NDAs), editing sample translations to omit any info that could personally identify clients, etc. I'm secure financially for a good while, and I have other sources of work, so this is more a lengthy inconvenience than a huge blow. But it angers me that this reviewer was allowed to harass me for doing a good job, to play a practical joke with impunity and get away with clownishly incompetent reviews that wouldn't pass muster in a second-year Japanese class. Hopefully, though, this'll spur me to find more work with better-paying employers.
Anyhow, that's why I've been away.