To clients

[Blueberry]

Dear Mr. Z.,

I feel duped and I'm angry. You came to me saying that you just needed my stamp, now you admit that in your home country that this type of work isn't done well. "Isn't done well" is an understatement. Your countryman did an appalling job, no wonder it was turned down by the authorities here.

If you'd been honest about it from the start, I'd either have said that I need a week for the job or I would have suggested you look for somebody else.

You're in a hurry for the final result? Sorry, but I'm so used to that in this occupation. You're in a rush because you didn't set the work in motion early enough yourself. That's your problem. It's not my job to take up the slack and work over time and/or ignore my other clients' needs to help you out. It's painstaking work, requiring high levels of concentration. I need breaks and I take them, breaks of hours or even a day or two.

 

Also because you said you 'just' needed my stamp, I gave you a cost estimate which is way too low. I did say I might have to charge more, but if you'd been upfront and honest and at least told me there would be quite a lot of correction necessary, I'd have given a higher estimate right away. Now I've had two impatient emails from you, putting the pressure on. In neither of them did you say anything about money. If you want me to work faster, then you'd better signal willingness to pay more!! Not that I won't demand more, but that's hanging over my head too. I'm going to have to re-negotiate. Things hanging over my head make me slow down.

Yours sincerely

[Boy22]

Well vented.

"Things hanging over my head make me slow down."

I suspect your inner critic will be having a field day over this, tell them to button it!

[Blueberry]

Dear Dr. A,

No. I'm not going to do this work for you and your wife. You're asking me to fudge the truth. I don't like doing that. It makes me anxious. You're asking me to fudge the truth to the consulate of a country which has just murdered one of your countrymen in a consulate. No thanks. I'm going to let somebody else take that this work on.

Also you were putting the pressure on. I don't like that. I said I wouldn't manage before Monday. You said that was fine, you needed it Sunday. That means you're not accepting my limit, you're trying to get me to move faster than I can. In retrospect, I think you're manipulating. You yourself took a long time to contact me the first time, then you waited almost a week to turn down your wife's appointment. You did apologise but said you'd been really busy discussing things. I'm sure you had but it's still my time and money.

And then you put the pressure on for me to fudge the truth in written form for your country. Sorry, just the thought of giving my personal contact details to the consulate of a country like yours makes me feel uneasy. Especially since you yourself opined that you come from a really nice country that gets a lot of undeserved flak in the West. It's not as if you said climate-wise or geography-wise your country is really beautiful, but you can understand people in the West being apprehensive because of the politics.

*, I don't even need to JADE all of this, I can just say "No!" and I will.

[Boy22]

Um, just wow! I want to vomit all over them.

[Three Roses]

I am loving the boundaries you are setting in such a clear manner in these letters! Even tho the clients aren't seeing them, the clarity will remain in your mind. I love it.

[Blueberry]

Thanks 3R!

Boy22: Unfortunately negotiating and refuting the stuff from Mr. Z. is all in a day's work for a certified translator. I'm noticing my limits more and more. Yes, I can translate but slowly and it triggers me, giving me blank-brain on account of FOO stuff. On top of that all this negotiation is just too much for me. It takes too much out of me.

Thanks for your validation though, it's a nice image for me. Somebody on my side vomiting on difficult clients 

[Blueberry]

Dear Mr. K,

Seriously?!?!! You really thought that €10 I stipulated was going to cover 2 A4 pages of dense text!?? It would make sense to assume I'd translate the enclosures with the letters, but you didn't say so when we discussed by phone. And again the price ought to have been a clue for you that we were talking something different! Those €10 are for the short business letters without the enclosures and it's a bargain!

This is also what you get for going on about "they really are very short texts, no technical or legal terms, they really are very easy, I'M sure you can do them and you'Re the only one who can" nonsense. You got your just desserts here, even my T said that. You didn't accept my initial "No. Sorry on account of long-term illness I'm not translating that kind of thing anymore." You're a wheedler, you're manipulating just in a nice way, but it's still manipulation. You're used to selling your products and your arguments and this time it's exploded in your face. So what are we going to do??

[Blueberry]

Well, now we've had a further phone call. You admit after always talking price down in the beginning discussions that you didn't really know much about translator prices anyway. Actually on second thoughts, that's probably not completely true either. You know because in our beginning discussions you mentioned "line prices" and "character count". Who would come up with those ideas if they didn't know about translator prices? I know a friend of a friend did the previous translations for you but if she did them free-of-charge or in exchange for products from your company I'd be really, really surprised!! Just not what you expect.

________________________________________

Not to client: So now I might be doing these for Monday and i've sold myself down the river again price-wise. I should probably speak to another translator this weekend.

[Three Roses]

People can be so infuriating! 

[Blueberry]

People can be so infuriating! 

They certainly can!

[Blueberry]

Dear BrS,

Look, could you just accept my contract the way it is and stop pussy-footing around!! For goodness sake if you don't like it, go find somebody else of my quality of teaching who's willing to agree to week-by-week dates with you. It's just not normal in this country, which I've already explained.

ime though it's not just inconvenient and time-wasting for me, but it's bad for the student. You need a certain amount of minimal pressure to keep going with the lessons. Sorry, I've been through it all before: "Of course I'll come regularly. / I'm going to do 2 hours of homework every week so I only need to come to lessons every 2 weeks / I'll even send you the homework via email in advance to correct...." etc ad nauseam. It never works. There's always some excuse not to do homework, or even come to the agreed lesson. The excuses I used to hear - mind-boggling. You won't be one of those people, you say. How on earth do I know that in advance? And why should I believe that?? Experience says otherwise.

You want to learn a foreign language from scratch in 10 lessons??!? That's impossible. You want 10 lessons because you're not sure about me and you hope to find somebody else. Good luck. Ha ha. By now I'm fine with it if I lose you, considering all the time I spent emailing you explaining the hows and whys of my contract, not to mention translating it from the local language into English especially for you. I did offer you the possibility of coming another 2 lessons until your final decision, but I also stipulated that I need a contact from your company so I know who to invoice for those 2 lessons. No response from you on this. You're coming in a few minutes, at least I hope so, and I intend to be firm. I want clarity, now. It doesn't matter to me if we spend the whole lesson discussing the contract - you're paying for that.

[Hope67]

HI Blueberry,
Just wanted to say that I am impressed by this letter, it is to the point and says many useful things.  I hope that your appointment with your student went ok.
Hope 

[Blueberry]

It went better than expected, thanks. So she'll be coming for 10 lessons at least. Then we'll see.

[Three Roses]