So let me explain here. As Mike has told the respected members many things already, let me take it further to explain to you that who is guilty.
Yes, I did told Mike that the errors/mistakes are not that serious as I sent the files to other translators and clients for their review. In my opinion, if you have the people on payroll who can do the proofreading, it takes quite less time to proof read things. But when I told Mike this, he sent me this email(check out the dates as well as headers):
Subject: RE: FW: Translation Errors
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 16:38:07 -0700
From: "Mike" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "akhilesh sharma" <>
Akhilesh,
Scott is dealing with this situation directly and has been doing a great job for us, but I just have to interject myself briefly because I can hardly contain myself after reading over your last email.
I log all of my Instant Messenger conversations and went back today to look over our original conversation. The conversation is way too long to post here in its entirety, but I would be happy to send the entire thing to you if you like. In your own words you said the following about the project: “it includes translations, proof reading”, “i assure u high quality and on time deliveries”, and “as you know it needs to be translated with high precision.” To me this meant we were going to be receiving content that was ready to be copied and pasted directly to our website. Telling me what we paid for includes (again in your own words) translations that are proof read and of high quality means we should be receiving exactly that.
Of course Sandy told you everything looked fine. SHE DOESN’T SPEAK FRENCH, GERMAN, SWEEDISH, OR RUSSIAN. Saying that Sandy should have caught it is just flat out insulting. The only way we even found out about the problem to begin with was by sending a couple samples to a friend of ours in Europe who speaks French and German. Her reply back to me was “This sounds a bit funny, can you please send me the original files?” Immediately following that we decided to hire a French translator and within a couple days we discovered the low quality of the work we were receiving. That is when we brought it to your attention. It was about 5 business days after hearing from my friend and only when we were 100% sure what we had was crap. Since then we’ve had to hire a Russian, German, and Swedish translator just to get the project completed. So now I’ve paid you to translate the file and I’m paying 4 full time employees to translate it all over again, or fix the crap you sent us. Obviously some files / languages are better than others, but about 99% of the files we received have at least one error in them. I would say that 90% have at least a handful of errors in them.
We hired you for one reason and one reason only… speed to market. We knew that we could have you do the translation for us, and do it much quicker since you already have an established team. We also knew we were going to have to pay a premium for this. I was and am fine with our decision on paying this premium, but to have to pay the premium, and then get crap which delayed the project just makes my blood boil. We expected to have the site launched in all the languages you translated for us (with the core content) almost two months ago now. Instead we are out over 6 figures, have 4 new employees, and no translated content up on our site. So, as you could imagine I’m really not that happy…. and I’m even less happy now that you are trying to push this back on us.
Don’t reply back to me again asking for us to understand your situation. I don’t give a crap if the guy that translated the files does quit on you and I don’t care if it takes you money out of your pocket to fix it. If you gave us what you promised us from the beginning we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Understanding your situation would require us to pay for the problem and that just isn’t going to happen. We paid for A and got D. I WANT A….. or compensation for the time, effort and energy we had to invest ourselves to make it that way.
Scott will be back in the office on Monday and will be available to discuss this with you further then.
Mike Jackness
****************************************
Alright, then I sent this email to him:
Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 22:27:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: RE: FW: Translation Errors
To: "Mike" <>
CC:
Mike, simply tell me whose fault is this when you are reporting the errors after 3 months? Don't you think an internal QC should be done on any received matter? All companies do that. And do you mean ALL languages have been translated so badly? Then you might be thinking that my other clients are stupid who are paying us since 4-5 years!
As I can see, you will not understand what I'm trying to say- NO ONE can come to know about the problems unless an internal QC team reviews it. We had to push for speedy deliveries and it may have resulted in errors in russian, but I still want to say that in any project, an internal quality check should be done alongwith translations.
Yes, I had said and I still say that the quote I sent you includes translation and proof reading. And my translators did the proof reading, but may be because of project volume, the russian guy did it in hurry and got mistakes- I'm sorry for that but we also expect time to time reviews on translations so that errors are found and fixed.
I will pay my translator again for all the work- what a big loss this has been. No comments at all in 3 months and 8 days and then suddenly telling us that all the work is a crap and needs to be re done.
Will ask my russian translator to look into this from today.
*******************************************
Ok, now- I sent him some more emails to send me the files to be amended. Check this out:
Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2007 08:41:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: RE: [None]
To: "Scott" <>
Ok, I look forward to hear from you.
Also, please let me know what problems are there in particular in these russian files. Any suggestions?
Regards,
Akhilesh sharma
Scott <> wrote:
Hi Akhilesh,
Our Russian translator is off today and will be back in the office tomorrow. I will send you my reply after we review the documents.
Thanks,
Scott
From: akhilesh sharma [mailto:
[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 9:48 AM
To: Scott
Cc: Mike
Subject: [None]
Hi Scott,
I have asked my translator to do proof reading on a few files and he has send me 4 files initially. Please check and let me know if they are ok. If you still don't find them good, I'll get the proof reading done by another translator of mine.
Also, please let me know what problems are there in particular in these russian files. Any suggestions?
*******************************
Keep on checking the dates and emails dear members...Then I sent this email to him:
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 06:56:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: Re: FW: Russian proof read
To: "Scott" <>
Hey buddy,
Thanks for reply. I'm awaiting the list of files which need to be corrected.
You said "As we continue to build our own translation team...", did this mean you will develop the next projects in-house? If this is the case, kindly let me know so that I could accept other large contracts. I'm accepting only small projects in the 5 languages we are doing for you so that we could work almost exclusively for you.
But I really want to do the next projects for you and arrange the things in a more organised way. Now when you have QA people to check any problems, we can fix any errors without wasting any time so that we don't have to face this situation again.
Obviously I'll make sure the translators don't work in that hurry and will take care of those 2 points I mentioned before.
Hope you will continue with us in the next project
Best regards,
Akhilesh Sharma
Scott <> wrote:
Hi Akhilesh,
These 4 documents were significantly better translated and proofread. There were far fewer mistakes/errors and the content did flow better. I would say that this quality of work is acceptable still not to the standard that we would like but at least our Russian translator understood the content and would be able to use these documents. The areas that were a bit awkward are highlighted in yellow. As for suggestions, the same as I have said before…slow down proof read the work so it can be used on our website.
As we continue to build our own translation team we are finding that it will take about 5 to 6 weeks to proof read the most critical content before we can launch the language. That is not counting proofreading news articles. This is time and further expenses that we were not counting on.
I will provide to you tomorrow the specific pages that we feel need to be redone.
Regards,
Scott
***************************************
Then I sent this one!!:
Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2007 22:58:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: Waiting for the list
To:
Still no list of files to be proof read...
**************************************
Then this one:
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 08:13:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: List of russian files
To:
Hi Scott, I'm still waiting for the list of russian files to be corrected.
****************************************
Ok, after that, I received this reply from Scott:
Subject: RE: List of russian files
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:37:08 -0700
From: "Scott" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "akhilesh sharma" <>
Akhilesh,
Our Russian translator has finished the core site content after 4 weeks of revisions and is currently working on the poker site reviews and poker pro sections. She is finding the quality much better. In her opinion the translator who worked on these section did a good job as they are only needing minor correction which are easier for her to do than to resend then . As she comes across files that need major revisions I will send them to you.
Thanks,
Scott
From: akhilesh sharma [mailto:
[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 9:13 AM
To: Scott
Subject: List of russian files
Hi Scott, I'm still waiting for the list of russian files to be corrected.
******************************************
After his email, I sent this reply:
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 07:54:39 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: RE: List of russian files
To: "Scott" <>
Hi Scott,
Only one translator has worked on all the files. I was also amazed that how is it possible that the files are so bad in quality as Mike was saying them as "crap". That's why I told you that some files may not be so good because of hurry the translator did but this is not the case with all files.
Also, I'm still awaiting your answer on this question I have asked previously:
You said "As we continue to build our own translation team...", did this mean you will develop the next projects in-house? If this is the case, kindly let me know so that I could accept other large contracts. I'm accepting only small projects in the 5 languages we are doing for you so that we could work almost exclusively for you.
But I really want to do the next projects for you and arrange the things in a more organised way. Now when you have QA people to check any problems, we can fix any errors without wasting any time so that we don't have to face this situation again.
Obviously I'll make sure the translators don't work in that hurry and will take care of those 2 points I mentioned before.
************************************************** **
Best regards,
Akhilesh Sharma
Scott <> wrote:
Akhilesh,
Our Russian translator has finished the core site content after 4 weeks of revisions and is currently working on the poker site reviews and poker pro sections. She is finding the quality much better. In her opinion the translator who worked on these section did a good job as they are only needing minor correction which are easier for her to do than to resend then . As she comes across files that need major revisions I will send them to you.
Thanks,
Scott
*********************************************
So my dear friends, I hope you are checking the dates. This email Scott sent me has the date 13th of August, 2007. He or Mike didn't sent ANY file to be amended untill 28th of August. On 28th, he sent me and email which is quite long, let me post a few things here(but if anyone wants to see all emails, I'll be more than happy to forward them all to you):
Subject: Translation errors
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:50:09 -0700
From: "Scott" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "akhilesh sharma" <>
CC: "Mike" <>
Hello Akhilesh,
Attached are some files that that needed to be redone entirely as well as over all issues that were pervasive throughout all files.
Here is what a few of our translators said of the work (in blue)
“Part of the work was much better than the others. I also think that the translator should have done some research about Poker before translating to avoid most of the errors related to terminology. There were verb errors throughout most files”
......
....(in these dashes, he has written about translation errors in general, if you wanna see, please let me know and I'll paste whole email here)
....
........
We did not anticipate having to pay for the work twice, once to you and again to our new employees to proof read the docs and ready them for publication. As Mike and I have stated earlier, this project did not goes as expected. We would like to see a discount on the outstanding $41,000 invoice for our troubles on this project.
I look forward to your reply.
Scott
***************************
Then I sent him this email:
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:31:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: Re: Translation errors
To: "Scott" <>
Dear Scott,
Many thanks for your email. As I have said before, all companies do QC on their end to achieve what type of translations they are looking for which didn't happened in this project and hence the problems. I have noticed that the errors you are talking about are mostly the different opinions of 2 different translators.
In the translations, many a times we have to keep things simple and in their original context so that they could be easily understood by the readers. Rest of the typo mistakes, as I have said before were committed because of hurry, I'm sorry for that. And saying that our translators don't know ther poker terminology and are not providing native quality....I'm sorry I can't accept this. If this is the case, why over 21 clients are using our services again and wasting their money?
There will be no fun of stretching it too long. I'll be able to provide a discount of 3000 USD in the invoice amount(I'm now losing almost all the profit). Anything extra will mean a loss and I really don't think the work is that bad.
To be very honest with you brother, if I ask my translators to comments on the attached files, they will present a lot of valid reasons to prove they are right. Again, NO 2 translators can agree 100% on a translated file. Also, I agreed to re translate any files which you need to be re done but you didn't sent any and that time is also gone now. You should have sent the files at that moment as mike also told me.
Now if we start re-translating as per your QA people style and methodology, it will take a lot of time. That's why I'm offering this discount only because of sake of an ongoing business relationship.
Please feel free to amend my invoice and deduct 3000 USD from it. Kindly send me an email when you send money as I really need it...I already send invoices after so long time.
Thanks and regards,
Akhilesh Sharma
***************************************
Then, on 3rd of September, Scott sent me this email:
Subject: RE: Translation errors
Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 13:58:32 -0700
From: "Scott" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "akhilesh sharma" <>
Hi Akhilesh,
A $3,000 discount was not exactly what we were looking for. We have spend about $15,000 in additional labor costs getting these languages fit to publish. This is not a settlement that would guarantee future work from us. Please reconsider the discount amount.
Regards,
Scott
*************************************
As obvious, since they didnt sent me any files to be amended, I declined to provide this huge "discount". I further agreed to provide a final discount of 4000$ only for the sake of business relation. Check this:
From: akhilesh sharma [mailto:
[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 11:13 PM
To: Scott
Cc: Mike; Sandy
Subject: RE: Translation errors
Hi Scott/Mike,
Thanks for your email. However, you have asked for too much. Even if you work with a leading translation company @ 0.16 USD/source word, you still need to do some sort of quality check at your end to make it as per your style. I'm in this field since 5-6 years and I also know what it costs to get the content "fit" to publish, from the translators who work in-house.
And why you didn't sent me the content for rechecking when I agreed to do it? Now that time is also gone, you have done it yourself and now you are demanding 15000$ discount! Unrealistic!
I have now shown the files to 2-3 leading translation companies in UK for their review. I work with those companies so don't worry about confidentiality of your content, they are my friends. And all of them have said that the quality is quite Ok....I still accept the mistakes in starting files of russian but after that, the rest of files were quite ok as you have also said.
Also, please let me know if you want to ask ALL my clients about our work quality and I'll send you the details of ALL of them. Feel free to ask them why they are wasting their money on the translations which are so bad that need corrections costing 15000$ on a 375000 words project!
I'm not a 3rd class guy who in greed of next projects, go this much down and leave my self respect behind. You have literally said that the translation quality is 3rd grade, crap and only because of this, I'm showing content to the leading translation companies to know what's so bad in it for which I'm being blamed. Companies like Pokerlistings(we work for them through webguidepartner) and many others check the translated content to make it their way because no 2 translators can agree 100% to a translated content. You may ask them, they are paying us @ 0.11-0.13 USD/source word for big projects, why they are wasting their money- may be you wanna ask them.
If you don't want to continue with us, no problems at all. I agreed to a lowest rate of 0.08 USD/word only because of the fact that the work is big as well as the company is so esteemed that it will be a honour to work with you guys and it will boost our reputation too.
You have my next invoice amount with you and you can ask for ANY discount Scott, 15000, 20000, any amount. I'm sorry, I can't bear it anymore- I'm resending the invoice with further 1000 USD deducted and I will not provide any further discount now. Please send the money and I will not ask you again for any future project, it's your decision whether you want to continue with us or not and I respect every decision of yours. Money is not everything for me.
Best regards,
Akhilesh Sharma
***************************
Now, as Scott requested, I sent him my bank info. Then, he sent this email to me:
Subject: RE: Bank Information
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:18:46 -0700
From: "Scott" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: "akhilesh sharma" <>
CC: "Mike" <>
Hi Akhilesh,
Mike and I have discussed this issue at length and we do not feel that we got what we were promised which was complete proof read, ready to load translated documents. A $4,000 discount on a project of this size is not realistic given the extra time and expense that we incurred in cleaning up these documents. Again we did not even get to the 800 plus news articles… that would be just too expensive on our part. We will pay $26,886.72 of this last invoice to offset the $15,000 plus that we spent in proofing this project.
Regards,
Scott
***************************
In reply to this, I sent this email:
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 23:03:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: "akhilesh sharma" <> Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
Subject: RE: Bank Information
To: "Scott" <>
CC:
This is enough Scott. You guys are harrassing me now. I know very well what it costs to proof read the documents. Any why you didn't sent me the documents for proofreading when I agreed to? Why didn't you asked for a discount at that time? Mike sent me a email saying so many bad things like crap quality, this, that etc. saying me to proof read the docs. And when I agreed to it, you emailed me after so many days that your russian translator is saying the rest of content is a lot better.
Now when you know that you guys have my money and I have no wayout, you are demanding this much discount? What was wrong with you when I agreed to do the proof reading, why didn't you sent the docs then. It was my stupidity that I agreed to provide a 4000$ discount, I should not give any discount to a client who behaves like this. Still, I agreed to provide a 4000$ discount and I want the invoice amount(37886.72 USD) I sent you, not even a single penny less.
And I DO NOT want to work with you people again. I remember one of my clients said you have to be very careful in this online poker industry, it has many people who may ditch you. I never expected that this will happen to me. I will never include your website in our portfolio and will try to forget that I ever worked for you. Please send the exact amount as soon as possible, nothing more, nothing less than 37886.72 USD. I do not want to discuss anything else.
***************************************
***************************************
So this is it! I request all members to please read this and decide who is guilty and who is innocent.
The bottomline is, if I was READY to do the proof reading, then why Mike didn't sent me any documents to be redone. And if they are saying one thin in start, they should stick to it.
On which base they had deducted 15000 US dollars from my invoice amount? I request all of you to take your precious time and carefuly read all the emails above. What was my fault when I agreed to each and every thing demanded by PSO? They still did this to me...!
I'm also going to post some jpeg images on this post..(I dont know whether it allows to post images in forum..I dont visit forums quite often). Those jpeg's are the chat transcripts between me and mike, they will be a concrete evidence of what this company has done to me, you members will be amazed to read what he has said even about pokerlistings.
Thanks,
Akhilesh Sharma
Reply to Mike with evidences
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