This company asks current employees to leave good reviews to improve their image, but it's widely known in the translation services industry that TransPerfect is a sweatshop, where employees are paid badly, burnt out, pushed out and replaced, the turnover at this company is extremely high for a reason.
It’s appalling how the Production teams treat linguists, with the only importance being on very low rates and asking linguists to deliver ridiculous amounts of work within inadequate time frames.
The industry standard is 2000/2500 words a day, but this isn't considered for ‘Rush’ jobs. As a Project Manager, you’re told to get linguists’ rates down as much as possible (to criminal amounts) and will be reprimanded if you pay a standard rate that the linguist has asked for. The PMs proofread the work themselves and flag ‘linguistic’ issues to the linguists, even if they don’t speak the source language, which doesn't really make sense, as surely a qualified linguist should be doing this, even in English? One pair of PM eyes will be checking up to tens of thousands of words alone, as well as juggling all their other tasks. This isn't an accurate or reliable method, especially for medical files.
We were also using linguists that were not completely qualified/certified for medical subject matter (Chinese into English medical documents).
The linguists are then harassed to make amends and are not paid for the additional time spent. The linguists are expected to drop everything and provide this free service, even after being paid peanuts to rush through the job in the first place. PMs will even ask linguists who didn't translate/proofread originally to make these changes for free. Translators and proofreaders please avoid this disgusting factory; you will not be treated with any respect or paid fairly.
Spiteful managers on a 'power trip' with no people skills, will obsessively micromanage and note down your every move. You'll be reminded of the hierarchy when you flag that the intense managing process is anxiety-inducing. The respect and kindness you receive here is entirely dependent on whether you suck up and get through an impossible amount of work each day. The expectations aren't feasible and you feel like you're working in a sweatshop, with the same repetitive actions every single day. There's a total lack of focus on your strengths as an individual. Every minute of the day must be accounted for here. ‘End Of Day’ summaries and constant check-ins during the day are something I've never observed in a workplace before, this obsessive watching and constant need to know your daily output is put in place for you to be tracked intensely and later scrutinized.
Sucking up and trying to be friends with management are the only ways to progress here and have a chance at a decent working life. The way 'Team Leads' treat and interact with senior members of staff is obviously different to how they'll interact with standard workers. There’s a total lack of equality in the workplace here and unlike anything I've ever experienced before, the hierarchy is uncomfortably defined.
They promote out of favouritism and you have no voice if you're the bottom of the 'food chain'. If you have no seniority at all, expect to be treated badly and like a ‘nobody’, because that's literally what you are in this company. When you flag misconduct to HR, they will not help you or offer you any constructive advice. Despite being such a huge international company, there aren't any trade union representatives. Preference is always given to management and once you've complained, goalposts will be moved to unrealistic expectations as part of an action plan to push you out, which is disgraceful. There's no job security and the level of ‘bitchiness’ and ‘clique’ hierarchy within the all-female London teams is reminiscent of a horrible high school, instead of a professional place of work.
Employees that have moved internally to join other teams are openly referred to as 'traitors' by management, which highlights just how judgmental and cruel this environment is.
There's no job progression here, only for the people who have been in the managers' pockets since day one. Employees are put on an extremely slow path to any sort of progression, with words such as 'Senior' and 'Executive' being added to 'Project Manager' to give the illusion that you're actually moving forward in life, but essentially your job stays the same and wage only increases slightly, but not enough to actually reflect the amount of time and energy you're expected to pour into this company.
Work-life balance here is terrible. You're expected to work through your hour of unpaid lunch to get through the sheer amount of work set, as well as stay late every evening. You’ll be judged for not staying late. There's a complete lack of culture and team spirit here. Free fruit twice a week and free pizza once in a while, that you eat at your desk whilst continuing to work, does not build real company culture. Treating people like human beings and not robotic work machines is probably a good starting point. Strong individual friendships in teams make it seem like there's positive team morale, but this isn't the case. These friendships are made from bonding over how difficult and stressful the job is, how you never feel good enough and how intense and negative management are.
There's no Exit Interview when you leave (most likely because the turnover is so high), which reiterates how this company has no interest in hearing employee feedback.
They're not willing to change at all, so there's no hope for improvement, avoid at all costs.
