TransPerfect reviews

The pay here is ridiculous. Go to the Salaries section and check for yourself - those are pretty accurate. Most Project Managers work 10-12 hours on a daily basis and, regardless, get about 40k a year (sometimes less). Overtime work is a gift that the employees give to the company. Also, the trend is to hire very young, fresh-out-of-college kids. Project Managers are basically all foreign kids needing working visas - this keeps them tied to the company and makes them accept almost unbearable working conditions. There are no in-house linguists, so all the translation work is outsourced to freelancers or other translation agencies, resulting in us having little or no control over the actual quality of their work. Attention to quality is not as crucial as the importance of saving money. Our budgets are so tight that we have to hire the cheapest translators, then negotiate even lower rates, and this goes to reinforce the negative reputation that this place already has (both on the translators' and clients' side). If you are a professional with expertise in this environment, I suggest you check other localization companies. I would only recommend this place to fresh graduates who want to have a brief and intense NY experience, while learning something about the industry.

a) We used to constantly lie to the linguists and sometimes to each other. Most "client reviews" are just proofreader's opinions. We used to tell linguists "the client has an issue", while the project was still in production. It's psychological terrorism through lies. Similar practices sometimes among employees. The management from America has established this malicious culture, it affected us all. b) At Transperfect all linguists involved in a project may be paid less than half of a project's budget. I felt ashamed asking people for highly specialized work at such rates. I had to use good linguists to secure a client (samples, glossaries etc), and promised them "a big project coming up", and then we would send the bulk of the work to the cheaper ones. To those that worked to get us the client, we would lie that "the client cancelled it". Our promises worth nothing in this company, I felt I was not a trustworthy person. Project managers are trained in methods to lower the linguists' rates, as if the linguist are fat cats (!). The "production metrics" for linguists are based on no scientific or empirical evidence whatsoever and are unrealistic. Cheaper linguists accept them and then we consider them responsible for the entire project. Sales charges clients with "formatting", which is actually done for free by the linguists (!!!). Shameful, and not standard in the industry at all. In one case the linguist asked me for formatting fee, which we charged the client at 3x what the linguist asked me, and I had to refuse it. c) There is no work-life balance whatsoever, you must stay until you' re done, and you will end up hanging out with your other colleagues. The financial crisis has made many people willing to accept such conditions. The company is extremely profitable and has no reason to resort to exploitation of pretty much everyone, that's really low ethics.