alexpgp | Treading on thin ice...

From a recently sent email:

Dear Ms. N.,

I was under the impression that you were contacting me on the basis of my having satisfactorily completed two previous projects for [your company] (for Ms. V.) in 2006 and 2007. With that in mind, I am at a loss to understand why another sample translation would be necessary.

I am also taken aback that [your company] would consider asking professional translators to do a sample consisting of 2,100 source words. Please forgive my frankness, but among my clients, files of such size are no longer "samples," but "assignments."

I may end up short one (not very active) client at this end of this, I don't know.

However, clients that ask translators to do overly large samples may have other bad habits lurking, as well.

Cheers...

UPDATE: The story has a happy ending, to the effect that payment is offered for the requested translations, which had not been made clear in the original email. Based on my previous relationship with this client (excellent, BTW), I am inclined to go along with this interpretation.