Incoming!... mail.

I get a lot of inquiries from companies looking for translators. Most such queries are sent to multiple recipients, which tells me the sender has only one principal criterion for selecting candidates—lowest price—no matter how much lip service the text of the email may pay to translation quality and translator qualifications, experience, and subject knowledge.

Today, for example, from a company in Alexandria, Virginia, comes an email that announces:

We currently win a contract of translation authentication where the translation will need to check, review and authenticate the translated documents. We are anticipating up to 200 hours work for [redacted by alexpgp]. Please let me know your rates. We are expecting to choose linguists with the lowest rates. Let me know if this is something of interest to you.

On the one hand, it is refreshing to see a potential client (not!) expressing themselves so frankly on the subject of rates. On the other, given the quality of this missive's text and the sender's predilection for cheap labor given the nature of the work under discussion, I expect that, somewhere in the world, the entity that awarded a contract to this company is in for a very bumpy ride.

Cheers...