Pros
- Great insight into where the translation industry is at as a whole, especially finding out how much freelance translators can be paid - A stepping stone for those new to the world of work - Pick up many transferable soft and hard skills - Get really good at working under pressure - Develop great working relationships with other employees (trauma bonding) - WFH possible
Cons
- Translation quality is not so much a dirty word as thoroughly disregarded. Quantity and turn around time is prioritised at the cost of quality. - The only job progression is taking the place of people who are leaving. The long-term hiring process appears to be constantly bringing on fresh meat to replace those who have burnt-out. - Little support from management for TACs on pushing back on deadlines, leaving the production side to do the work of project managers in expectation management. - Customer demands are not adequately managed, leading to unrealistic deadlines and additional pressure on the production team to meet them. - Translators are sometimes made to cover TAC (Translator Administratihve Coordinator) responsibilities despite little training and experience, leading to potential mistakes. - Working with a timesheet system causes a lot of undue stress. Your work time is monitored from the start to the end of the day. This, theoretically, includes bathroom breaks. - Unpaid overtime is expected, to meet already unrealistic client deadlines. - On top of all of this, pay is low for the amount of work involved. Yearly pay rises are small percentages and the only way to guarantee a good pay rise as a TAC is to wait for a completely different job role in the company to become available.