Monday, March 8, 2010

Transperfect Translations 3 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10016 212-689-5555

HOLD THE PRESSES: 



OK, think about what's going on here.  Transperfect and related companies as evinced in many many reviews of the organization is a nasty, vapid organization who systemically is/are willing to be deceptive to, mislead and lie to clients.  There is a corporately / culturally and systemically fostered substance abuse initiative.  Employees are regularly encouraged to tell "half truths" (purported to be part of the orientation process). The impetus behind the above (nypost/nydailynews) referenced he said she said sturm und drang is the removal of ~ 1/2 a million dollars from a slush fund?? type of account? Do you think this would be going on if the rats in charge were not trying to cover themselves prior to pending ... fill in the blank.  One ought not be surprised if the above is merely proverbially smoke prior to evidence of fire.    

What percentage of Transperfect employees do NOT know what an ADVERB is ??!!??


It's only a matter of time [before] a hungry investigative reporter will burst the ... TransPerfect PR bubble, and release some less than glowing information  




From RipOffReport: I present this report to blacklist Transperfect for [their] ... unethical practice[s].  Any company that [conducts themselves as does TPT] should be avoided.



The [positive] reviews in here [posted at glassdoor] are FAKE!!!”

  

Depressing sweatshop … ; TPT's business model is quite simple: hire young college graduates promise a shining future, work them till burnout, pay as little as possible, do not invest in them and recruit on a permanent basis to replace the defectors.

Since TransPerfect knows that the average employee will last less than a year, all processes have been prescribed in detail so basically anyone can do the job just by clicking on the fields on your screen. This makes for terrible drudgery, also because the software is antiquated and requires entering the same information in many fields over and over again. While the work itself is easy, what makes the job hard is the enormous amount of jobs you need to handle. You will find yourself clicking away like mad, with no time for a lunch break and two to four hours unpaid overtime every day.

Toxic work environment: one person's gain is the next person's loss, cynical middle management whose pay will depend on the number of unpaid overtime hours they will manage to extract from their reports. Culture of "anything goes as long as it makes us a buck". Workers are a replaceable commodity at TransPerfect.

The worst employment experience possible … Project Manager (Former Employee),  New York, NY; I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year; Cons – This company ruined my life for the entire time I was there. 60-80 hour work weeks just don't come close to justifying the horrendous salary, given NYC cost of living. I would have to fight to take my vacation time because the busy season never ends. Taking a sick day was considered the worst thing an employee could do; I know multiple co-workers who were asked to write fake reviews for this site; that's how morally bankrupt this place is; Management is entirely apathetic to the toll the hours and stress put on its employees. While upper management makes ridiculous bonuses, it's the production staff that's under-trained, underpaid, and overworked. I have NEVER had such awful stress induced work dreams in my life. At least, when I made it home in time to actually sleep; This job isn't worth it even as an entry level position. If you go, be prepared to give up your life for a company that couldn't care less about yours. Advice to Senior Management – Actually care about your employees. No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Advice to Senior Management  Jobseekers, look elsewhere. This company does not deserve your commitment.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Update, more stay aways from The Ides of March (March 15) 2014 backwards to November 2013:
Transperfect reviews current (3/14) backwards to November (11/13)
March 9:
Culture& Values, Work/Life Balance, Senior Management, Comp & Benefits, Career Opportunities all 1/5 except comp/benefits 2/5
3 people found this helpful  
Account Executive (Former Employee)
New York, NY
I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than 3 years
ProsYou get a lot of responsibility, if you like getting loads of work without any clear direction and then being yelled at for mistakes, this is the place for you , you are owning it. congratulations and welcome to the world of mind games at TransPerfect
ConsEverything about this place is awful. Senior management does not value a single person. There are some in middle management that try to make some changes, but all that effort is shut down by senior managers. Those in power are a rat pack with no clear experience in accomplishing what they ask their people to do
Advice to Senior ManagementInvest in your people, acknowledge your current model is broken, this is not high school, instead of asking people to write fake reviews just change the environment,
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company
March 7, 2014
All rankings 1/5
1 person found this helpful  
Anonymous Employee (Former Employee)
I worked at TransPerfect
ProsGrowing business, lots of potential in the sector but management does not prioritize the right needs
ConsHigh turnover, poor management, low salaries
March 6, 2014, rankings ALL 1/5
person found this helpful  

Burned out and underpaid employees

Project Manager (Former Employee)

London, England (UK)

I worked at TransPerfect full-time for less than a year
ProsMet some lovely people. If you exit TransPerfect alive, you can survive anything!
ConsWhat you will encounter is unpaid overtime and overtime is all that you do there. My contract stated that I have a 1 hour lunch, but I was only on very rare occasions able to have a 20 minute lunch. The workday was supposed to start at 8:30 am and end at 17:30 pm.
In reality, my workdays lasted from 8 am till 11 pm and I was finding it difficult to find time for bathroom breaks. The projects just pour in and you can't do anything about it. You need to final eye the translations and deliver lots of projects at the same time.

As some of the reviews already say here, you are constantly micromanaging and trying to avoid a disaster if you should deliver a project late.

It goes without saying that there is absolutely no work and life balance in this company. Working there has seriously damaged my health. I have anxiety and can't get rid of hand tremors.
Advice to Senior ManagementPlease do something about the working hours and the amount of work you assign per person. What is going on in the company at the moment is extremely unhealthy and I think even illegal. I'm not sure how you can get away with exploiting people like this.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend
March 2, 2014, all rankings 1/5

Greed is Good at TransPerfect

Project Manager (Former Employee)

Utrecht (Netherlands)

I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year
ProsI have met some good people, all of whom have left TransPerfect in the meanwhile
ConsAll you will do, is trying to push translators to work for you at ridiculously low rates. Tactics used to get translators' cooperation are making promises of better paid jobs at some point in the future (just do this one for next to nothing, next time I will make it up to you), providing misleading information about the nature of the job ("piece of cake, should not take more than two hours" when you know this is a hell of a job with lots of tables and formatting), claiming the client "has got an issue with your translation" in order to cut payments while no negative feedback was received at all, and overcharging clients for services not performed (skip the proofreading, they won't notice - add formatting, they don't know what this is anyway, charge "project management", they won't protest).

TransPerfect senior management is fully aware of these shinigans, and have in fact raised the minimum mark up from 230 per cent to 270 per cent, forcing project managers to lie and cheat even more in order to meet these ridiculous demands.

Working at TransPerfect will destroy and sense of self esteem. You will become very good at telling half truths or downright lies: this is the only learning you will get from your job.
Advice to Senior ManagementYou are so self absorbed'with your own superiority that any advice is useless, so I won't waste my time.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company
February 28, 2014, rankings all 1/5
2 people found this helpful  




Localization Translator (Current Employee)


Utrecht (Netherlands)


I have been working at TransPerfect as a contractor for more than 8 years


ProsI loved working for Overtaal before they were taken over by TransPerfect. Overtaal was one of the few agencies which did not focus solely on short term gains but genuinely cared about the quality of the work performed, its employees and the external translators. After Overtaal had been taken over by TransPerfect, maximising profits became the only concern.


ConsTransPerfect has a very poor reputation among translators. Rates are among the lowest in the industry and you will often find yourself in the hands of unqualified project managers who do not have a clue about translation (most likely they are in their first jobs, straight after college, no linguistic background, minimal training).

After Overtaal had been taken over, there was a true exodus among inhouse staff, who were replaced by unqualified and underpaid starters. Quality suffered enormously, and a large number of major accounts were lost. Rates paid to external translators were cut by about fifty per cent, which again led to an exodus of translators (who are referred to by TransPerfect as "vendors" - a telltale sign). Payment delays were the order of the day and having to wait three months to be paid became normal. In addition to this, TransPerfect charged 20 dollars "payment costs" per transfer, which was taken off every invoice. I lost several hundred dollars because of this.

My cooperation was asked to win a large EU-tender. TransPerfect asked me to submit a signed CV, stating that I would undertake to work for TransPerfect should the tender be won. However, one of the project managers (who has left since, of course) told me that while the CVs of the best-qualified translators would be submitted as tender documents, TransPerfect had already decided that none of them would be used for the job, since cheaper translators were available. The fact that these translators were largely unqualified was completely irrelevant. The CVs of qualified, experienced translators would be used to win the tender, but the work would be given to others who were unqualified and inexperienced - but cheap.

I refused to send in my signed CV and this was the end of the cooperation with Overtaal/TransPerfect. Thankfully, the ploy did not work out and TransPerfect did not win the tender.

Judging from LinkedIn profiles, virtually all project managers I used to cooperate with have now left. Judging from translation jobs sent to me through other agencies, many ex-Overtaal clients have decided to move their business to another agency and I find myself translating the same documents for the same clients again - but not through TransPerfect.


Advice to Senior ManagementAs a relative outsider, it's hard to give advice. It would seem to me that TransPerfect's sole focus is on making money no matter how, Employees, clients and translators are all seen as legitimate sources of income. I doubt if this business philosophy is sustainable.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


February 20, 2014, rankings 1/5 except 2/5 comp/bennies, career ops
5 people found this helpful  



DBD (Former Employee)


I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than 3 years


ProsI made some great relationships with colleagues who are now my friends. Interestingly, none of them are still with TPT.


ConsI cannot believe how the senior management team treats their employees. If you want to be looked down on, made fun of, and constantly criticized, this is the place for you. the senior leadership team seriously thinks they are a bunch of celebrities and act like it - refusing to talk to anyone other than themselves at social events, despite yelling at your manager the next day if you don't approach them and say hi. They will also do anything they can to somehow take over your accounts and give them to DBD's/DSA's that work under them so they collect the revenue for it.

Hours are absolutely horrible. You can expect to be e-mailed and called 24 hours a day, and if you don't respond to an e-mail within minutes, you get in trouble. You also have to send a "EOD" Report at the end of every work day - listing IN DETAIL what you did all day long. If your manager or a VP decides your "EOD" isn't good enough that day, they REPLY ALL and humiliate you in front of the entire company (the EOD report goes to the entire sales organization, right up to the CEOs).

I was at that company long enough to really understand how everything works behind the scene. I was lucky when I first started in that I reported to a VP who actually seemed to care about the people who worked under her. Unfortunately, she left the company after my first 2 years there and it all went downhill from there.

It's really sad how stressful and horrible the work environment has become, because the colleagues I worked with were some of the nicest people I've met. Unfortunately, we all bonded through the horrible stress we were put under by sr management. What's even more pathetic is that both Phil and Liz are very nice people and are very smart. I am shocked that they have let their sales organization turn into this circus.

If I can offer any advice, DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME HERE. I am serious when I say that I developed anxiety from working here. i've been in a new AMAZING job for 6 months, and I stlil have nightmares about getting e-mails from production at 3 am saying a project was never started. I still get nightmares that a VP responded to an EOD and yelled at me in front of the company. It is NOT worth it - and this is from someone who was making close to 6 figures as a DBD. It took a huge toll on my personal life - my boyfriend of 5 years was ready to leave me because this job was making HIM so miserable.

also, I recently heard from an employee that is still there that they have blocked the company from accessing glassdoor.com. So all of the positive reviews you've been reading are fake. They know how horrible it is to work there so the sr leadership have been tasked with creating positive fake reviews. This is a fact.


Advice to Senior ManagementYou're all great sales people, but you are horrible leaders. You need to learn the difference and start treating employees with respect.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


February 13, 2014, rankings 1/5 culture/values, work/life balance, 2/5 Senior Management, Comp/bennies; 3/5 career ops


people found this helpful  


Don't waste years of your life here



Project Coordinator (Current Employee)



New York, NY



I have been working at TransPerfect full-time for less than a year


ProsYou become close with your co-workers because you're all going through the same difficulties. Similar to a pledge class, I suppose.


ConsTransPerfect's business model is based upon having people work as much unpaid overtime as possible. The business environment is hostile, where departments only interact to yell at each other. Outdated software and processes make what should be easy work, time-consuming. The volume of work that will be assigned to you will be too much. Quality suffers because everything is rushed out the door because there are SO many other jobs that need attention. You can theoretically have a lunch break. If you do leave for more than 20 minutes for lunch, however, you will come back to a stalled project, and tons of emails from people angry that something has gone wrong. That's why no ones does take lunch breaks.


Advice to Senior ManagementIf you've spend the majority of your working career at TransPerfect, you may not realize how toxic the environment is. You need to see how crazy and harmful the culture is at TransPerfect--this is not normal.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


February 13, 2014, all rankings 1/5


person found this helpful  


Exausting, terrible too must fastpaced while the organization is not ready



Director (Former Employee)



Jersey City, NJ



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for less than a year


ProsCan't find pros yet..Still I need to fill up 20 word mimimum.


ConsThere will be tons of emails you will receive overnight, spend all day on sorting out and deleting email. I wish I could escape from this kind of work. With a lot of work with good compensation, I would not complain.but ended up like you work 24 hours due to useless conference calls and interference. The company is so small that the work is not organized and settled, many clients started complaining about receiving coldcall. It is not important how much you can expand the market but how you can retain your customers. Quit thinking of 3000 mailers a month will do the trick. Clients come to you not because of mailers and pamphlets, but because of quality and ISO9001 and ENXXX and nice service.


Advice to Senior ManagementDo not micromanage and don't hire fresh graduate if you want to keep meddle on things. Experienced people with great career know how to act responsibly. Don't be so bossy and do not treat your employee as your own kids


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


February 11, 2014, all rankings 1/5


people found this helpful  


Unappreciated, underpaid, discriminated against and just offended



Anonymous Employee (Current Employee)



I have been working at TransPerfect full-time for more than 3 years


ProsMy co-workers across positions are fantastic people. If it wasn't for everyone helping each other out I don't think any of us would have made it past 6 months.


ConsWhere to start... Low pay for very high stress positions. Churn and burn company culture across the engineering, project management, and account management teams.

Younger male employes with less experience paid more than female employees.

Lots of emphasis on blame and not solving the problem.


Advice to Senior Managementbe polite to your employees, just because you're paying us doesn't mean you have the right to be rude. An occasional "Thank You" or "good work" would go a long way.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


February 9, 2014, all rankings 1/5


5 people found this helpful  


Work like a slave with unqualified managers



Anonymous Employee (Former Employee)



I worked at TransPerfect


ProsWorking with many nice people and able to work remotely at home. Getting paid on time. It's a good place to start if just graduate.


ConsInternal conflicts all the time. Seems like an enemy between each other rather than a team. Ruled by unqualified managers. Low salary and stressful and expect OT most of the time without paid.


Advice to Senior ManagementJust stick it up yours


February 6, 2014, all rankings 1/5


8 people found this helpful  


Please understand that this type of company is not the norm and something better exists!



Account Manager (Former Employee)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for less than a year


ProsYou find out what you DON'T want out of a company and a career. I have no positive comments but have to keep writing to adhere to the 20 word minimum.


ConsI am writing this review to deter anyone who is applying/thinking about applying for a job at TransPerfect to STOP in his/her tracks and withdraw the application immediately. I can honestly say that I have never felt more psychologically abused in my life. I attended a top tier university, graduated with honors, and arrived at TransPerfect ready and willing to embark on a fulfilling career. How stupid was I.

From day one, every tiny mistake I made was pointed out and exaggerated to the point where I had no time to do my job because I constantly had to justify/correct tiny "errors" that even from an objective viewpoint, were absolutely negligible. I was mandated to copy my manager on every single email I sent to a client/the production team, and without fail, in seconds I would receive a response informing me how many "mistakes" I made and how they needed to be fixed immediately. This never stopped. For over half a year, I felt undervalued, unintelligent, and thoroughly unappreciated. I did my absolute best, but that was never good enough. According to my manager and the "higher ups" such as the VPs (who are mostly sadistic sociopaths), I was utterly and completely expandable. Thus, I decided to make TransPerfect the expendable party and promptly evacuated.

I am now working at a company in which I am trusted to get my work done, only get (maximum) 10 emails a day (none of which are micromanaging in tone), and receive ONLY constructive criticism/positive remarks on my work. I also earn significantly more a year for a job that is far less demanding and requires that I only be there as long as it takes for me to get the job done. That's how a job should be...and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Recent grads, PLEASE heed my advice. No matter how much you think you need a job straight out of college, this company isn't worth it. You will find better over the summer, or even by the following winter. All my fellow graduates have done so. You can too!


Advice to Senior ManagementIf Management was willing to receive/act upon advice, the reviews on this site would be 100% more positive. TransPerfect is a hopeless case.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


January 31, 2014, all rankings 1/5


3 people found this helpful  


The positive reviews are part of a media campaign and have nothing to do with true experiences of TransPerfect employees



Project Manager (Former Employee)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsWorking at TransPerfect allows you to experience first hand the destructive influence malicious management has on company morale and integrity


ConsBasically, everything has been said in the previous reviews. Sure, companies exist to make money and there is nothing wrong with that. At TransPerfect, though, an extra element is brought in: dishonesty, deceit, abuse, fear - all of these are OK if they bring in a buck. Your manager will lie to you when it suits him, you will be expected to lie to clients, promises will be broken as easily as they were made. In our department, my colleagues and I worked about twenty hours' overtime every week. These hours were not accounted for in the regular hour system, but recorded in an Excel sheet kept by the general manager. When we asked how we would be compensated, we were told the budget did not allow any extra payments and it would be time for time.

When we wanted to take the accrued hours, we were told we would have to reach new targets first. When we had reached these targets (which were insanely difficult to reach and necessitated more unpaid overtime) we were told we could not take any time off because we were understaffed and we could not be missed in the office. Hiring extra staff to deal with the super high workload was forbidden because it would cost money. When we protested, we were told that nothing our manager had promised was binding, because he had not put his words in writing, and verbal promises, as a matter of company policy, did not count. We lost all our overtime: I personally lost about 200 hours.

When we contacted TransPerfect's CEO about this (after all, TransPerfect prides itself on its open door policy) we did not hear anything for three months. Then we received a curt email from a PA to the CEO, who informed us that TransPerfect management stood fully behind the actions of our manager.

The facts speak for themselves: worldwide, TransPerfect employs about 2,500 staff. Until about two years ago, every month a company-wide email would be sent to welcome the new hires. On average, between 150 and 250 people would be on the monthly new hire list, but the total headcount remained stable at about 2,500. This means that for every new hire, one person leaves. And that means companywide staff turnover is close to 100 per cent per year.

When TransPerfect realized that anyone with a basic understanding of numbers could figure this out, they stopped distributing the list, but nothing has changed and the exodus has remained at the same incredible level. I worked at TransPerfect for almost two years and when I left, I was the person with the longest tenure (out of about sixty people).

The positive reviews posted here are very obvious fakes, written by an agency to counter the true experiences of real employees. Notice how genuine reviews (almost always negative) tend to come in regularly over a period of months. Then, all of a sudden, there is a burst of glowing reviews, all five-star, all posted in the course of one or two weeks. Notice how vague and general these fake reviews are. Notice how often the word "meritocracy" appears in each of these reviews - probably part of the briefing given by TP to the copywriter. I would not be surprised if the positive reviews were all written by one and the same (trainee) copywriter, who is paid to post such reviews. One consolation: paid by TransPerfect means paid next to nothing, with six months' delay.

Do not waste your time working here.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


January 27,  2014, culture values, career opps,  work/life balance 1/5, senior management 2/5, comp&benefits, 3/5


5 people found this helpful  


A growing company hell-bent on burn-and-churn employee treatment



Project Coordinator (Former Employee)



New York, NY



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsThe people are amazing and I made some friends that I know will be life long contacts and this company provides a great insight into the translation business. It will give you the experience necessary to find a good job.


ConsWorking at Transperfect is a bit of a mixed bag as a Project Coordinator. You will love the people you work with and your manager, but you will hate working 12-14 hours per day. This company is the typical post-college modern day sweatshop that has a ridiculously high turnover because people eventually realize they can get jobs where they are respected and do not have to work 70+ hours per weak. This company typically hires kids out of college who don't know much better and make them feel like they are lucky to have the job. Overall, I cannot say that this was a positive experience in anyway. I feel that the only reason this position might be beneficial is when you realize your own potential and leave the company with some knowledge of the translation industry. In a recent interview with a translation company, a hiring manager looked at my resume and said "Transperfect huh? So how long did you work there? I am always interested to see what is the lowest number I can get." This company is a complete joke and is constantly obsessed with making more money at the expense of the health and motivation of their employees. This company is led by people who had almost never held another position anywhere else, and it is absolutely damning to the culture. It produces people who are content with being exploited and they try to impose that upon you as well. This company is a white collar sweatshop that has limited potential for growth. I would not recommend this company to any of my friends entirely because they can prove themselves in a company that actually recognizes success. They are quick to hire anyone because of their high turnover, so if you are a fresh graduate, please take the time to really consider this before accepting the first job offered to you.


Advice to Senior ManagementPlease work on your work-life balance because you end up sacrificing quality of translations because of how much people end up despising this company. Many people who work for this company are often very dissatisfied and management never tends to listen to any review or complaints. Please address complains at an early stage and actually try to fix some of the things people complain about.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


January 22, 2014, culture values 2/5, work/life balance 1/5, senior managemetn3/5, comp&benefits 1/5, career ops 4/5


6 people found this helpful  


Growing opportunity but within the very stressful work environment



Project Coordinator (Current Employee)



New York, NY



I have been working at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsDevelopment opportunities within a big company with a relatively short history. Short ladder to an upper management.


ConsRidiculous salary, horrible compensation for hard work. Finger pointing work environment - in every situation, the company will find one person to take all the blames. Employees need to be prepared to protect themselves in every single situation. No appreciation for its employees nor forgiveness for any type of errors.


Advice to Senior ManagementPlease do not make the employees feel that they are replaceable although they are in fact replaceable for you.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company


January 22, 2014, culture/values, work/life balance, senior managmeent, career ops 1/5, comp/bennies 2/5


4 people found this helpful  


There is a reason why the turnover is like a fast food company



Project Coordinator (Former Employee)



Newton, MA



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for less than a year


ProsI gained good experience I take elsewhere (where I dont have to work 80 hours a week and am bullied)


ConsIt you are over the age of 35 bullied and ostracized by younger employees they hire out of college as they do not know any better about how people are to be treated...run in a high school clique fashion; unprofessional, abusive


Advice to Senior ManagementStop running Crimson like its a high school clique. Learn to treat people with respect and how to talk to them


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


January 15, 2014,


people found this helpful  


Eye-opening, no work-life balance.



Project Manager (Former Employee)



Barcelona (Spain)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsGreat people, team-atmosphere, learned to be independent and responsible for myself, formed global relationships, free happy hours monthly!


ConsNo work-life balance, awful pay, even when you are not at work you stress about everything that you did that day and everything you have to do the next day. You are not considered a "human" at the company, only a computer operator. Perfection is demanded at all times, managers have been known to yell at people publicly for not meeting very high expectations. You meet amazing people, and become friends, and then they quit.


Advice to Senior ManagementEither hire more people in production to be able to meet the high demand and high workload, or pay project coordinators and project managers more so they feel as if the 60+ hours a week that they spend in the office, and not sleeping, is worth it.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company


January 15, 2014


people found this helpful  


Not to be recommended



Director of Business Development (Former Employee)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than 3 years


ProsThe relief when you close the door behind you for the last time when you have managed to break free of this operation.


ConsI worked as a Director of Business Development at TransPerfect. Although my job title may have been impressive the job comes down to endless cold calling, envelope stuffing and telling half truths or downright lies to naive clients. Everyone in Sales does this, it is a fully accepted way of making your money. Clients are considered suckers, and if they are stupid, they deserve to be cheated.

The overall atmosphere is very negative: if a client places a big order, there is no feeling of gratitude for getting the business but just glee at how clueless the client was to buy your story. I have never encountered such a strange attitude anywhere else. The game here is not about winning, but about seeing someone else losing out.

Many people around you will be heavy drinkers (in TransPerfect-speak: work hard, play hard) and co-workers will try to steal clients from each other (in TransPerfect-speak: a healthy, competitive environment). The game here is to set up your reports for failure. If they cannot handle the stress anymore, it's your chance to claim their accounts and start collecting commission.

Earnings are based on recoverable draw. Your sole income will derive from commission, which is paid as an advance against bonuses. TransPerfect will do its best to avoid paying out your commission by posing insane requirements about mark up and profitability. If a job is billed late (something outside your control), you lose your commission. If minimum mark up is not made, same story. If a client pays late, no commission. If a client has a quality issue, your commission will be docked.

This intricate system of fines, deductions and penalties is applied throughout the company and sales, project managers and translators alike will be penalized on any pretence. The customer is always charged in full, of course. Woe the client who pays a bill twice because of an accounting error. They will never get back the amount they overpaid. And guess who they will be harassing to get their money back? The sales person, of course, since he is the point of contact.

When you give in your notice, you will not receive the bonuses owed to you. TransPerfect will recalculate your recoverable draw, and invariably come to the conclusion that you owe the company, instead of the other way round.

Avoid this place.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


January 6, 2014 rankings ALL 1/5


9 people found this helpful  


I was asked to provide assistance to fire my colleague



Project Manager (Former Employee)



Utrecht (Netherlands)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsNone, but you only realise this when you have left TransPerfect and have had enough time to recover from the experience


ConsYou travel to work with a stone in your stomach and return ready to cry. One of my colleagues had a dispute with the General Manager and I was called by HR in London to provide evidence which could be used against my colleague. They pretended this was just an employee survey, but it was quite clear to me what they were after and I refused to corroborate the statements they presented to me.

Nevertheless, my words were twisted and my statements were rephrased in such a way that they shed a very unfavourable light on my colleague. When I saw what they had made of my testimony I protested. I received a very brief acknowledgement from HR, but later the twisted version was used anyway. Three other colleagues were asked to help build the case as well, and I suspect they were too scared to protest and cooperated. We never discussed the matter among ourselves because we felt too embarrassed by having been brought in such a situation. Three months after my refusal to cooperate, my contract was terminated. This is exactly the way the colleague with the dispute had said it would end, in spite of the fact that my team manager had claimed that I had nothing to worry about.

This all happened nearly a year ago, and I felt so miserable after this experience that I was unable to apply for another job until quite recently. Working at TransPerfect completely damaged my self esteem and many of my co-workers have had the same experience.

There is absolutely no point in working here. There were fewer than forty people working in Utrecht, but there was no way you could get to know everyone since the turnover is so incredibly high.

It was a horrible experience.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


December 28, 2013


All rankings 1/5


6 people found this helpful  


Terrible management - exploitation and abuse are the core values of this company



Project Manager (Former Employee)



Utrecht (Netherlands)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsYou learn about the operations of companies where "Greed is Good" is practised to perfection


ConsThe pervasive management technique is instilling fear. The method used is quite simple: you will be praised highly and be told how very special and talented you are, and what great future is in store for you with TransPerfect. Then, when you make the slightest mistake, are unable to do overtime on a particular day or dare to question the decisions of your manager, you will be shouted at, humiliated in front of all your co-workers, be told you are a piece of s. and it would be better if you found another job. The next day, you will be praised again, told that you should not take the treatment of the previous day personally and should understand that your manager was just following orders from his manager in Barcelona. Then, after a week, the abuse will be repeated, followed by profuse reconcilliation again. This is how lover boys prey on their victims and make them completely dependend: your manager will play the same game with you.

Staff turnover is unreal (between 50 and 100 per cent in any given year), pay is just above legal minimum (for project managers with a university degree) hours are long, overtime is mandatory (and unpaid). The unpaid hours are presumably compensated with time off, but taking time off is linked to meeting unreallistically high targets. You will hardly ever reach any of these, and lose the unpaid overtime hours when you quit your job. This is the standard system used at TransPerfect, and copied from the Barcelona office.

Absolute dead end job - no financial prospects, no prospects of promotion in terms of job content. You will spend your days sending translation jobs to the cheapest translators you can find, trying to cut their rates even further, and fighting with Sales about impossible deadlines. This is a white collar sweatshop where workers are just a commodity; they can be used and discarded at will.


Advice to Senior ManagementThere is no point in giving advice. In fact, in one of your memos you stated that the manager I just described was a fine example of everything TransPerfect stands for. This says it all.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


December 27, 2013 all rankings 1/5


6 people found this helpful  


Don't work in production.



Technology (Former Employee)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsOutside of production there are actually some decent jobs. I worked in technology, and although I completely identify with the rest of the reviews here, it wasn't like that for me. I worked 40 hour weeks every single week, was paid well compared to the rest of the company, and got along great with my team. However, I realize I am a small, small minority.


ConsStay far, far away from anything in the production department (QA, Quotes, Project Coordinator, Project Manager). My office was 90% production and I saw people breaking down and crying in the lunchroom on a weekly basis. People were paid slave wages for 60+ hour work weeks. The only people that stuck around were because they weren't talented enough to find anything else. Very sad.


Advice to Senior ManagementHonestly, there's no saving this company. Just shut the sweatshop down, you'd be doing everyone a favor.

By the way, everyone knows the five star reviews you guys leave on Glassdoor are fake. So pathetic. Oh, and the fact that Glassdoor is blocked on the corporate network is very telling.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


December 26, 2013 rankings culture and values, work/life balance, senior management 1/5


people found this helpful  


Learning experience... Who I do not want to work for...



Account Manager (Current Employee)



Miami, FL



I have been working at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsAdvancement opportunities, training program, allows you to work with independence...


ConsFraternity culture, cold calling, all they care about is a mark up on sales...


Advice to Senior ManagementStop partying so much...


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


December 23, 2013 all rankings 1/5


people found this helpful  


Dutch job seekers: stay away!



Project Manager (Former Employee)



Utrecht (Netherlands)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsYou get to know the mechanisms of a corporate monster that aims to exploit as many translators, pm's and other staff as possible, all for the gain of a 2.3 mark up.


ConsA culture of fear and aggresive disrespect, extremely low pay, ridiculous working hours, brainwashed management, and a work ethic that is based on survival of the 'fittest' (people who say yes to everything).

Employees at Transperfect can be divided into two categories: those who have a life, morals, values and empathy and those who live their lives based on fear, power and control without a sense morality. Those who have some sense of right and wrong usually do not stay very long. Those who want to "work their way up" in the company at any costs spend their days sucking up to management, treating translators like crap and have overall lost the ability to use the word no, sacraficing their colleagues' well being in the process. Why? Because TPT never accepts no from an employee, especially a pm.

I am ashamed that transnational companies such as Transperfect are able to bring their poisoning, rigoureus, disrespectful and greedy business model into a country such as Holland. Let's boycot the s. out of companies like these and stop them from spreading corporate violence.


Advice to Senior ManagementStop basing your company model on the dead human ape and go into the 21st century with an attitude of balance.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


December 17, 2013


All rankings 1/5


5 people found this helpful  


The worst work environment I've ever been in.



Customer Service Associate (Former Employee)



Tempe, AZ



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsI had a lot of downtime between phone calls to work on homework. The job was very easy.


ConsThe work environment is horrible. Several accounts of contracted workers not being paid at all. Empty promises of upcoming raises that never happened. Employees promised health insurance if full-time but never given it. Have no idea how the company decides who to pay what, because the most experience and hardest working employees were making considerably less than their less experienced counterparts. The management doesn't care about it's employees at all. Management would either be very underhanded and not tell you if there was something they wanted you to do differently and instead complain about it to everyone but you. Upper management know to curse and verbally berate employees.

The schedule often came out at the last minute. Never had the same schedule.

Management is not open to new ideas at all, even if they are extremely easy to implement. Even simple changes most go through upper, upper management who doesn't know how the company works on the ground level and is extremely reluctant to make any kind of change.

This company will do anything it can to exploit and take advantage of it's employees.


Advice to Senior ManagementListen to your employees.


No, I would not recommend


November 19, 2013 culture and values, senior management, comp&benefits, career opportunities all 1/5


2 people found this helpful  


Worked as freelance translator from about 2001 to 2008



Freelance Linguist (Former Employee)



New York, NY



I worked at TransPerfect as a contractor for more than 5 years


ProsGood place for a newbie translator to get a start, because they have tons of work


ConsThe projects are always in a rush and rates have been very low since 2008. According to translator talk boards, translators stop accepting assignments from TransPerfect as soon as they find work sources that pay better.


Advice to Senior ManagementMake sure the freelancer you contact is qualified. I still get several work offers a day even though I haven't accepted one for years, and most of them are outside my stated capabilities. For example, I get asked to translate into UK English when (as I've told them repeatedly) I do only US English. This is a recipe for poor work, because many new translators are hungry for anything they can get, and optimistically accept anything that comes over the transom.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company


November 6, 2013 all rankings 1/5


1 person found this helpful  


Project Manager



Project Manager (Former Employee)



New York, NY



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than 3 years


ProsNice view of Manhattan. You can listen to music while working.


ConsWorst company I ever worked for. Completely unethical and greedy.


Advice to Senior ManagementStop acting like Andrew Carnegie (i.e. be of the opinion that every worker that works for a low wage deserves it, otherwise they wouldn't work for it). Try some modern approaches of motivation and live by example.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


November 2, 2013


1 person found this helpful  


Shameful pay, 10 hours a day



Project Manager (Current Employee)



New York, NY



I have been working at TransPerfect full-time for more than 3 years


ProsThere are some nice people in this place.
Some of the company's tools are useful and quite interesting.


ConsThe 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.


Advice to Senior ManagementHire more experienced people, pay them decent salaries and invest in the quality of the translations. Stop overworking your employees, or start paying overtime.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


October 30, 2013


11 people found this helpful  


Why



Project Coordinator (Former Employee)



I worked at TransPerfect full-time for more than a year


ProsYou learn how malicious management can spread a negative culture, and try to avoid it in the future. The only positive is that you appreciate other agencies when you finally leave TPT.


Consa) 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.


Advice to Senior ManagementManagement thinks that they should make money by lying to the clients, cheating the linguists and abusing any sense of "work hours" of their production employees. Most other agencies live very well by not exploiting and not lying. I know that this is the core mentality of certain people, so it won't change. Any advice would hit on deaf ears.


No, I would not recommend this company to a friend



November 2013!


Why

Project Coordinator (Former Employee)

I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
Pros – You learn how malicious management can spread a negative culture, and try to avoid it in the future. The only positive is that you appreciate other agencies when you finally leave TPT.
Cons – 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.
Advice to Senior Management – Management thinks that they should make money by lying to the clients, cheating the linguists and abusing any sense of "work hours" of their production employees. Most other agencies live very well by not exploiting and not lying. I know that this is the core mentality of certain people, so it won't change. Any advice would hit on deaf ears.
No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


Notorious for bullying translators and banned from http://Proz.com. Need we say more? [Yelp!, as in Help!]
The reviews for this place are prob the worst I've even seen!
Transperfect is f*cking awful, and I don't say that as a competitor.
I can say that their language work is absolute malpractice-level garbage.
Transperfect is a horrible outfit. NEVER WORK WITH THEM.
Several people didn't get paid for over a month because Transperfect couldn't mail the checks to the right place. One of these guys got personal assurances from the president, and it still didn't improve.The associates would roll their eyes about Transperfect and their incompetence. Also, a translator told me that they would do things like agree to your rate for a job, then after you had sent them your work call you back and say, "you were too expensive, we're not paying your full rate."
They sent two [expletive deleted] to make a "one pass, haul ass" walk-through. They reeked of arrogance and just seemed like boneheads.
We took to calling it "kurukurepaa-fekuto" (A Japanese pun, based on 'kurukurupaa' which means "empty-headed.")


[JD Underground]

 

 


 

  • “Unethical business practices”


  • Translator and Quality Checker (Current Employee)

    New York, NY

    Consno concern about quality, but will fabricate excuses about quality to cut translator pay. Full time staff have very little knowledge about the translation business. Their reputation among translation professionals is very poor. I have seen them staff translation projects with people who were not native speakers of the target language and had a very limited understanding of the source language as well.

    Advice to Senior Management – Think about the long term - you have succeeded in trashing your company's reputation among employees past and present as well as in the industry in general.


     



     


     

    Some good people, horrible company


     

    Project Coordinator (Current Employee)


     

    New York, NY


    I have been working at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year

    ConsWhat can i say that hasn't already been stated here in the other reivews? Read them, unfortunately, they're all true. I've met some great people here, guess how many of them are still at TPT, none. That should be enough for you.
    If not, know that you will be treated like an idiot most of the time, talked down to by sales, yelled at by sales.

    You're also told to be positive, no matter what. If you're a good performer, you'll get pulled into meeting rooms and reprimanded if you complain about anything (like working until 10PM every night, not getting approved for reimbursements, being uncomfortably hot b/c they turn off the A/C in the summer or the sheer number of cockroaches crawling around the office).

    Advice to Senior ManagementNothing, they won't listen.

    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

     


     

     

     


     

    10th Circle of Hell … Project Coordinator, Transperfect (Current Employee)

    I have been working at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
    Cons  -Relationship between sales & production is terrible. The company values sales much more, so production is expected to work above and beyond without any appreciation whatsoever.
    -Pay is awful. I have been working my ass off here for two years WITHOUT a raise. No wonder the turnover rate is so high! Hoping to find another job very soon!
    -Hardly any days off. MLK Jr. Day? Presidents' Day? Veteran's Day? Who would even think to let employees off those days. Every employee loves having not one holiday between Jan 2 and the end of May.
    -No work/life balance. I'm expected to work after-hours with NO overtime pay. And this happens all the time - it's hard to even get a thank you at the end of the day for it. This job has literally made me depressed.
    -Terrible ethics. The budget that sales allocates towards some projects is straight embarrassing - linguists feel robbed (and rightfully so). There is absolutely no push for quality with TransPerfect. It's all about numbers. I can't believe clients come back to TPT..you wouldn't believe some of the things that go on so that markup can be made (steps skipped, unqualified linguists used, etc. etc.). You can thank sales for that.
    -Benefits? What benefits? The company recently auto-enrolled everyone in the company WITHOUT consent (is that legal?). 401k match is a joke..the worst percentage match out of any company I've ever heard.
    -No room for growth. TPT doesn't want you to stay. They want to hire you fresh out of college for minimum pay, then work you until you are burnt out. Then they expect you to leave so that they can hire another batch of hopeful young graduates. If you don't leave, you have to constantly work with new hires - so it's the same mistakes happening over and over! What fun.
    -No push for self-growth. You want to take a class outside of work to improve your language skills/get a PM certification/etc? TPT won't help you out with that. I had a colleague ask for help getting a Quality Management Certification so that she could help save the company in the long run with her Spanish linguistic skills. Did they support her in any way? Of course not! They don't want to contribute to employees' growth because they would rather spend the money on sales "conferences" aka booze trips (nothing for production, obviously), and to attract poor, young, naive recent graduates.
    If you want to feel like you're working in a sweatshop, then TPT is for you.
    Advice to Senior Management  -Give employees INCENTIVE. You hire talented people but then lose them because there is literally no motivation to keep working hard. If you show you will give some sort of reward for showing strong work ethic and going above and beyond, maybe you will actually retain employees. Instead of constantly hiring new people to replace talented employees that got sick of low pay/no respect, work on improving current employees' skills and benefits, so that you can retain customers and ultimately SAVE money in the long run!


    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company


    5-Star Reviews Of This Company Must Be a PR Move

    Project Coordinator (Former Employee); I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for less than a year; Pros  Exposure to languages can be interesting and unique

    Cons  At first I was excited to join TransPerfect- the pay seemed excellent, it was labeled as a Project Management role, which I was looking for, and I would get to work with languages, all of which sounded perfect. After a 2-week training period in which I didn't learn a single thing about my role, I then started receiving job-specific training from separate individuals with different opinions on how to do the work correctly. Management is there because they were the only ones who didn't quit, and so they have seniority (I'm serious). They are also very passive aggressive to their staff. While I was there we had zero contact from upper management and heard nothing from them regarding the company or the business plan. Non-management is a good group of people who are understaffed and overworked, which makes the compensation irrelevant. Salary is a dirty word here- while the bare minimum amount of expected hours/week is 45, you will likely work 60-80 hour weeks when things get busy, which can be frequent, especially because of the understaffing. Holidays are scarce and the 401K plan is absolutely terrible. From an ethical standpoint, they are also lying to their clients about project rates as a standard practice. While I made some good money at this position and the sheer amount of work volume did give me some solid experience, it was a very destructive culture, and I regret ever being employed there. I have theories about how this company is still in business, but at some point the extremely high turnover rate, ,the dishonesty to their clients and the lack of involvement from upper management will catch up to them in a big way. If you are looking for something that TransPerfect is offering, I would highly recommend looking at every other possible option first.
    Advice to Senior Management  Upper management needs to establish some form of contact with the rest of the company.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

    Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5, Comp. & Benefits 2/5

    Was offered a permanent position in exchange for a 35 per cent pay cut: when I refused, I was fired.

    Project Manager (Former Employee)

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than 3 years
    Pros  You meet interesting people from all over the world, who tend to leave within a year
    Cons  I worked my ass off for almost three years, and received very positive appraisals. After three temporary contracts, labour law here stipulates that the fourth contract must be for a permanent position. My manager told me that he was very happy with me and would love to keep me. However, I would have to take a 35 per cent pay cut (my salary was under 2200 USD for a fifty tot sixty hour week). When I asked for time to consider, the offer was retracted on the spot and my job was taken over by an "intern", who is paid less than 500 dollars and works a sixty hour week with no training or prospects.
    Advice to Senior Management  Some advice for jobseekers: look elsewhere and do not believe anything you are told by TPT management.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5, Comp. & Benefits 2/5

    Lots of micro management, no autonomy or independence, endless formfilling, every mouseclick is recorded, dog eats dog

    Project Manager (Former Employee)

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
    Pros  You will be very relieved after you have left this business and will greatlly appreciate your next job
    Cons  Oppressive work environment: anything goes as long as long as it brings in revenue. No ethics towards vendors or clients, and as you will soon notice, no ethics to workers either. Management consists of bullies with no morals who grew up in the tradition of manipulation and misrepresentation: those who you have no problem with this, will get promoted. Others will be fired or will leave on their own initiative.

    It's interesting to notice that TPT is well aware of the problems: the positive reviews posted here (which were incidentally posted by either the marketing department or by senior management posing as project managers) never fail to stress how much freedom, satisfaction, opportunity and space for personal growth TPT offers. It is exactly in these areas where the problems are: jobs are absolutely dead-end, every step has been prescribed in great detail with no space for personal input, anything you do, any mail you send will be recorded and checked by your supervisor and you will witness a permanent exodus of staff. Your manager has only one interest: safeguarding his bonus, which (surprise, surprise) will be based on keeping your salary low and making sure you put in at least 10, and often 12 hours a day.

    This is TPT's business model: hire young graduates for minimum wage, work them to the bone and make sure you have got replacements lined up. Once it becomes clear to the new hires that working at TPT is not sustainable, they will leave, only to be replaced by other hopefuls who will go through the same cycle of commitment, disappointment, and departure.

    The same cycle applies to hiring translators: there is a permanent demand for fresh translators, but not because more work keeps coming in. Translators will be lured in with promises of quality work, reasonable pay and a well organized office. Again, reality is the opposite and few translators continue working for TPT after the initial experience. Common complaints include poor cooperation with project managers (who are largely inexperienced), extremely low pay, slow payment (90 days), unrealistic deadlines, and unfounded complaints about quality, just in order to cut payment or refuse payment altogether.

    All in all, not a pretty picture at all.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5

    The Good Reviews Are Fake - I was asked to write one as an employee

    Anonymous Employee (Former Employee)

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations
    Pros  I had a desk and a lunch break. There's a 20 word minimum so I have to keep writing just to reach the minimum
    Cons  Glassdoor is meant to be a website that customers, employees, or possibly future employees can get a real view of the company culture, work/life balance etc. It is meant to be honest and an inside look at what goes on. My manager at TransPerfect came to me and asked me to write a positive review for the company. Mind you, my manager never spends time with me, and when she does treats me like I'm incapable of doing anything correctly. My hours are absurd, my work is demeaning, I spend 75% of my day cold-calling, the other 25% I do folding letters, printing envelopes, and stuffing mailers. Based on what I was told I'd be doing as opposed to what I am actually doing, this job is a joke. Actually, this company is a joke and shouldn't even be considered such. I'm not okay with lying to the people who look to this site for guidance and telling them that this is an excellent company with room for growth because, not to burst your bubble ITS NOT. If you're in this mess, get out while you can.
    Advice to Senior Management  People join this company with integrity and morals, and you completely strip them of that. Those smart enough to get out do, and the rest get brain washed into believing what they're doing at TP is honest, good work. This company needs to be revamped from the inside out.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5
    Sales (Former Employee)
    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time
    Pros – They work with a variety of clients.
    Cons – I want to start off by letting any prospective employee know that I have been asked 3 times to write a positive review for this company on this site by my manager, but I will not lie for them on here. The 'great opportunity for growth' reviews are written by their marketing team.

    I would not even call this company, a 'company' it is a scam and they are about two steps away from getting sued by a labor lawyer for their business practices.

    Think you will ever be able to take a holiday? Forget it if you take this job. They give minimal holidays off, meaning Christmas Day (no Jewish holidays), Thanksgiving, New Years Day, and Fourth of July Day. All other holidays or days before or after the holiday you have to work. You are even expected to be by a computer on holidays to handle any last minute requests that come in.

    Its a 'work hard, play hard' environment. This means you will be expected to work from 8 AM to 9 PM every night. Also, they sell 24/7 coverage to their clients, but guess who will covering 24/7? YOU. If you tell them you couldn't sign online, they take you into a conference room and scream at you.

    They give you an unrealistic workload and never pay on any of the commission or bonuses they promise you. I never received one bonus that was promised to me in my interview and they screwed me out of commission on almost every job. The upper management team are all liars and criminals.
    Advice to Senior Management – Prospective Employees: Stay away from this company. There is a reason for all of the negative reviews. They prey on colleague graduates and promise you the world, but it's better to take your time and find a job that will actually be worth it (and pay more!)

    Current Employees: Don't settle for the way you are treated. Let your clients know how management acts, spread the word.

    Management: I'm not going to bother giving you advice because you know exactly what is going on with your employees.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company
    Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5, Disapproves of CEO

    If you have no morals or integrity, this is the place for you

    Anonymous Employee (Current Employee)

    I have been working at TransPerfect Translations
    Pros  Sincerely trying to find one, and nothing comes to mind
    Cons  This company is infected with liars from senior management and on down the line

    60 hour work week

    Endless cold-calling and cold-emailing

    Huge lack of respect from upper management

    Working here has honestly made me question my self-worth

    WORST OF ALL: The account managers are told to over quote from day one! It's wrong, immoral, unethical and from a legal standpoint, its theft! You can't charge to translate a document per word, and then up the word count in that document just so you make more commission

    End all be all, this company makes me sick
    Advice to Senior Management  If one of your company values is 'integrity'... you should probably instill that in your employees.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5, Disapproves of CEO

     

    Project Coordinator, Transperfect (Former Employee)

     New York, NY

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for less than a year
    Pros  Will hire you with no experience and provide solid training. When I left this job after a year--the Job I got right after paid more than double for a less taxing job.
    Cons  Will underpay you for what you do, keep you on salary and expect 80 hour weeks. Only promotes from within. Will fire you if you leave your résumé on monster.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

    Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5, Disapproves of CEO

    Very negative work environment.

    Account Manager (Former Employee)

     New York, NY

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for less than a year
    Pros  None, I have nothing good to say about them
    Cons  Cheap, badly managed, with terrible culture
    Advice to Senior Management  Wake up and take management classes
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5, Disapproves of CEO

    The Worst Company in the World

    Project Coordinator (Current Employee)

     New York, NY

    I have been working at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
    Pros  I had a desk.
    And a chair.
    Nice coworkers to work with.
    Cons  Working at this company wears you down little by little every day until you begin to value your self worth. Upper management should be utterly ashamed of themselves that they have created such a destructive and unhappy workplace for so many people based on fear and blame.

    They offer no development opportunities at all and the "change" in job titles is usually in name only with the actual job not changing whatsoever. To even get a promotion, the statistic system used is completely flawed, with no transparency about how to achieve good scores and constantly changing targets (which I'm pretty sure is illegal).

    The below-inflation pay raises are equally ridiculous - effectively taking a pay cut after a year of working hard is far from rewarding. Getting a bonus was just as hard - receiving just one negative feedback on a job wiping it out completely.

    I have never met anyone in the company that actual likes working there, which is not a good long-term business model. When I spoke to someone in my new office, they mentioned that they sometimes use translation agencies. I asked which ones and they said SDL and TransPerfect - guess which one I told them not to use anymore?
    Advice to Senior Management  Learn to value staff, even slightly more. Stop putting fake reviews online.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance, ALL 1/5, Disapproves of CEO

    Disrespectful sales management and unhealthy work environment.

    Sales (Former Employee)

     New York, NY

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time
    Pros  -The CEOs care about their people and push them to improve, but may not know how poorly sales management operates.

    -Young, ambitious and resilient colleagues.


    -Transparent sales reporting with good visibility.

    -The "own your own business" model can be too much work at times, but great experience.

    -Proactivity is admired and rewarded.

    -Strong marketing department and investment in business development activities.

    -Well planned sales conferences.
    Cons  -TransPerfect blocks Glassdoor on company computers.

    -Rule by fear, mental abuse and intense micro management. The inner circle generally hides behind cynical emails. You need to tune it out to function normally at work.

    -NY TPT sales management considers yelling, attitude, snide remarks, huffing, talking negatively about others, and "problem child" lists acceptable ways to treat employees. Senior sales management from other offices should also be feared.

    -Management dangles the carrot in front of hungry reps to sell them on the pipe dream of endless income. Most work thanklessly around the clock for years, but leave because they get burned out. The results of their hard labor are gifted to those who stay around long enough.

    -Fake false sense of urgency from management due to poor planning or random immediate requests.

    -Always a quid pro quo mentality.

    -Posh facades, aviator sunglasses, and being openly hung over at meetings gets more traction with management than solid business acumen.

    -I only heard from my manager when they wanted something or had a problem. If you don't suck up to fit in, you're just a number to them.

    -The sales team has a revolving door. The rich get richer by churning through those in their pyramid who build and manage business for them for a meager salary.

    -Many sales managers are too busy to give meaningful guidance, oversight, or show they care. Immediate results are expected and barely recognized.

    -On top of 24/7 end-to-end sales/account management, making contact lists, printing 1,500 mailer letters, and manually stuffing 1,500 envelopes is slave labor; not something nearly everyone in sales is required to do weekly.

    -Management wants you to respond instantly to clients at any hour, which builds unsustainable and unnecessary expectations. No emphasis on a healthy work-life balance; just live for and die for the Client.

    -You only get paid commission after your client pays their bill. If clients pay late, you lose commission. As more time passes, you lose a lot more. If you don't make mandatory markup requirements, you also lose commission. Highway robbery.

    -Way too much email volume because you're forced to be on irrelevant global distribution lists.

    -Cockroaches and fruit flies repeatedly found on the sales floor.
    Advice to Senior Management  -Let respectful people manage and listen to the soldiers instead of the cheerleaders.

    -Giving someone a direct report just because they hit a revenue goal is short changing everyone. They need to know how to manage first.

    -Slow down on buying companies and grow organically. Acquisitions water down the core of the company and inflate revenue. Build with your own people first.

    -Don't be cheap. Stop the recoverable draw structure. Pay employees fairly so they don't starve. You're losing far more capital when trained talent learns their worth and leaves for greener pastures. Hiring waves of new employees to replace vacancies is a quick fix, which repeats the cycle.

    -Hire people with industry experience and a sales background, not just those from job boards for their first job.

    -NY sales management shouldn't have endless slack to treat their staff so poorly. They're toxic and costing the company crops of talented employees, loyal clients, and tons of ill will. Those who move on could be going to current or potential clients, so the negative buzz can be even more costly over the long term.

    -The company is getting a bit too large for two CEO's to run at their traditional level of detail.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    2/5 Comp&Benefits, Sr. Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, 2/5 Work/Life Balance, others 1/5 , Disapproves of CEO

    TransPerfect has launched a "positive review" campaign again - ignore the positive postings here, they are fake!

    Project Manager (Former Employee)

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
    Pros  On occasion this business has made me laugh, as it does now when I spot the positive reviews and think back of the times when I was required to write similar posts.
    Cons  More frequently, though, this business has made me cry in despair. I felt pure desperation when I was left alone with an unsurmountable workload because of mass defection of my co-workers (average tenure at TPT is less than six months) and my manager told me "there is nothing I can do, this is the way the company is run".

    I was told to misrepresent (remember the training slides: "half a truth is not a lie" and "do not consider the work done, consider what you can charge your client for"?), lie (if you do not make markup, just charge for a larger word count) and misinform (tell the new hire the low salary will be made up in bonuses, when we all know that bonuses are hardly ever paid, and if they are paid, they are a pittance).
    Advice to Senior Management  At least stop posting fake reviews on social network sites. You are making fools of yourselves.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

    Project Manager (Former Employee)
    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
    Pros – Semi-decent salary for recent college grads
    Work can be done remotely
    Many offices around the world
    Young, fun staff
    Relaxed dress code
    Cons – After the first week you will never work an 8-9 hour day again. Most weeks average 50-60 hours, but salary doe not reflect this.
    Work/Life balance is a myth and those that pursue it are seen as slackers
    You will spend a large chunk of your day playing the blame game, both offense and defense.
    You do not have sufficient funds to provide a quality product
    To the company all employees are merely cogs in a machine, most employees do not matter to management
    Advice to Senior Management – People can make or break a company. Treat your people better, instead of like Pre- and Post-Software mouse clickers, and maybe your high turnover wouldn't be undermining your efficiency.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend
    Was this review helpful? 

    Absurd turnover rate.

    Administrative (Former Employee)

     New York, NY

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
    Pros  Centrally located office in mid-town Manhattan. No other pros, really. This is not a good company to work for.
    Cons  No long-term thinking whatsoever, there's no future at TransPerfect. This company does not value their employees. The staff is not a valued resource at TransPerfect. If you're not happy it's not their problem. Anyone can fill your seat, at any time. 60-70 h work weeks are considered "light" and 80-90 is more like "normal". But don't think you'll get paid a big, fat salary for this work. The starting salary is at the looower end of entry-level and for the hours you are expected/forced to put in, the compensation is ridiculous. Salary increases are low/non-existent and completely at the whim of the owners.
    Advice to Senior Management  Start thinking about the bigger picture, not just the fast cash.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

    Stay away

    Account Executive (Current Employee)

     New York, NY

    I have been working at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year
    Pros  No pros at this company unless you are one of the first Directors of Business developments that stuck around, if you are one, then now your job is to manipulate, abuse, and work green college graduates while they make no money and you come in at 10
    Cons  Upper Management is a joke. They mentally abuse all employees
    Popularity contest in major offices with toxic working environments in most. Worst offenders are New York, DC, and Atlanta
    Future leaders not determined by merit/achievement instead by amount of happy hours attended
    No repercussions for non-performance/low sales numbers because if you go to enough HH and stay out late enough at conferences, you will get promoted
    Culture in New York Office
    Advice to Senior Management  Retain your people, invest in performers, get rid of the weeds,stop thinking about your own pocket books, and get your production team trained and staffed.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Awful company culture, good people

    Director, Business Development (Former Employee)

     London, England (UK)

    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for less than a year
    Pros  The hire a lot of cool people, who tend to leave quickly
    Cons  Awful culture, like joining a cult where they tell you the path to success (and therefore your worth as a person) is to stuff envelopes and live in the office. No development, no progression.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend



    October 2013


    This pretty much says it all STAY AWAY FROM TRANSPERFECT ... THEY ARE LIARS and CHEATS

    "Confidential" questionnaires are used against employees: "Open door" policies are used to play staff against each other



    Project Manager I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year


    ConsFear, abuse, exploitation, betrayal: these four words say it all. There were very serious issues in my department, ranging from drug abuse to intimidation of junior staff by senior management and my manager just laughed at my concerns.

    When I approached HQ with these issues, it took them more than three months to respond. When they did, it appeared that the three months had been spent building a case against me by stealthily contacting my co-workers and putting words in their mouths regarding the accuracy of my concerns.

    Some of my colleagues have forwarded to me email correspondence in which they were quoted as confirming that none of my concerns was founded, whereas they had said exactly the opposite. When they responded to HQ stating that they had been quoted wrong and supporting my point of view, HQ agreed to change the reporting, but never did. Instead, they used their falsified reports to demonstrate that I was a liar and my concerns were just made up stories. Shortly after, my contract was terminated.

    TransPerfect promises absolute confidentiality in their employee questionnaires. Do not believe any of this: the results are sent to your manager with your name included. Your manager will then proceed to make your life miserable and fire you in the end.
    Advice to Senior ManagementTell senior staff to stop lying.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company



    July 2013:

    Stay away”; Account Executive (Current Employee);  New York, NY; I have been working at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year; Pros – No pros at this company unless you are one of the first Directors of Business developments that stuck around, if you are one, then now your job is to manipulate, abuse, and work green college graduates while they make no money and you come in at 10; Cons – Upper Management is a joke. They mentally abuse all employees; Popularity contest in major offices with toxic working environments in most. Worst offenders are New York, DC, and Atlanta; Future leaders not determined by merit/achievement instead by amount of happy hours attended; No repercussions for non-performance/low sales numbers because if you go to enough HH and stay out late enough at conferences, you will get promoted; Culture in New York Office; Advice to Senior Management – Retain your people, invest in performers, get rid of the weeds,stop thinking about your own pocket books, and get your production team trained and staffed.; No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company; Senior Management, Culture & Values, Work/Life Balance all 1/5.


    Awful company culture ”; Director, Business Development (Former Employee); London, England (UK); I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for less than a year; Pros – The hire a lot of … people, who tend to leave quickly; Cons – Awful culture, like joining a cult where they tell you the path to success (and therefore your worth as a person) is to stuff envelopes and live in the office. No development, no progression.; No, I would not recommend this company to a friend; Senior Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, Work/Life Balance all 1/5. 


    Jul 8, 2013, Culture & Values, Work/Life Balance, Career Opportunities, Senior Management ALL 1/5, Disapproves of CEO, “Trans-Garbage Technology”; Anonymous Employee (Current Employee); I have been working at TransPerfect Translations as an intern for more than 10 years; Pros – I'm currently working on TP and anyone who is in Technology should not apply to this company or waste there time unless you need a pay check.; Cons – This company still doesn't have any MS license at this stage of the game. Backup solution really sucks. I wish I can continue talking about the infrastructure but its all a joke. Most engineers will sit collecting a pay check because management really doesn't know what to do with them. We have engineers world wide waiting for something to brake making $80K, but according to management they are short handed.. LOL; Advice to Senior Management – Liz, needs to take a look at her technical needs and figure out how to maximize what she has and not spend another $160K on two new engineers.; No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

    Jul 5, 2013, Culture & Values, Comp & Benefits, Work/Life Balance, Career Opportunities, Senior Management ALL 1/5; Disapproves of CEO; “TransPerfect's business model: the raised middle finger”; Project Coordinator (Former Employee)
    Barcelona (Spain); I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for less than a year
    Cons – The work is not what it is claimed to be. Project management has nothing to do with linguistics or genuine project management. A PM's job consists of nothing else than forwarding translations to vendors, demanding the lowest rate and dealing with highly unrealistic promises made by sales, who have no knowledge of linguistics and will promise the moon just to get the deal. Average working day 10 to 12 hours, pay per hour below legal minimum wage. Sales persons work on commission, need to stuff a minimum of 500 envelopes every day and must make 120 cold calls to prospects they need to harvest from the internet. If you do not meet these targets, you will be bullied and humiliated in front of your co-workersThis is not about building meaningful and productive relationships with clients, this is just pointless semi-unskilled production work. Average working day 12 hours, in addition you need to be available on the Phone or by mail 24/7; Turnover is unreal (the average employee lasts less than six months, burnout and sickness absenteeism is skyhigh).

    Pay for all positions is low (you will earn more cleaning TransPerfect's offices than working in them) with lots of promises of bonuses and raises, none of which will materialize. There is a climate of permanent fear and dogs eats dog. In Transperfect's vision, there are three sources of income: clients, suppliers and employees. Add to this the unwillingness to pay taxes or respect laws and you have got a pretty accurate picture of the kind of business you are looking at. Advice to Senior Management – Management knows what they are doing: earning tons of money no matter what. Since TransPerfect is only about money, there is no need for advice to management.

    Instead, I will give some advice to jobseekers: heed the warnings on this site. The positive reviews have been posted by senior TransPerfect staff who have been instructed to do so in order to create a favorable image on social media.The negative reviews represent the experiences of people who got burned. In a time of recession it may be hard to find a job, but TransPerfect is a place to avoid.
    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company 

      Culture of intimidation and fear; Poor infrastructure; Advice to prospective employees: Heed the warnings of the honest glassdoor reviews, and enter at your own risk



    Transpoorfect”; Project Coordinator (Former Employee); New York, NY;
    I worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year; Cons – Extremely high turnover; Excessive workload; Long hours, no compensation for overtime; Culture of intimidation and fear; Niche industry, skill set is extremely specific to the company, does not translate (pun intended) to marketable skills in other industries; Poor infrastructure: they promote from within, which means middle and upper management have no formal training in management and do not have the soft skills required to successfully manage teams of people. ; Advice to Senior Management – People are not machines. A person's daily output varies from individual to individual and cannot be measured against the most efficient employee holding the same title. Invest in your employees and do not micromanage them; they will build resentment towards you and eventually stop caring about the quality of their work. Streamline workflows and build APIs so that employees do not waste time on extraordinarily mundane tasks.; Advice to prospective employees: Heed the warnings of the honest glassdoor reviews, and enter at your own risk. No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company 1/5 all: Work/Life Balance, Culture & Values, Senior Management, Comp & Benefits, Career Opportunities; Disapproves of CEO

    June 2013:

    -->

    “Oppressive environment, managed by fear - avoid this place!”


    Project Manager (Former Employee)

    Cons – Basically, everything. You will be part of an operation which exploits translators (by insisting on the lowest rates possible, inventing complaints so pay can be docked and possibly be refused altogether) misleads its clients (overcharging, misrepresentation of certification), dodges taxes (pretending to be an offshore operation) overworks its staff (standard week is 60 hours, 20 of which will be unpaid) promises the world and delivers nothing (what happened to the bonuses, pay raises and promotion we were all promised at our application interview?).

    Anyone with an ounce of integrity will leave within a year. Those who stay, will adopt the behavior they have suffered from. As a psychological experiment about abuse of power and conformity, this business provides an excellent showcase. As a place of work, this company is hell.

    Do not fall for the positive reviews here: if management believes you can be trusted, you will be instructed to post glowing reviews as a counterweight to the very real and very negative experiences of those who suffered under TPT management.

    Advice to Senior Management – Be open and straightforward about the true nature of this company. This is not a reputable business offering quality services. This is a sweatshop where money is made at the expense of underpaid translators and overworked project managers.

    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

    1/5 stars

    “TPT is not a good place to work”


    Project Coordinator (Former Employee), New York, NY

    Cons – This is not a gratifying position. You are constantly being put in situations that you can't solve, with sales breathing down your neck to make promises you can't guarantee. You will be over worked. You won't be thanked for it, and you will be "punished" with a CAF(corrective action form) for situations that are not your fault. Happened to me multiple times.

    I would definitely not recommend a friend to work here.

    You get very few days off. Christmas eve and new years eve? You'll be working.

    I didn't meet one person who liked working at this company while I was there. Not a SINGLE person. Everyone hates it. Morale is very low - its an awful environment to be in.

    Advice to Senior Management – Treat your employees better. Hire more people, do a better job of spreading work load. There are a lot of smart people at this company; stop over working people and treating them like machines.

    Also- good reviews here are fake. Stop forcing employees to write good reviews on here (fact) and foster an environment that will encourage them to do so on their own terms.

    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

    1/5 stars

    “Kindergarten Management - not much to learn, but a lot to suffer”


    Anonymous Employee (Former Employee)

    Cons – Poor Management - only Machiavellian money oriented Management who do not care about the means, but only to get their big pockets filled. This ends up in lack of morals and ethics and consequently high staff turnover (less than a year is the average of an employee's stay) affecting the quality and services to the end client (who are indeed ripped off).

    Advice to Senior Management – Transparency, honesty...being moral.

    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend


    “Exploits translators”

    Translator (Former Employee)

    Cons – Cheap labor, very rude PM's (some of them), very high expectation for very low pay,

    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

     

     

    Current – New


    Pros – Nothing to be thankful in working at this miserable place.

    Cons – You will attacked and abused if you make a small mistake.

    You will be bullied if you leave on time after working 10hrs a day with 15 mins of lunch break. Too many rats sneaking behind your back to your manager.  Everybody is terrified to lose their job because your not good enough meaning your not willing to out 14hrs a day of free labor and no over time.  One [piece of] advice: all the good reviews [posted on glassdoor are] all fake, believe me! You wont know it unless if you enter this miserable place.

    Advice to Senior Management – Management are miserable and want to put down your self esteem [stating] that you are not good enough [to do the job] and never will be.

    Currently working full time - 

    • Compensation & Benefits 1/5
    • Work/Life Balance 1/5
    • Career Opportunities 1/5
    • Culture & Values 1/5
    • Senior Leadership 1/5
    May, 2013:

    “A sect, rather than a business. Avoid at all cost”


    Former Employee – worked at TransPerfect Translations full-time for more than a year

    ProsI have been thinking hard to come up with pros, but even a statement like "it's better than nothing" is inaccurate. I would venture to say that having nothing is better than being part of this operation, since having no job at all will allow you to look for employment. The 60-hour weeks spent at your TPT desk and the resulting exhaustion will it make very difficult to look for anything else while working at this abusive sweatshop.


    ConsI would say the biggest price I paid was the loss of my self esteem. Working at TransPerfect will teach you to lie, misrepresent and take advantage of those around you, be it co-workers, translators or clients.There is an omnipresent spirit of "anything goes as long as it makes us money" and this involves underpaying those who do the actual work, overcharging clients, falsifying certifications, dodging taxes - you name it, it's there.



    After a year or so, this way of thinking becomes part of you, and you start to accept this as perfectly normal behavior. It's then difficult to realize what you got into, and even more difficult to get out. The ban on maintaining a Linkedin profile speaks volumes about the business culture, as does the 15-page non-disclosure agreement you are required to sign. Avoid this business like the plague: it will consume your entire life, take away your personal pride and bring nothing.

    Advice to Senior ManagementIn his last convocation to his underlings, the CEO compared himself to Napoleon. I do not think Napoleon was open to advice, and I will not waste my time giving advice to his successor.

    No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

    Work/Life Balance, Senior Management, Culture & Values, Career Opportunities, ALL 1/5

    Worked till burnout and then dumped”; Former Team Lead in Barcelona (Spain) – Reviewed May, 2013
    Cons – You will be part of an operation which runs on deceit and pitting people against each other. Sales against project management, project management against translators, employees against each other, management against reports. There is a permanent sense of fear and stress, which I never experienced anywhere else before. The game is not about winning: the real spirit here is making sure your counterpart loses. Pay is abysmal, raises unheard of, 12-hour days are standard. You will take a PowerPoint training from which I will never forget two key slides, which boldly stated: "less than full disclosure does not equal dishonesty" and (this is the best) "half a truth is not a lie". This is how project managers are taught to deal with translators and this says it all. Anyone with an ounce of integrity will leave within a year. Do yourself a favor and pass up this opportunity. I learned at my detriment: after a year I suffered a severe breakdown and I was dumped within six weeks. This is how many people end their careers at TransPerfect. Advice to Senior Management – Be honest about your intentions. This is a sweatshop running on abuse and you might as well be open about it. Work/Life Balance 1/5; Compensation & Benefits 1/5; Career Opportunities 1/5; Senior Leadership 1/5; Would not recommend this company to a friend;
    TransAwful” Former Sales – Reviewed May, 2013; Cons – * hardcore sales - no time to build actual relationships with clients due to unrealistic goals; * not just stressful (hey, which job isn't) but actually disstressing a lot of the time; * elbow mentality; * sustainability is not something that matters to management; * if you read headlines like “The most psychologically abusive institution I've ever been part of” - believe it! it's true; Advice to Senior Management – Wake up and understand that your employees are the best resource and ambassadors a company can have. Treat them fairly and it will benefit the company overall. If you have to constantly hire new people to replace the ones that do a runner, you will never be able to benefit from knowledge transfer and loyal employees; Work/Life Bvalance: 1/5; Senior Leadership 1/5; Culture & Values 1/5, Disapproves CEO Rating; Would NOT recommend this company to a friend, Thinks the company will perform worse
    Don't Stay; Current Freelance Translator – Reviewed May,  2013;  It's obvious that few PMs stay at TP for longer than a year; Advice to Senior Management – Please re-consider your whole business strategy. Stop treating people like crap. Culture & Values 1/5; Would not recommend this company to a friend

    Salient Features of posted reviews portraying Transperfect as the bottom of the barrel: “The positive reviews are part of a campaign to present TPT as a happy place to work: reality is the opposite, though”; You will meet other[‘s] who were taken in by the same empty promises. Cons – TPT is run from the top by a number of managers who got in at the start of the company, about twenty years ago. The work is done by thousands … who are … fired or harassed into handing in their notice as easily as they were hired; If you are looking for meaningful work, and pride in your job, stay away. You will … be discarded if a cheaper alternative becomes available. The fact that TransPerfect has now started a campaign where senior staff are required to submit positive postings on social media [sites] (such as Glassdoor) speaks volumes about the business culture. To describe this business in one word: deceit. Misrepresenting TransPerfect culture as honest and caring, creating an image of a sustainable career and promising a growth path will only attract people looking for jobs where these values are present. They will be lured in, find out they made a mistake and leave within a year. Either live up to your promises or be open about what TransPerfect is about: a white collar sweatshop. Rankings: Senior Leadership, Culture and Values 1/5; “TransPerfect NOT the Perfect Employer” A very demeaning job. A horrible company culture. Cons – This is not a human company; “If there was an option for zero stars, I'd use it”; Cons – Management is unprofessional and uninterested in employee[s]; The positive atmosphere trying to be portrayed on this site is fictitious since senior management is aware of the negative press they're receiving on this site and others. “So glad it's over!” Working for TransPerfect provides first hand experience of being bullied, abused and treated with absolute contempt - this is an experience not easily gained elsewhere, and in that sense, it was very educational. Also the feeling of immense relief when I finally left the office for the last time was very pleasant; Cons – Long hours, low pay, overworked co-workers, insincere management. Nothing wrong with hard work, I have worked sixty to eighty-hour weeks before and actually enjoyed it. The difference here is that in return for your blood, sweat and tears you will not receive the slightest form of appreciation. Once you break down, you will be discarded. Employees are played against each other (in TP-speak this is called "an atmosphere of healthy competition”) are encouraged to inform on each other, employees are purposely kept in a state of anguish about the security of their jobs, salaries are frequently late. There is a culture of substance abuse (in TP-speak called "work hard, play hard") and office politics are practiced to perfection. Staff turnover in one year in my department was close to 100 per cent; “Project Managers - enter at your own risk....”; stress to the point where you WILL see people crying at their desks. I decided to leave as I couldn't listen to people moan anymore about how depressed they were & I had had enough; Management are useless, intimidating and run the department through fear with a discipline system in place called CAFs. If you make a mistake on a project you will have to explain what went wrong and be bullied into accepting responsibility even if the project was bad due to very low budget and only being able to pay rubbish [to] linguists; TPT do[es] not value staff at all; HR is frightened of management and do not do the job they are supposed to; only work here if you have nothing else & need experience - but keep looking, you can do better!; Once you are in you will realize you made a mistake; bickering all the time … level of micromanagement is incredible … not allowed to take any decisions yourself. Your manager gets paid for keeping your salary low. You will work at least ten, but more likely twelve hours a day, and get paid for eight … promises [never] honored. Turnover is laughable “The Good Reviews [posted by TPT] Are Fake”; Poor business model; Immature, inexperienced management - unprofessional behavior that results in favoritism, and un-deserved promotions; Advice to Senior Management – > Respect your employees (All of them, even the ones who don't party with upper-management); “A very unhappy place to work”; "Meritocracy" is subjective at best. Nepotism is rampant. Immature employee  / upper-management relationships; “Wretched. Engage at your own risk”; False promise of a meritocracy quickly exposed after witnessing firsthand the extreme subjectivity of senior management; "Fun" and “youthful" work environment breeds a very unprofessional work culture including nepotism and other inappropriate work situations; Advice to Senior Management – change your business model so people can actually want to build careers [at TPT]; “Not a sustainable career”; Quality will continue to decrease [with current business model]; “avoid this place at all costs. The job market may be hard, but this is the LAST place you could ever want to be”; This is a terrible place to work. Anyone who says otherwise, CLEARLY, is not telling the truth. This company always over promises and never fulfills promises. They tell you things will get better and then they get worse than they were the first time around! … This place is HORRENDOUS. A corrective action form (CAF) comes in and if it's related to language, the project manager's performance review suffers even though they're not required to know the language or read it in the first place. If you can, avoid this place at all costs. TERRIBLE place to work, TERRIBLE environment, TERRIBLE morale; take my word, and stay far far away. Do yourself a favor do no work [at Transperfect]. Was not a good experience in the least. I do not want to get into the details. Just G*ogling the name should tell you everything you needed to know; Worst Company Ever. Pros: nothing Cons: everything; Horrible company that no one should waste their time working at unless they appreciate being treated horribly, working under the dumbest most unqualified management and having no job security or [potential for] advancement. “Not to be recommended” Uncaring upper-management demands unrealistic hours. Advice to Senior Management – Respect your employees, respect the vendors that work for you, be professional in the workplace, change your business model so people can actually want to build careers [at Transperfect]; “Not a sustainable career.” Quality will continue to decrease until Project Managers are fairly compensated with the pay they deserve. “Incompetent management and horrible pay” Management treats you like dirt; My manager, specifically, had no idea what he or she was doing. It's a mystery how he or she got the job. The HR policies are deceptive. HR will tell you that you can accumulate the hours you've worked overtime to take days off later. However you will not be able to take them off when there's "low capacity", and will continue to accrue them. “Absolutely awful” You might meet some great people, but they won't stick around for long...and neither should you. … ridiculously high turnover! “The super positive reviews here [are] fake.” 3 Park is The Slaveship. Wish I had made that up rather than learned it; Over worked, under paid, bullied, super high turnover, pyramid scam for Sr. management and lifers who got in before 2005 – 6; I've never posted on a page like this before, but felt compelled to after reading the [Transperfect Marketing/Communication Dept.] Marcom written positive reviews. Hopefully, those spawn more ex employees to call [TPT’s] B.S. and write on here for the first time. Worst job I ever had ( a few years ago), with the worst corporate culture. You run into people who used to work there and they are all so happy to be gone. My advice is keep it up, maybe another company will take your market share. “Fake positiveness, no respect” … Haggling with project managers… their snark starts to show through their fake positiveness as soon as you challenge them; Advice to Senior Management – Get your head out of your rear ends and start paying attention to what your employees and contractors are saying about you (getting people to put up fake positive reviews does not convince anyone). You can't go on abusing your employees forever. Your house of cards will fall down at some point, and you won't be left with any friends to call on. [From Ind*ed dot com] TransPerfect has very low company morale; The level of stress for most workers is very high while compensation is very low. … most leave as soon as they can. “Absolutely awful”; Would not recommend this company to a friend; “Cheap company with poor upper management!” This was a really awful job; miserable to witness was how trainers acted towards new PMs during training period … publicly shamed; scores of PMs quit in 6 months to a year and go on to be really happy elsewhere; Outside of the office social events are really boozey. pretty off-putting … production is a revolving door for a reason… this a really unsustainable model. … Sr. management's appearance of having their head stuck in the sand and their lack of response to the obvious revolving door of production staff (either voluntarily or by termination). Issues with production are NEVER the fault of management decisions - but ALWAYS the fault of the employee....and thus TP continues to hire unqualified employees ...if that's the case. Don't have the right middle management structure in place. As this has been a continuing issue for years....it would be best to hire a consultant to come in and tell you where the issues are - seeing you don't seem to want to hear it from your worker bees.
    “Extremely bad quality management” Advice to Senior Management – Actually apply the quality standards (ISO) you say you apply … “Awful environment, Wannabe Managers, No real knowledge or training” a lot of free booze if you brown nose management; reactionary rather than innovative; management promotes their sorority sisters and frat brothers (without merit) before anyone else; high, high turnover for a reason; Sr. management is highly narcissistic; “I know the job search is tough right now, but keep looking!!” … The office is severely understaffed because of the incredibly high turnover rate. Taking a lunch is impossible. The "experience" mentioned in other reviews is simply having an office job to put on your resume. Most transactions between PCs and linguists occur with very little professionalism, which would not fly at almost any other work place. There is little to no thinking in this job; … just processing and meeting an overload of insanely tight deadlines; Poor training/Treated with disrespect …the amount of micro-managing was beyond belief. … absolute disrespect and intolerance. One of my coworkers actually told me she wouldn't speak to a dog the way the trainer addressed me!! … Unhappy employees/Dismal workplace; There is absolutely no time for fun conversation or teamwork throughout the day. You are glued to your computer for 12 plus hours- processing projects and managing deadlines; there is no camaraderie or socializing at all during office hours. Managers would come down HARD on mistakes- leaving employees who just worked 20 hours of unpaid overtime to the point of tears, with absolutely no thanks. … “Now I know what I don't want in a job” This is a job so people can understand what they do not want in their career. Pattern of staff terminations (voluntary or not), clearly indicates there is a spoke broken in the training curve and production wheel...although blame is continually deflected from this blatant problem to make it appear the issue is the lack of skill with the production team. These issues have been happening for months if not years, with continual staff turnover. It's not the staff's problem, but the production model that is in place; middle management appears to believe it's purely a staff issue - as proved by their revolving door of departing staff. Can 100 employees all be so bad at their jobs? This reflect[s] poorly on the hiring judgment of managers; By supporting the continual acceptance of deadlines that are not obtainable, production staff members are continually set up to fail; unhappiness and frustration within all sectors of TPT; How can any business plan support continual increase in revenue when your most valuable assets keep walking out the door? [Management] respond[ed] to my concerns as being unacceptable. What I do now enjoy, is my new [non TPT] job; [comment about facilities at 3 Park, where the staff have aggressively attempted to accost employees they do not like:] P.S. Did I mention the women's bathroom frequently runs out of toilet paper and/or paper towels and there's always one stall that no one dares enter? Advice to Senior Management – For your own sake, PLEASE invest in the people that add quality to your company. It's time for TransPerfect to look internally at their production process; I can't imagine this is the first time these observations have been relayed to management. After all, anyone with any business savvy is very aware of the employee reviews publicly posted on the Internet (Glassd*or [etc.]). If things don't change, it's only a matter of time when a hungry investigative reporter will burst the wonderful TransPerfect PR bubble, and release some less than glowing information; My overall experience at TransPerfect was not something I would recommend.” Most employees are expected to attend social functions outside of the office which becomes burdensome; There is a lot of turnover … the proper infrastructure [is not] in place, … caus[ing] problems when it comes to issues with Human Resources, Training, etc. “Sweatshop.” Tense, stressed, and often hostile work environment, poor management, bad communication and leadership; You hear only 2 things from management: 1) you messed up, and you are getting a "verbal warning" ("you're inefficient" is a popular one, to demoralize their hard-working employees); or if someone is doing well; 2) you need to be taking on more work. (Simply meeting the demands of the job will not cut it. If you're good at it, management uses this against you to pile on more projects); Inflexible about vacation or time off; No lunch breaks.
    Office is drab, cheap, and in need of repair. Bathrooms are filthy; it would help if the place was less depressing; Bring in management with leadership experience. Someone who has worked at TransPerfect long enough to climb the ladder to management level does not qualify them as a capable manager, and leaves entire departments to fend for themselves with no guidance and no leader; “Boring and not in line with what was indicated about the job at the interview.”; Cons – Unreasonable work hours; expect you to work for 9-10 hour days with no lunch break and almost zero team interaction. Do not work here, the term 'work/life balance" does not exist; describe jobs properly during interviews - to make sure people really understand the type of position they are taking on. This is not a true "project management" position; Poor feedback, management; Repetitive Stressful Work; few incentives for most employees; The work is the modern equivalent of an assembly line with lower pay and fewer benefits. Turnover is ridiculous basically everyone there is waiting for a better opportunity elsewhere, and after awhile any opportunity.



    This just in from complaintsboard re Transperfect:

    I've dealt with this company as … a former employee … for a couple of years. They have a total disregard for their employees. 0 Votes; I have worked with them as a translator and have gone through much abuse by this company. I am so fed up with this [company]. Please help, if you know a way for me to file a complaint. 0 Votes; This company is a total rip-off. We advise all its clients to find alternative suppliers. The company's quality of products is a disgrace. They translated for banks in [the] UK and I had to edit some of the translations. I think they hired high school Italians to do it for them, rejected the job and surprisingly the translation that I refused to edit was on their client's website a couple of days later. Their poor client may not know that and paid a fortune for it and Transperfect knew that and did not pay that high school student. Customers who are tricked by Transperfect should also voice their concerns and if any potential customer is reading this, please save yourself a lifetime of translation errors and a lot of money by Googling some other companies. There are faithful and honest ones that compete with this corrupt agency. Surprised they are not investigated yet.

    !THE DRUNKS!, 1/31/11: Tenants and even a Super in a building where a mid/senior TPT Manager lives refer to them as THE DRUNKS.

    This just in, 12/21/10: TransPerfect Legal Solutions Hosts Panel Discussion on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) - what would its attendees think if they knew that TPT Management requests that their employees "certify" work they did not perform?

    Transperfect, where (even its Management infers that) it pays to be a dummy (or a dilettante)

    "I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but I can rub my clients down and even bone them if necessary." posted by Joey, who claims to be a VP [and a gay Scientologist too!] at Transperfect

    This blog is not run by www.transperfect.com or www.translations.com [abbreviated as TPT]. It does not imply that an accurate work product is unobtainable from these organizations. It does address concerns (inclusive of QA/QC, lack of character [and class] and nastiness) at TPT for your edification. Content contained at hyperlinks presented herein are not necessarily the opinions of, condoned or condemned by the editor of this blog and are presented for rhetorical/didactic purposes.

    Transperfect is chock full of people who would ask a naive to transport contraband through customs on their behalf and party with the spoils and each other afterwards

    Posted on TPT's Website, 12/1/10, The ABC's of Global Legal Matters: paraphrases – Red Adair “If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” Well, a company that doesn't pay its stable of freelancers, that discriminates based on how 'ugly' they deem their at home workers to be, whose Directors and Managers expect their staff to submit false certifications, that is globally considered to be a low quality organization by translators ... THAT'S AMATEUR ... THAT'S TRANSPERFECT

    This Just In: From the web!: I just came across a dramatic piece of news: ProZ.com has banned TransPerfect Translations Inc. and associated companies from using its leading portal for translators. ProZ.com does not allow staff from TransPerfect to post jobs for translators.

    ProZ.com bans Transperfect from posting jobs

    ! Note from site staff This outsourcer [Transperfect] has been banned from posting on ProZ.com.

    ... ProZ suspends outsourcers when reports of non-payment are made.



    Word on the street: Transperfect's new Quality Assurance Director resigned ... perhaps after finding out what a mess (relative to QA/QC, and deceit) TPT is??

    From TPT's Website, 11/16/10: TransPerfect Legal Solutions Names Michael Wudke President of Digital Forensics Division. What would Mr. Wudke say relative to TPT's Directors asking their employees to file false 'certifications'?



    Who might the TPT affiliate dim wit be who impersonates others on web posts? Might the dope be Dan Milczarski, Andrew Gates, Brent Armstrong, Robert Denoia, or another TPT scholar?

    From TPT's Website: relative to "Safe Harbor": "TransPerfect’s privacy practices are self-certified", yet Director (and Management) Level employees of Transperfect ask their colleagues to submit false certifications and people who claim to be gay/Scientiologists/VPs at TPT brag about lying and state that they can "bone" TPT's clients. Transperfect's Management Employees make sport of bantying about confidential information. Would you trust TPT with confidential information?

    From TPT's Website: November 1, 2010, Translations.com Europe Certified to EN 15038:2006; Director (and Management) Level Employees of TPT ask colleagues to misstate the facts (lie) relative to "certification" of work; Management Level Employees of TPT vet work at home employees based on how 'ugly' the worker's photo posted on their professional website is deemed to be; Transperfect is considered a "low quality agency" (web posting by professional translator/linguist); Dan Milczarski has been the Director of QA/QM at TPT; Affiliates of TPT have been impersonating others on the web, posting comments in other's names and posting false, disparaging comments about others; If the above mentioned dim witted affiliate is Dan Milczarski (or another) he would be very wise to remove any such postings; An apparently learning disabled (erstwhile, retarded) person who works for TPT's IT Help Desk bizzarely smirks at others; There is a substance abuse concern at TPT (fostered by management); "Me and my boys are going to teach him a lesson" [a TPT employee whilst bragging about how much he drank (getting his load on), perhaps this didactic approach is suitable to great institutions of learning such as Oxford University, New Jersey City University, & bien sur! SUNYs Plattsburgh and Oswego]; unacceptable attempted physical and emotional bullying by TPT and its Headquarters' (3 Park Ave) Employees is allowed to occur by HR; Robert Denoia is the incumbent head of HR at TPT; HR / Senior Management is 'absolutely terrible' (A TPT employee); "I walk down the streets of New York everyday knowing that I am the shit. I probably screwed your girlfriend, wife, daughter or all of the above. ... Just remember no salesman is successful without ... lying. ... I can bone [my clients] if necessary" (someone who claims to be [1] gay; [2] A Sceintologist (a follower of Scientology); (3) a VP at TPT ... QED?

    From TPT's Website: Forbes – October 25, 2010: co-CEOs, Elting and Shawe continue to run its [TPT's] day-to-day operations. “From the start,” Elting says, “we have dedicated ourselves to providing the very best client service possible." [e.g.??: .someone who claims to be a TPT VP (a gay Scientologist) states: "I walk down the streets of New York every day knowing that I am the shit. I probably scr*wed your girlfriend, wife daughter, or all the above ... I can rub my clients down and even bone them if necessary."]; "Quality control is also of paramount importance, and TransPerfect has the most rigorous quality management measures in the industry" [Director level and Project Management level employees have asked other employees on more than one occasion to lie relative to 'certifying' work]; "We hire the highest-caliber linguists" [Oh my God, look how ugly she is. How can she expect to get any work with such an ugly picture? She has to take that picture down if she wants to get any work(paraphrasing a female project manager at TPT vetting a work at home translator); The majority of employees are extremely unhappy here; Senior management is absolutely terrible; HR is so incompetent; not one [employee] seemed remotely happy, enthusiastic or doing anything productive; [TPT has to suffer] the loss of my business on what would have been a fairly expensive project. My assessment of Transperfect is that they are a bootleg company that severely wastes the time of others with no professional courtesy whatsoever and I highly advise anyone who is considering doing business and or working for them to steer clear.];"According to Elting, the company’s many locations make it convenient for most clients to meet with an account executive in person." [see below, beginning with "I am a fairly young, successful, New York based sports media professional..."]

    TransPerfect is notoriously known as a ... low-quality agency

    Transperfect [QA/QC ??] affiliates are now impersonating others on the web. These unacceptable attempts at (now cyber) bullying are consistent with the egregiously unprofessional behavior exhibited by this company [e.g. towards its employees, by one employee to another (unchecked, in variance with numerous written and verbal requests to do so), freelance staff (discrimination), clients (e.g. in the form of willingness to falsly certify documents, etc.) as evinced in numerous complaints posted relative to Transperfect. Why would co-CEO's Phil Shawe and Liz Elting allow their affiliates to jeopardize further the credibility of Transperfect? The Department of Consumer Affairs, the Better Business Bureau, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection (identity theft complaint division), the IC3 (internet crime complaint center), the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) are all being contacted relative to the Transperfect Affiliate(s) who is/are committing identity theft and posting false claims in the name of others. Transperfect Translations will be charged with joint liability for these transgressions. Is Transperfect aiming for a legal liability that escalates into a legally enterprise ending event? Co-CEOs Liz Elting and Phil Shawe ought to put in check their unwise affiliates in short order and have them remove the posted comments post haste.

    I would only recommend someone to work here if I wanted to destroy that relationship. I would venture to guess that no one that has worked at this company has left with a positive impression. And this does not even touch upon the unethical business practices… [emphasis added!]

    TransPerfect is not a company to work for if you want to feel proud of where you work.

    People affiliated with Transperfect post comments in other person's names on the web. Name misappropriation, and/or Identity Theft, fostered by Transperfect? In addition to Director's dishonesty relative to QC, actions in variance with ISO/EC standards, work discrimination, ethical shortcomings, etc., Transperfect is opening itself up to legal liability including possible Enterprise Ending Events. Is TPT Management that foolish?

    Transperfect is a place where not particularly intelligent alpha male wannabes and flighty women act hip, but if you ask them what an adverb is, they are apt to fidget nervously.

    It is telling that in an economic downturn, employees quit left and right with nothing lined up after simply because the conditions are so miserable.

    [comments by Transperfect Translations or Translations.com employees]

    HARROWING – how an employee of TPT describes walking into 3 Park. [from dictionary.com: harrowing - extremely disturbing or distressing]

    “Oh my God, look how ugly she is. How can she expect to get any work with such an ugly picture? She has to take that picture down if she wants to get any work”. Marina Yoffe, Project Manager, Transperfect Translations [TPT] 212-689-5555 x1331 [myoffe@transperfect.com]

    Paraphrasing a female ‘Project Manager’ while viewing the professional website and vetting a work at home employee in Transperfect’s [an ISO9000 certified company] stable of freelance workers … subsequently seconded by other Project Manager(s)/Coordinator(s), both male and female, … TPT, exhibiting a lot of class (all of it low) …. Would Ms. Yoffe have acted in such a manner without counsel from higher Management at TPT? Ms. Yoffe is a graduate of Cornell University. Lovely. What would its President (president@cornell.edu) think?

    I just got to the schoolyard … I walked into the schoolyard and I saw a bunch of people on the ground bleeding and I saw one standing. THAT’S THE BULLY. The Bully is the one standing when the others are on the ground bleeding. The Bully got used to people coming on scene and looking at the people on the ground and saying "do I want to be on the ground or standing" … and they give in to the Bully. I say "you punch them, I PUNCH YOU". Christopher J. Christie, Incumbent Governor, NJ, 2010 (paraphrased)

    I have never seen so much hyped up mediocrity and dummy worship in my life [a TPT employee referring to the atmosphere at Transperfect]

    [from Wiki: Lord of the Flies is a novel by William Golding about a group of schoolboys stuck on a deserted island who try to govern themselves, but with disastrous results.]

    “Those are nasty, insincere people with inflated sense of self” … A TPT alum; (other TPT alums have described the environment at TPT as being "toxic" and / or "noxious". A TPT Senior Translator/Supervisor has told subordinates "You can kiss my a*s"; and referred to others as "*trash" and "simple people" (as in simple minded).

    Daisy Kudish, aka Deniza Kudish, is a Senior Translator at TPT.

    TPT employee(s) with Management portfolios (e.g. Brent Armstrong [Global Director - BMC / Legal-RED / MCM Departments, 212-689-5555 x 1251, barmstrong@transperfect.com] and other Manager(s) e.g. Anne Lutz, Project Lead/Manager Legal Red Department) have requested (on more than one occasion) that a TPT employee "certify" translation work that the employee did not translate. This may be in variance with ISO9000 and / or client guidelines and/or the ATA Code of Professional Conduct and Business Practices and its Bylaws. Would one be similarly deceitful if applying for a Visa renewal, a Green Card or Citizenship? When convenient to TPT Mid and/or Senior Management employees will be asked to misstate the facts (i.e. lie) relative to Translation "certification(s)" thereby impeaching the credibility of its QA/QC. Is this sort of deceit a DIII/Division III thing?

    [paraphrased from dictionary.com: BUFFOON: a fool; putz: a fool, jerk]

    Mark Peeler is the Vice President of Global Production at TPT [mpeeler@transperfect.com 212-689-5555 x1236]

    "They're a rotten crowd," I shouted across the lawn. "You're worth the whole damn bunch put together." A salient quote from Nick to the Great Gatsby.

    Dan Milczarski is the erstwhile Quality Assurance Director at TPT. New Jersey City University; according to US NEWS NJCU has been ranked as a Tier 4, "Less Selective" School. Dan won an award that was actually presented at NYU. Dan and his QA team attempt to ferret out 'actionable' typographical errors, yet reprimands are doled out by TPT based on whether you are a TPT approved and condoned substance abuser. If you get your load on with the management, you're apt to be off the hook. Dan has exhibited pride in having read Kurt Vonnegut and having had courses devoted to the movie The Big Lebowski. [your tax dollars at work?!?] http://www.macfound.org A TPT Affiliate is impersonating and libeling others on the web. Is Dan the dope committing that transgression? What would the ISO 9001 & EN 15038 Quality Assurance organizations say if that were so? Would ISO and EN then approve of Dan Milczarski being a QA 'Consultant'?

    "Write What You Know" attributed to Mark Twain; so if one were to write about (and for??) what some [e.g. a senior supervisor at TPT] might refer to (write [sic] or wrongly) as *"trash" according to Mr. Twain, what would that make the author?

    "I walked in his house put my stuff down said where's my copy of [redacted] so I don't leave without it bitch! And he handed it over." Posited at the Princeton, Yale Club or Harvard Club ?? ... or better yet, perhaps on Wayne's World, the Beverly Hillbillies or the Jersey Shore? Transperfect and its affiliates exhibit a lot of class, all of it low.

    "When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."
    Jonathan Swift

    Guess what? ... TPT's QA Director is not a genius.

    Viewing a selective QC/QA disciplinary event of a purportedly “actionable” error at Transperfect is akin to watching theater of the absurd. QA/QC tenets are invoked subjectively, selectively and vindictively; e.g. if one is a drinking buddy or flighty subject of Management one may expect that an otherwise allegedly “actionable” error be dismissed with a giggle, titter or smirk. If one is not a Management-lush then one may expect to be on the short end of an attempted invocation of the vindictive wrath of the QC/QA team. This drill may consist of the QA/QC Director walking with feigned command presence, complaining about an absurd error that may/may not be due to a particular employee and the scapegoated employee receiving a written reprimand / warning. This is curious as a favored son or daughter / lush buddy of TPT Management would not receive the same level of discipline. Watching the TPT QA/QC Director in action one might think of, in lieu of a dust cloud wafting about Peanut’s Pig Pen character, a sonorous wafting of the Deliverance music theme, or a NYC School “Para-Professional”, a mediocre observer of hanging chads of a presidential election of yore, les enfants du mais or some other invocation of a peasant with a pitchfork tantrum. It would be one thing if Tranperfect was merely a harmless cache of mediocres (dummies, dilettantes and parrots) running a mutual admiration society, if quasi-imperial QA tenets were not invoked selectively-discriminately, vindictively and/or overridden/impeached [in the form of management asking others to submit false 'certifications'] when convenient to management. Read the reviews: STAY AWAY FROM TRANSPERFECT

    - a ny paper quoted someone as saying the victim was trying to "stay away from garbage and trouble"

    - TPT is so incompetent

    [paraphrased from Wiki: The Beverly Hillbillies is an American sitcom about a hillbilly family transplanted to Beverly Hills, California after finding oil on their land.]

    [bottom of the barrel - (paraphrasing dictionary.com): the location of persons or things of the very lowest quality; the least desirable, the dregs; [a sample sentence (or two)!: The Director graduated from a school whose degrees may as well be gifted along with a happy meal from a fast food restaurant. Although there are numerous examples of autodidact top tiers, the Director was clearly not one of those. He was clearly from the bottom of the barrel].

    [paraphrased from dictionary.com; Doofus - a foolish or inept person; a dim-wit]

    Andrew Gates is an IT Help Desk Employee of TPT. Gates has a nasty habit of smirking at people. He is a graduate of SUNY Oswego. Albert Einstein, Bill Gates and Andrew Gates have IQs. Knucklehead Smith does not. Extrapolating on Einstein, everything is relative. If you graduated from SUNY Oswego, or had an IQ similar to Mr. Gates' would you smirk at anyone? Would you go outside without a paper bag on your head? Special Education – noun; education that is modified for those having singular needs or disabilities, or slow learners. www.mensa.org


    3 of the above have IQ's; all is relative; If you had Andrew Gates' IQ would you smirk at anyone?

    [paraphrased from Wiki: Elmer Fudd is a fictional Looney Tunes cartoon character and the de facto archenemy of Bugs Bunny. He usually ends up seriously injuring himself. He speaks in an unusual way ... (and)... lacks intellect]

    Erin Sweeney, the Director of Performance Optimization at TPT [esweeney@transperfect.com, x1195] also likes to smirk at people. Erin is obviously perfect. Perhaps she should look in the mirror. Ms. Sweeney is supposed to provide leadership by example. MOO! [typo / redacted] BOO!

    [paraphrased from dictionary.com; Zaftig - having a pleasantly plump figure; sample sentence : She was Rubenesque and zaftig, yet for some unknown reason she chose to laugh at others]





    "Today's Job is to get [redacted] drunk". Brent Armstrong, TPT Director referring to a female project manager at TPT that he supervised; TPT Management encouraging substance abuse in a subordinate.


    3 Park Avenue Garbage Attendant – A garbage attendant (who shaves his head) at 3 Park Avenue has in the past acted aggressively, going out of his way on multiple occasions to block the path of an employee of a company headquartered at 3 Park (Transperfect). This behavior is atavistic and is consistent with what one would expect from animals at a zoo. Is this person auditioning for a diorama at the Natural History Museum? With a Wolfeian “pimp roll”? [The Pimp Roll – term coined by Tom Wolfe in the Bonfire of the Vanities: Exaggeratedly springy, swaggering walk of ghetto males [paraphrased]: They walked with a pumping gait known as the Pimp Roll ... He saw the Pimp Roll in the courtroom every day, too ... On warm days ... there were so many boys out strutting around with the Pimp Roll, whole streets seemed to be bobbing up and down. Even with his hands behind his back … [he] … managed to do the Pimp Roll … He had the same pumping swagger that practically every young defendant … affected, the Pimp Roll; Such stupid self-destructive macho egos; [Counsel] Attempts to “get the pimp roll out of a client”; … taught … to walk, at least temporarily, without the "Pimp Roll" which so clearly says "Street Hood" … [& if need be, counsel will] break his hip so he can’t do the Pimp Roll];What to do when ‘the help’ is untrustworthy and aggressive? This employee likes to smirk, too. ;[Paraphrased from Wiki: The Planet of the Apes is a 1968 science fiction film adapted from a 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle wherein apes can talk. Taylor (the protagonist) speaks, shouting "Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"]....3 Park Avenue is managed by the Cohen Brothers Realty Corp. Shouldn't the Cohen Bros. ensure that their staff is well behaved and not hostile towards tenant's employees?... perhaps the Cohen Brothers Realty Corp. might deign to keep the [staff who act like] chimps in check? Perhaps they can act like true gentlemen and scholars.

    "Me and my boys are going to teach him a lesson" David Patrick, TPT typesetter [evidence of the hostile environment found at TPT]

    There is more to life than getting one's load on, going on a bender, posturing and earning an epitaph: "Got Drunk, Played Darts, Duh(mmy)"

    [Rehab - (from dictionary.com): to rehabilitate; [sample sentence]: The fool lush sought rehab at the behest of his friends' intervention. He was going nowhere fast and in a negative spiral].

    TPT VP "The Shit"[tpt-the-shit] - A person who claims to be a VP at Transperfect, brags about cheating and lying. Joey, 33, gay, Scientologist (a follower of Scientology) states: "I walk down the streets of New York everyday knowing that I am the shit. I probably screwed your girlfriend, wife, daughter or all of the above. ... Just remember no salesman is successful without ... lying. ... I can bone [my clients] if necessary" What would Xenu think? [perhaps, Xenot or Xenut? (the opinions mentioned in the weblinks in this blog are not necessarily those of its editor)].



    TPT is, too, often a Kindergarten - e.g. Roman Ryba is apt to come to work and prattle away a good part of the day, interfering with the work progress of other employees. This person has diarrhea of the mouth.






    Anne Lutz is a Team Lead at TPT

    Pearl Leo is a Project Manager at TPT

    Dilettante - a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, esp. in a desultory or superficial way; dabbler.

    "I don't think I've ever been to a chamber music concert" Alison Hahn, TPT employee







    Word of the day: Effete; Sample sentence(s): (a) Effetes (vested or otherwise, especially those at the top of the stairs) shouldn’t smirk. (b) The Effete curbed his smirking when he applied for a visa renewal.

    Corporate Headquarters
    TransPerfect Translations
    Three Park Avenue, 39th Floor
    New York, NY 10016
    Tel: 212-689-5555
    Fax: 212-689-1059

    Below are salient features/hilights!! of comments posted by current and/or former employees of transperfect:

    managers so young they are on a power trip (even though they are roughly your age)

    managers so young because very few (self-respecting) people stay around long enough to be promoted.

    There is no incentive to stay at this company unless the underlying issues are changed, and employees are treated like they are.

    The majority of employees are extremely unhappy here; How does one expect to keep its company afloat when employees have zero interest invested in their job?

    TPT is so understaffed due to a steady stream of people leaving. The employees are always so overworked & miserable. Emphasis on speed rather than quality.

    Continuous pressure to get work turned around. No sense of accomplishment can ever be realized. Results from unrealistic deadlines and having to use the cheapest translators on the planet are that errors are made. A walk around the office will confirm that hardly anyone has any experience at all.

    Senior management is absolutely terrible.

    TransPerfect is not a company to work for if you want to feel proud of where you work.

    While there are good employees who genuinely care, none of them have any power, which is unfortunate. Eventually these good people leave out of frustration, disrespect and lack of monetary compensation for the hours worked. None of the intelligent people are ever listened to, in fact, are often hushed, as management doesn't want to hear any productive ideas to improve the company, only to make their wallets fatter. There is no job security whatsoever. There is no contract, and they make it clear that whatever your position is, you are easily replaceable. Do not try to negotiate a livable salary, they will just tell you to quit. (They won't fire you to avoid expenses or unemployment, but instead make your life miserable until you do.) The average length of stay at this company is probably 6 months to a year. The only employees that end up staying any considerable amount of time are foreigners whose visas are tied to the company.

    It is telling that in an economic downturn, employees quit left and right with nothing lined up after simply because the conditions are so miserable.

    If you are a freelancer, don't even think of working for them. They will treat you like garbage and offer you below market rates. They are proud of the fact that they've driven down prices so low that no one can make a living wage from freelancing for them unless they live in the third world. Also, part of the money-making scheme is to blame freelancers for problems then demand discounts from the job. Apparently they don't understand that costs can only be cut so far, they will eventually have to pay someone for something, but the business model depends on the cheapest people they can find, a veritable sweatshop of translation. They claim upon hiring that it's a meritocracy, which is a complete joke. If you receive a "promotion," it's never backed up monetarily, instead, they will drown you with work and blame you when things go wrong. The only reason you would be promoted is because so many other people have quit and you are the only one left. People are not treated equally and policies are never clear and there is no accountability whatsoever.

    Usually those that are promoted are the ones that get the drunkest with their managers.

    HR does not look out for employees' interests, they are simply a tool of upper management to get people to quit before any real benefits have to be paid. HR is so incompetent [emphasis added!] they can't even return phone calls or emails or call you when you have a scheduled interview.

    [Robert DeNoia is the incumbent head of HR, rdenoia@transperfect.com x1311; Robert actually attended Baruch College, the Harvard of Lexington (Ave., not MA)!]

    paraphrased from dictionary.com: milquetoast: a timid, unassertive, spineless person, esp. one who is easily dominated or intimidated]

    A Good Book, Sissy The Hummingbird Slayer!; A good game, Fairy-Opoloy!; Another Good Book: The Sissy Duckling!



    This just in from Facebook, dated 11/4/10: Someone has been impersonating me [says Robert Denoia] on the internet on blogs [correction: no one is impersonating Robert Denoia on the web, they are posting problems at his shop (many stated by other employees), Transperfect Translations] ... let the 'ongoing investigation' investigate the false certifications, discrimination [no (work at home) ugly translators!], deceit, posting by tpt affiliates in other's names (e.g. perhaps Dan Milczarski, the 4th [academic] tier fellow, who writes [Mark Twain said 'write what you know' ... so if one writes about riff raff and it's read by riff raff, what would that make the writer??]), comments by gay/Scientologist TPT VP's (boning the clients?) that occurs/is committed at/by TPT and/or its affiliates ... Wanna keep this venue safe for all of us?? then, do as most who comment about TPT say: STAY AWAY FROM TRANSPERFECT

    Paraphrased from dictionary.com, effete: worn out

    I would only recommend someone to work here if I wanted to destroy that relationship. I would venture to guess that no one that has worked at this company has left with a positive impression. And this does not even touch upon the unethical business practices... [emphasis added!]

    Advice to Senior Management: If you wanted to have a legitimate, professional business, you would have created a sustainable business model long ago. As it's clear you don't, continue with the shameful practices you're currently employing, make as much money as possible, use your employees until they're drained, and cut your losses in a few years when the ship inevitably sinks. But then again, it's obvious this was the plan from the inception, so enjoy the fruits of your labor!

    I am a fairly young, successful, New York based sports media professional. I work for a network that is in the process of expanding their summer programming by buying some territories in the international sporting space (Champions League Soccer, Rugby, Cricket, etc.) With that, we were potentially in need of outsourcing a translations company to localize our website(s) for the foreign audiences we are trying to attract. After some preliminary research, it almost seemed like hiring Transperfect's Translations.com was a no brainer. However, when an office assistant of mine said her nephew had a fishy experience interviewing with them, I found some bad press online and my boss and I decided to take a different approach. Upon seeing a job opening for a "Sales Account Manager" to work out of their midtown Manhattan office, my boss and I made a few adjustments to my actual resume to make myself appear to be a very recent college graduate in search of a good job. I applied for the position and at first I was very impressed. The job posting itself seemed to be well written and posted on legitimate job boards (too bad I just noticed they started posting on *****'s list). Furthermore, the careers website had a very thorough application which asked potential new hires to pick from a list of their strongest business skills (such as cold calling and negotiating) and rank them on a numerical scale. At first, this all told me that Transperfect is a very organized, professional organization which seems to evaluate and nurture talent quite well. The next step in my "under cover" interview process brought me to Sandra Carpenter, an HR executive in Atlanta. Sandra and I connected for a 15 minute phone interview which I felt went pretty well as I would be moving forward to talk with Sales Manager, Mark Hjepre. Mark interviewed me over the phone for about 20 minutes in a manner, which seem to evaluate my "sales skills" in more depth. This phone conversation also turned out well when Mark suggested we meet in person. Things got fishy when I got an email from Mark asking me to meet him in a coffee shop down the street from their offices in Murray Hill. It got stranger when he tried to push back the interview time and the location of the meeting only an hour or so before we were supposed to meet. A little later on I found myself in a crowded Starbucks near Grand Central; Mr. Hjerpe was 10 minutes late when he found me and escorted me to a bar across the street. I was informed he was planning on spending the night out with a client so he was going to treat our meeting as a "pre-game" as he downed two cranberry vodkas [editor's note: TPT has a substance abuse concern, fostered by management] and had me order a beer. The discussion went fine for the most part except for an awkward encounter where Mark ordered chicken wings. After a few minutes Mark became impatient with the services and rudely canceled the order with the waitress while muttering something about being a good server correlating to sales. I started to wonder how unprofessional this guy really was until he confirmed it by taking a personal call from the shop where his bike was being repaired. Anyway, Mark liked me enough to pass me through to a phone interview with Sales Director, Martha Geller. I was not surprised to get a call from Ms. Geller at our scheduled interview time asking to reschedule; I was starting to realize how inefficiently HR communicates with the actual mangers. After two phone interviews and a face to face discussion, one could imagine the questions I had to field from Martha the next day were starting to become repetitive. After talking for about 25 minutes Ms. Geller confirmed that I would be a strong fit for the position and that Sandra would let me know where I would be going from here. After talking to three different people on multiple occasions during a three week period, I would finally be seeing the inside of the actual Transperfect office to meet with VP, Jessica Eker. The office seemed flat; I only saw a few people come through the common area of the office and not one of them seemed remotely happy, enthusiastic or doing anything productive (strange for a Monday morning at the office of a company which seems to promote so much success). After waiting for almost 12 minutes, Ms. Ecker presented herself and asked me if I was there for the interview. When I said yes, I was brought into the conference room where Jessica gave me her business card, asked me my name, what position I was applying for and to see a copy of my resume (so much for the early gold star for organization in the evaluation process-this lady had no idea what I was doing there). Jessica asked me nothing but "cookie cutter" interview questions such as "what are your best personal assets, do I consider myself to be a competitive person, and where do I see myself in 5-10 years." The interview was over after 8 minutes, nothing profound was said in any regard and I was not even given an opportunity to ask questions of my own. Jessica escorted me to the elevator and told me I was at the end of the process and Sandra from HR would be in touch soon. A few days later, I received a form email from Sandra saying that I was not chosen for the position. After going through this process, do you think I gave a positive report back to my superior in regards to the company's efficiency and overall morale? Absolutely not, and the consequence they have to suffer is the loss of my business on what would have been a fairly expensive project. My assessment of Transperfect is that they are a bootleg company that severely wastes the time of others with no professional courtesy whatsoever and I highly advise anyone who is considering doing business and or working for them to steer clear. Furthermore, I filed a vendor claim with my employers corporate office. Within days, Co-CEO's Phil Shaw and Elizabeth Elting will receive a letter from my corporate offices informing them of my experience, the business they lost, and how the corporation that owns my company will not be in need of their services in this calendar year. The heads of all major units of my corporation have been warned that Transperfect is a faulty vendor and that decision makers should look elsewhere if in need of any translation services. On a separate note, a week or so into the process it came up in a conversation with Sandra that I went to an incredibly selective an prestigious university in Atlanta; they very city she works out of. She said that I was a great person to find because I could help her find highly educated and talented people to help fill some of her opening down in Atlanta. Now while I would have been more then happy to have put Sandra in touch my alma mater’s career center, I filed yet another report with them warning students to refrain from interviewing with Transperfect as they are not serious about hiring. I found it interesting to find that Mark Hjerpe received his degree Humboldt State (what state is that in exactly, is this a made up college in never never land or something?) I guess asking for legitimacy out of a company where the top executives have illegitimate educations is a very tall order. [emphasis added in this paragraph by editor].
    "Transperfect Translations of New York ... uses fraudulent hiring practices, presenting temp jobs as full-time, permanent jobs with medical benefits. A friend who works there got me the job, and then when they told me after the fact that I was there only to replace someone on vacation for a few days, he [w]as highly embarrassed" ... [I sent] ... "them an indignant note villfying the company's hiring practices ... I ... stated what happened and why it was unethical."


    Il Segno di Caino - The Translator's Hall of Shame

    TransPerfect is Still TransAwful

    TransPerfect’s new “strategy” for cheap, quick translations is crowdsourcing (…TransPerfect breaks up …translations and sends pieces of them to multiple translators at the same time) coupled with a demand that translators provide deep discounts for CAT-tool “matches.”

    [Y]our blog helped me finally make a decision regarding my relationship with TransPerfect....

    When I first began working with TransPerfect, it seemed to be a very serious company. Their rates were low, but not as low as many other companies, and within what I considered the "bare minimum" I would be willing to accept.... My first jobs with TransPerfect were smooth ... and I received a check within 30-45 days. I worked with them a few times and was happy with their professionalism.

    Unfortunately, much of this has changed. My first negative experience was last fall, when they wanted some help with a huge project they were distributing among translators. I took some files and translated them, I believe, well. A few days later, I received a startling e-mail stating there were some quality issues with my work and to look over the comments of the proofreader. When I looked at the documents, I realized that the majority of the documents with which they had a problem and which they wanted me to review were a)not the files I had translated and b)proofread by someone with no knowledge of the document's subject. TransPerfect wanted me (reduce my invoice) because they had associated my name with files I had not translated and with which an unqualified (for that field) proofreader had issues.

    This is when I began to realize there was a problem, especially with distributing files among several translators, getting the assignments confused, and ensuring that the both the translator and the proofreader understood the subject of the translation....

    Since this incident, I have noticed many other things that indicate the company's commitment to quality is not what it once may have been. There are many mass e-mails sent asking for availability; sometimes these blast messages seem personalized, but, when you write to give your availability, you receive no reply. The translations being offered are many words in a short amount of time (sometimes only hours), for very little money..... The company continually tries to lower the rates being offered, wants translators to complete impossible translation feats in little time (all jobs seem to be rush jobs now), now requires WordFast for most jobs, and has a habit of splitting jobs (even those that are large but not huge) among translators in order to complete them more quickly, rather than giving one translator a couple of more days to ensure uniformity in the translation....

    My biggest complaint with this company is the lack of respect for the translator. Recently, I was sent a mass e-mail about a job. I answered and offered my availability. The project manager responded, sent the files for me to approve, and we had a discussion via e-mail to confirm rate and deadline. Everything seemed agreed upon, so I set aside the time and waited for the Purchase Order, which never arrived. After an hour, I e-mailed the project manager to ask him to send the PO or to let me know if he had given the job to someone else so I could accept other jobs. Two days later, I am still waiting to hear from him. I wish I could say this was an isolated incident, but, unfortunately, this is the second time this has happened, with two different project managers, and I am afraid this will mark the end of my association with this company.

    And, finally, a former employee offers this insight:

    As a former employee, I am in agreement with your article on TransPerfect;

    need to mount a serious media campaign to let the public know what TransPerfect is, what it stands for, and how it is harming translators and the translation profession.

    So we say again, write them and make your position clear:

    Liz Elting, CEO: lelting@transperfect.com / Amy DiTrani: aditrani@transperfect.com / Anne Fang: afang@transperfect.com / Anne-Claire Lord: alord@transperfect.com / Cristina Farelo: cfarelo@transperfect.com / Hyojin Park: hpark@transperfect.com / Jennifer Adie: jadie@transperfect.com / Jennifer Bucci: jbucci@transperfect.com / Michael Petrigliano: mpetrigliano@transperfect.com / Pearl Leo: pleo@transperfect.com / Sara Hutchison: shutchison@transperfect.com / Sung Ha Lee: slee@transperfect.com / Zachary Eldridge: zeldridge@transperfect.com

    K said...

    As someone who used to work in TransPerfect's London office, I had a ringside seat in watching the company mutate from its former position as a hungry, dynamic multinational to what it has now become – a chaotic and bloated tantrum of a company that drools uncontrollably at the slightest prospect of ripping off its service providers.

    Back in 2002-2003 TPT had a fairly liberal internal attitude with regard to how its internal linguists structured their working day – you could use whichever methods you wanted to when proofreading a file, provided the work got done on time. This was actually crucial in allowing me to develop the skills I still use today as a freelance translator. They then decided that in order to become more efficient (read: in order to charge their clients more and pay their service providers less) they would obtain ISO 9001:2008 certification. This was the effective death-knell of internal and external quality, since linguists were forced to spend all their time filling out endless useless checklists and forms rather than actually translating documents.

    Fast-forward a few years...

    Last week I got a call from TPT asking if I would be available for an interpreting assignment in my home town. I asked whether it was still true that TPT paid only in dollars, regardless of where the service provider was located, and the PM said it was. They would, however, be happy to send me a cheque. I then explained to the PM that cheques in US dollars were completely useless to me, since I have only a euro bank account. She was very apologetic and said that payment by bank transfer was fine, and agreed to accept an extra $20 on my invoice to cover the processing fees involved.

    I then received my PO, clearly marked “Preferred Payment Type: Check”.

    After removing my head from my hands I went back to the PM, got my login details and changed my profile preferences on their website, giving them all my bank details as required. About three hours later I got a specific e-mail from their payment department saying that their preferred payment method was by cheque, and that any bank transfers would incur a fee of $20. I replied “I know, I’ve already factored it into my invoice.”

    Following day: job cancelled. The thought of paying for a job where the linguist would actually receive his full, original price was just too hard to swallow.

    The worst thing is that complaining to anyone within the company is pointless. The project managers are … in no position to change anything and the executives just don't care. The only thing to do (as this article shows) is to get word out in the industry that they are absolutely never to be worked with, ever.

    G said...

    I chose never to work with this company.
    All that I have been reading about them is obviously consistent with that. The low rate says it all. Do not spend any more time with them.

    emanuela said...

    Nothing of what you all said surprised me. T
    They decided not to hire me anymore. And this after one month negot[iat]ing and several tests, phone interviews and personal interviews. I just wasted one month of my life and I'm SO happy they changed their mind. Maybe I was using mine too much for them.

    Temporary Attorney: The Sweatshop Edition:


    Mar 12, 2010 ... Someone has been asking about Transperfect Staffing. Avoid at all costs. Not even sure if they are legit.

    As previously stated, this blog is not run by www.transperfect.com or www.translations.com [abbreviated as TPT]. It does not imply that an accurate work product is unobtainable from these organizations. It does address concerns (inclusive of QA/QC) at TPT for your consideration. Content contained at hyperlinks presented herein are not necessarily the opinions of, or condoned by the editor of this blog and are presented for rhetorical/didactic purposes.



    3 comments:

    1. I've worked with/for this company, including with some of the people mentioned here.
      ...a lot of my colleagues, professional translators, don't like them.

      ReplyDelete
    2. Transperfect Translations does seem to be a terrible place to work. No one appears to have any experience, yet are some how full of their own self importance.

      The staff turnover is really high. This is a product of overloading people and being more interested in making a 3 x mark up than doing a good job.

      ReplyDelete
    3. Just a note: Humboldt State is an actual university in the California State University System. It's located in the small town of Arcata north of San Francisco. But it's odd that someone would put it in his CV without giving such details.

      ReplyDelete