Beware : translation scammers on the net

We are all aware of the scams that plague the internet, particularly the infamous 419 nigerian scams. How many times have we been solicited by those countless rich nigerians who seem to have enormous amounts of money in their frozen bank accounts. If only they could get your bank details to help them move the money. 

The bad news for translators is that the translation industry is rich picking for scammers. It can be anonymous, operates completely over the internet, and money can easily get lost when transferred between countries. To add to that quality control can be a problem, and victims often don't realise they have been scammed until long after any translations have been used.      

The current economic climate means that many people are now trying their hands at translation, whether they are capable of exercising such a career or not. The availability of translation engines such as google translate has also meant that many have seen this as an opportunity to provide "translation services" without even looking at the quality of the translations that such engines produce. Fertile ground indeed for scammers.   

There are several types of scam the translation industry can come across.

Lets have a look at each of them. 

THE FAKE AGENCY

 We have all heard of bad or slow payers. Although these are a problem, they are not what we would call scammers. Sometimes they are once reputable companies who have just fallen upon hard times. The translation market is getting more and more competitive, and a fair number of the victims have been agencies tryig to keep their head above water.   

What I am talking about is the solicitation of freelance translators by individuals who just want to get a "free lunch". Scammers can set up fake websites with domains or agency names that are similar to more reputable agencies. They get inquiries from potential customers, and farm out the work to unsuspecting freelancers. They then pocket all the money, and leave the freelancer wondering whether he will ever get his money. 

Consider how easy it is to set up websites and email addresses on Google. No identification is provided or needed when setting up a gmail account. If the agency only provides a gmail, hotmail or yahoo address, that might be one sign you are dealing with a potential scammer (although many translators and agencies do have legitimate reasons to have such addresses).

There are a number of simple checks you can carry out to see whether an agency has a solid presence on the internet:

• Run a whois check on their domain
• Run an alexa check on their domain (only for midsized and bigger companies)
• Give them a call (sometimes online scammers are cowards and get freaked by real interpersonal contact)
• Make sure they have a landline contact to an office, somewhere (some legitimate translation companies are little more than sole traderships, and one of the attractions of working in translations is that you can travel around on the job, and people often do)     

Be aware that there is always a risk of dealing with agencies or clients where there are no intergovernmental financial agreements between your country and the country where the agency is located. Even a contract may be rendered useless if the mechanisms do not exist to recoup your money, or if it is just too expensive to do so. You could try an escrow service where nobody gets the money unless everyone is happy, I found one for translators at Bewords.com. Reputable small sized agencies, however, are always scared of bad publicity, so even if the mechanisms may not exist in full it is still in their interests to do the honorable thing. There is the Blue Board on proZ for example, which many refer to, and which can be quite damaging if there are any bad entries (and there are plenty for slow payers). 

THE FAKE CLIENT  

THE "CAN I WORK FOR YOU SCAMMING SPAMSTER"

Recently I suspected that I have beome the victim of a peculiar scam artists who sends out fake CVs and applications.

I am not an actively recruiting translation agency (indeed I have stopped promoting myself as such and instead promote myself as a freelancer), so I was wondering why there was an explosive interest in people who wanted to work for me.  

The emails had the following common characteristics.

1: The vast majority were from gmail addresses.  

2: The application letters were somewhat nebulous, not to the point, and full of vacuous claims about reliability and punctuality,  annoying and amateurish  for anyone who has to vet them. Many contained glaring spelling mistakes.

3: There were disproportionally more applications for the language combination Arabic to English

4: Not a single application included any information about where they got information about my one man company. This is a simple courtesy which always creates a good impression, especially at a time when many of us have to invest considerable resources in marketing.

I was generally surprised about the naivety of the applications, and how they were prepared.

I then went about archiving the emails so I could write a mass response to about 150 of the 800 or so applications I have received.

Curiously, many of the senders emails had been disabled, especially the gmail addresses.

I also never received a single response addressing my letter from anyone I mailed to…..not a single response.

Researching into the issue a little further, I discovered that a growing problem in the translation industry is this particular type of translation scamming.

This is the practice of phishing CVs from translator portals such as translatorcafe or proz.com, and sending fake CVs and application letters to prospective clients. Often the CVs are real but the names have been changed, or simply the contact email address has been changed. These fake translators then run a translation through google translate and bill the clients while pretending to be someone else. Not only are these fraudsters defrauding clients, they are also causing untold damage to the real translators they are purporting to be.

I wonder whether I have been the victim of such an identity theft.

I am also particularly alarmed that the fast majority of prospective applications seem to come from such individuals.