This week the translation world has been busy tearing apart Lionbridge for its crimes against humanity, this time in the form of an attempt to fool freelancers into cutting down their rates. Heated discussion is a good thing, and not only as a venting tool: the less confident and experienced among us will find it easier to resist the arrogant move if they know what others are doing. There is a problem though: the emotional conversation is a bit detached from reality.
Most feedback falls into one of two categories. The first is, let’s voice our indignation and the monster will retreat. Let’s see. A universally hated SLA. A widely criticized translation environment. And now you pay to use it. And are required to reduce your rates. And summoned to their offices to wash the floor. Not yet? You will be. These guys would make Stanley Milgram proud. So you believe they’ll suddenly begin to care about whether you are happy because…?
The other suggested approach is grab some popcorn and watch Lionbridge go broke. Would be nice if the world were that fair. Everybody seems to have forgotten by now, but thebigword did exactly the same two years ago. Citing “current climate,” they “communicate[d] a necessary change in the payment terms <…>: your standard rate will be reduced by 6%.” Two years later, they may not be celebrating record profits, but they are definitely as alive as ever and their BB rating is a decent 4.5. (And they “value [their] industry reputation.”)
Importantly, this is not merely a matter of fairness. Many clients don’t care, but many care enough to avoid an LSP mistreating its suppliers, all else being equal. This brings us to the point that has so far been missing from the discussion: while it looks like nobody at Lionbridge will lose sleep over your departure from their talent pool or your eloquent e-mails to their VP of the Universe, if you bite off a portion of their market share they’ll have to pay attention.
Admittedly, you are unlikely to single-handedly ruin their record-profit-reporting, proprietary-software-imposing, discount-demanding empire, but that is not necessary as small steps add up across the market. Broadly speaking, you need to do two things: (1) make it easier for clients to find you and (2) figure out ways to prove your credibility. For most projects that, in essence, is the entire “all else being equal” part.
Clients are not just metaphysically attracted to agencies. Most of them opt for the line of least resistance when searching and try to avoid responsibility when choosing. So put yourself in front of their eyes (go for a niche to make things easier) and give them something persuasive to tell their boss in case they end up with a screwed-up translation and she demands an explanation (you know the translation will be fine, but they don’t). You will then be in a much better position to negotiate with LB, or any other client for that matter, and this includes the look-where-you-can-stick-your-rate-reduction kind of negotiation, too.
By the way, what on earth is in that SLA that so many people find it a joke?
One way to possibly escalate this concern for fairness is to make more powerful stakeholders who will care what this mean for the future of the company.
Identify all the research analysts that cover LIOX and inform them in a clear and dispassionate tone how this move will very likely cause the best translators to refuse to work with LIOX and result is lower quality for many services provided by LIOX thus resulting in customers leaving and a lower stock price. Remember that these are the guys who publicly quiz the executive management about how things are going every quarter and also write reports to inform interested investors what they think about the company and its future. Here is a start:
• Vafi, Joeseph of Jeffries & Co
• Baldry, Richard of Signal Hill Group LLC
• Hynes, David of Canaccord Genuity
• Liu, Kevin of B. Riley & Company, Inc.
• They also have coverage by Friedman Billings, Matrix Research, First Albany and Piper Jaffrey so find the analysts and let them know why you think LIOX has a shaky future
Identify the Investment Officers at their largest institutional investor firms and inform them why LIOX may be a bad investment and why their stock price is likely to fall, again in a dispassionate and clear way so that they understand that there is a real risk of the stock price collapsing and staying in the gutter.
This link provides a list of all their largest Institutional Investment holders http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=LIOX+Major+Holders
Find their addresses/emails and make sure they hear about this from you and all your best friends who disagree with this policy.
Write them all an email explaining the role of the translator in the localization supply chain making sure they understand that quality comes from good translators who are likely to work best when they feel fairly compensated. You could also explain how alienating good translators will undermine LIOX quality in the long run. LIOX will probably have a story on how easily translators are replaceable – it is important to explain that like in any other profession, the best translators are not so easily replaced. Give them examples of how bad translators undermine product and services offered by LIOX.
Then attach a link to all the blogs that explain why this is unfair / bad strategy etc.. There is a good summary of the LIOX Crowdscorning with many links at http://t.co/ArVJtc7 I suggest that an even and considered tone like the one employed by Kevin Lossner will be the most effective way to make your point. Angry people are tiresome and best ignored.
Make sure that you and a 100 of your best friends send some form of this summary to anybody who is interested in investing in LIOX stock or currently owns a significant amount of LIOX stock.
Make it clear that this is likely to cause the following:
• Loss in service and product quality
• Increasingly lower quality translators working for Lionbridge which will be reflected in their deliverables
• Imminent and sustained drop in LIOX stock price (i.e. it will be very hard for the stock to rise again)
• Continued losses as some large customers realize that they have so much ill will that it is going to affect their ability to deliver services and choose to find other suppliers who have better relations with the supply chain
• Perception of LIOX as a sweatshop which will make many blue chip customers shy away and avoid LIOX as a supplier
If you do this, I think you will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that you have done everything you can to let the authorities know about this. If you are lucky this will even cause Rory and Didier to get a severe hand slapping from the investors and possibly even issue an apology to all the people who received the infamous letter. Even if there are no visible signs of remorse I suspect there will be some back room chats that will make the boys tread much more carefully in future.
But my real advice to all of you is that you are probably best served by finding new people (SLVs too) to work with, who treat you with more respect and fairness and realize that in this industry quality is accomplished through human partnerships. Working with people who recognize and acknowledge your value always makes for a better life. Right?
Good Luck.