NordicTrans hits the bottom

Our colleague Jeff Whittaker was kind enough to draw attention to a press release announcing new, low prices from NordicTrans in response to the current economic crisis. Very interesting.

There are many ways to process that information. I could call the company an opportunistic bottom feeder for offering translation at below what I do (given today's exchange rate with the euro) when including proofreading by a second native speaker, but since I doubt that the quality a big agency can deliver at that price will every be any threat to me, I won't. For those translators who think that the sky is falling and prices with it, I'll agree that this is probably sound evidence of that: it's hard to afford a monkey at three cents a word when you're only grossing eighteen cents. Mistresses and Maseratis ain't cheap, and I for one am not about to give up my hard-earned profits to the undeserving just because they can't afford their winter heating bills. That would be bad business.

In any case, according to the press release, this represents the bottom of the scale pretty much. I do know of a few kitchen table wannabe agencies that charge about the same (well, a bit higher usually, given the exchange rate), maybe even a few pennies less in some extreme cases. But indeed, this is more or less rock bottom I think. Those who are a few levels down on the outsourcing food chain should think about this and consider it carefully in their "marketing strategies".