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tranfree issue 20 - 6th November 2000
A New Question You Should Always Askby Alex Eames When taking on a new job, the latest "must-ask" question (for me) is...
Last week someone wanted to send me 800 words of editing. "OK send it over" I said. A while later I logged on to get my email and there was a file of... I don't know why it was so big (and YES it was zipped), but it was probably something to do with fancy graphics. [These days I have an "always on" 500k cable connection except when I'm travelling. But even so, 1 megabyte per 100 words is excessive. After all, you have to store the files in case of future queries/complaints.] I emailed the American client, explained that in Europe we pay for online time and turned away the job. I also deleted it from the server without downloading (you can do this with Eudora Pro - eudora.com). If it takes longer to download the file than to do the work I'm not interested. Small-minded? No I don't think so. Inflexible? Maybe, but I've got good relationships with about 5 people at that company -- I don't think it'll hurt me much. I should have asked, and they should have told me up-front. You learn. That's why I'm telling you here. Sooner or later it'll happen to you -- unless you ask "What size is the file?"
Alex Eames is the founder of translatortips.com,
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...more than 9 Megabytes waiting for me.