Lowest rates in the industry. Too low to earn a decent living as a sole source of income. The average per word rate is about minimum wage.
You have to run like a beggar to grab whatever scraps they throw out there. They just have the plebs bid on everything instead of giving work to those who can do it best. Talent is of no importance. The only selection criterion is who can do it for the least.
Forced to use to low quality tools; bad software and awful translation memories. I must say the software (Wordfast) is steadily improving.
Proofreaders range from incompetent to novice (lowest bidder); you must translate like a novice who is not a native speaker or like a machine to avoid bad feedback. This can be a Pro depending on your perspective (going word by word is much faster than actually thinking, so you make more money by botching).
They can delay payment and even deduct random and disproportionate amounts when one of their allophone proofreaders subjectively decides to not like a common expression. Arguing and demonstrating serves no purpose because they are impervious to reason and don't actually understand their work or the subject. They will rob you. Just a little bit. But they will.
Like all FRCA translation services, they have a great disdain for FRCA. Everything is in some strange dialect that doesn't actually exist outside of translations.
Generalized low level comprehension of linguistics and language (they think all references are prescriptive and exclusive, rather strange).
Project managers regularly try to add extra work to projects and pretend you owe them. They'll even have the incredible gall to ask you for a "favour"!
Mistakes enforced despite knowledge that they are mistakes just for the sake of consistency, as if being consistently wrong was a good thing.
