For the past thirty years or so, my department has subcontracted the work it can't do in-house to a handful of local, independent translators (do I need to point out that I wasn't personally involved in this for the first 24 years?).
Or, to paint a more vivid image: most of our subcontractors have been working with my department since the day I was born.
And now, in 2010, globalisation has struck. It has struck - more precisely - in the obsession, among the faceless directors who live and breathe and dictate from up there in the murky echelons of power, with cost-cutting.
In the name of cost-cutting, we were instructed to issue a new Call for Tender. In the name of cost-cutting, we were forced - I mean encouraged - to shortlist dozens of super-duper multinational companies who promised to "do it all" for less.
In the name of cost-cutting, we were obliged to fight to keep our local freelancers on the shortlist.
And then, lo and behold, we were consulted. Instructed to assess the quality of each shortlisted candidate, we issued a test and reported on the competency of each.
The results were radical.
The sample documents submitted by all the cheap, so-called major companies were sloppy, badly written and littered with avoidable mistakes.
The documents submitted by our local subcontractors were of irreproachable quality.
So, we duly made out our reports and gave our marks out of ten.
And, when the powers-that-be had considered our reports... they decided that the cheapest firms should make it on to the short-shortlist.
At the end of 2010, this kind of thinking passes for "progress".
It seems poignant to me that, the bigger the notion of Quality becomes (it has its own department now, of course, plus a staff of hundreds...), the less of the stuff there is around.
Or, to put it another way: can anyone explain to me how someone intelligent and experienced enough to end up as a senior manager at a place like The Firm can actually believe that quality should be sacrificed for the sake of a few centimes per word?
2 comments:
That is so depressing and so typical of the short-sighted policies which now seem to be the norm everywhere. It's exactly the same with "customer service". The more it is talked about and given "priority", the worse it gets.
Concerning the powers-that-be decision, 2 words: objectives and rewards (or AIS).
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