Absolute Translations Reviews

I worked at Absolute Translations for less than a year and every time I look back and reflect on my time there I'm more and more baffled. Back then it was a small company in a small office and a suffocating culture: - In my first week there I was asked my zodiac sign by a colleague (someone related to the owners) and received a very hostile look when I replied and this person didn't like the answer. - There was a rota to clean the coffee machine, which I had to do even though I explained that I don't like coffee and therefore never drink it. - One of my colleagues literally told me that women couldn't be pilots because they're women, but men can, of course! - There was no room whatsoever to eat your lunch in peace. Also, lunch was only 45 minutes instead of a full hour and working hours were 9 to 6 for very little money. - The female owner was lovely and understanding. Not so much the male owner, who was loud, overexcited to the point of interference, and slow to apologise to the clients when mistakes occurred. Most frustrating of all, this experience left me very disappointed in the translation industry. They claim to use experienced and specialist translators, but most of the time that's not the case. Clients would pay for a specialist service and the translation would be assigned to the usual generalist translators. This is not to say that these translators are bad, just that they're not specialist professionals. The company lets clients believe that they are, and then of course they complain about massive, embarrassing errors that wouldn't have happened if this company really cared about quality. Additionally, never did I witness a project manager telling a client that a translation would take longer because the best translator for the job was unavailable. They would just send the text to someone else. All in all, this was a very stressful experience, with not very nice colleagues and with clients complaining all the time about the bad quality of the translations. I believe Absolute Translations gives translators a bad name. I was truly excited about this job and it's a shame that it turned out to be such a bad experience.