This is truly sad...

[Avery O]

Hi Bettye, 

I had to edit the post as it violated this specific Community Guideline:

• Including names of persons or companies (or other identifying information) in an accusation of misconduct, incompetence or other wrongdoing.

In this case, anyone can try to locate the job post by copy-pasting phrases from the post, and searching it in the marketplace. I hope this clarifies things, Bettye. Let me know if you have further questions!

[Bettye U]

Thank you Jennifer, but I did not accuse anyone of misconduct, incompetence, or other wrongdoing. My issue was with the people applying to transcribe and edit an hour's worth of dictation for $1.50 an hour, not with the client (actually, more power to them for getting work done for practically nothing)!

I appreciate your attempt to clarify this for me, but frankly, I've long since given up on trying to understand some of the platform's violations. It seems to be okay to post jobs for suspicious or illegal activity, like plagiarizing, but it's a violation to cut and paste a job posting on the community boards. Why is no one looking at the contents of some of these postings? I mean, someone could post a job looking to hire a hitman, and it would stay up longer than a cut and paste job on these boards! (I'm not trying to be difficult, but I just find this ironically funny.) The rule should probably be no cutting and pasting, period. 

Thanks again.

[Bettye U]

Oops, I meant, thank you, Avery.

[John K]

---

Bettye U wrote:

Thank you Jennifer, but I did not accuse anyone of misconduct, incompetence, or other wrongdoing. My issue was with the people applying to transcribe and edit an hour's worth of dictation for $1.50 an hour, not with the client (actually, more power to them for getting work done for practically nothing)!

---

Bettye, I was going to mention accusation of misconduct as one possible reason for editing your post, but decided it was a bit of a stretch. However, I looked up the word misconduct and one definition is improper behavior, and we both think paying $5 for transcribing then editing a 40 minute audio file is improper behavior, so I can appreciate Avery's viewpoint.

[Elia G]

Hello everyone,

such low rates come as no surprise, to me. But not only in translation; how many times have you read something like "New to Upwork?" This is a great chance for you!", and it turns out you're asked to write a 3,000-word article for $5 and "a great 5-star feedback!". Just wow.

Needless to say, these job posts must be avoided. I understand when someone points out that newbies are desperately trying to land their first job, so that they won't have their account suspended for too many unsuccessful applications, but there's more than that: working for those rates has a huge, negative influence on the translator and his/her career, and it also negatively affects the whole translation field, it diminishes fellow translators' work!

I haven't had any luck on Upwork so far, despite putting a lot of effort into it by polishing up my profile, my proposals...
Who knows if I will actually have my account suspended because of that! But that doesn't matter, as I have no intention to negatively impact my career, just to avoid getting suspended on Upwork -- maybe people forget that Upwork is very, very far from being the only place where freelance translators can get jobs. 

I wish so bad that, as time passes, less and less translators accepted shameful rates like those. We'll see (and hope)!

Have a great day you all.

[Luce N]

What really breaks my heart is when the client offers a reasonable price and you can see (with the Freelancer Plus plan) that some freelancers have offered to work for a pittance instead.

[Kashif A]

It is a buyers' market out there 

[Luce N]

It shouldn't be. It's up to us freelancers not to play this game, as it hurts our intererest.

[Virginia F]

A simple fix if Upwork would chose to do so ... is to set the minimum at $25. That's still not great, but it sure doesn't look as shameful as $5 - why Upwork wants to align itself with that other $5 site is beyond my ken.

[Preston H]

A $5.00 minimum is fine.

There are jobs I'll do for $5.00.

If Upwork allows this freedom to freelancers, it doesn't mean you need to do jobs for that amount. You can establish any mininum you want for yourself.