Victoria Strauss, who runs the excellent "Writer Beware" blog, had an inquiry about an outfit calling itself Author Translation, which offers to translate your work into Spanish.
She made a polite inquiry about the identity and qualifications of the translators and any publishers and clients with whom they have worked.
The answer was vague, so she restated her questions, still very politely, making the points that it would be difficult for an author to assess whether they were getting a professional translation if the site didn't offer any information about the translators, especially if the authors didn't speak or read Spanish themselves.
She got this hilarious response:
"You seem to gather what you want to gather. I told you the translators publish their names depending on personal choice (you can be published or anonymous), why do you gather from this sentence that "they are not professionals" ? Maybe you need psychological treatment if you understand so badly.
In addition, why do you say that "a language they can't speak or read themselves " if I told you that we are Spanish? Are you crazy ?
And why you say that "the author has no way of judging the quality of the finished product" if everybody can pass some few translated pages to any Spanish person in order to judge?
Please, don't disturb us any more, I answered you and I didn't have any duty of doing that. I did it only because you seem to be part of a bigger organization, but your "watchdog" is the more stupid thing I have ever seen in my life. Go away you and your dog.
Doesn't inspire confidence in their service (or their manners), does it?
