No comment on the content: everything I’d want to reply I already said in my original post anyway.

Just one question though – what on earth do you mean by “at least get out of the way”? I wasn’t aware that I was in your way in the first place…

*First of all,* let’s trot out the hackneyed bromides: “If someone offers you a rate you don’t consider decent, all you have to do is refuse the job.”

Great idea. And how’s that working for us, by the way? That great, thoughtful, individualistic, every-man-for-himself strategy has clearly resulted in a universal increase in translators’ fees, hasn’t it?

Every time you refuse a job because the pay is too low, you’re really giving those agencies and clients pause, aren’t you? In fact, you’ve made them just so darned ashamed of themselves that they’ve gotten together and decided to raise their rates, haven’t they?

Wow. Great work, you guys. You’ve done a HUGE favor to the entire profession and you should certainly deserve all the credit for it!

*And second,* let’s play the capitalist game called “I Pulled Myself Up By My Bootstraps and Anyone Else Ought to Be Able to Do the Same!”

There are many great players in this game this days, especially since U.S. banks nearly failed and the euro is in crisis, including Lehman Brothers, Bank of America, oh … I could go on and on.

How you play is like this: You’ve got all the clients you need? You’re earning what you need or want to earn? Good for you! To hell with everyone else! You don’t belong to a profession and you don’t have the slightest obligation to other translators! Not even the ones in your own language combination (No! Especially not to them! They’re the friggin’ competition, after all!!)

No human or ethical obligations either! There. Don’t you feel a whole light freer and lighter?

Let’s say it with Herman Cain, that master of compassion: “If you’re not rich and you don’t have a job, it’s your own fault!”

Anyone who thinks otherwise is clearly an “enemy of the entrepreneurial spirit”!

I’d go on, but it’s time for my emetic.

No one has to endorse No Peanuts! (and I’m so doggone sorry that exclamation point “irritates” you, MH. Certainly, there are no more serious issues facing the profession than your punctuation allergies!). But if you’re not going to join us, at least get out of the way.

I endorsed the movement, but I also totally agree with your comment. I endorsed principally for collective reasons, as I am also convinced that in this particular industry, individuals have a big “power” on the collective behaviour, the “mean” direction of that behaviour. We all were individuals, closed in our own little business, till the internet era started. I myself recognise myself in your “carreer” but somewhere “I” made a mistake (or mistakes). As there are many “I’s” to sum in the translation industry, all these big or little mistakes have their weight on a collective behaviour wich create “unaspected” difficulties for individuals and so on. Ofcourse, only individual corrections of individual mistakes will have the same collective effect… but somewhere I stay convinced that collective information can help individuals to “clear” their own doubts or to understand and recognise their own mistakes. No Peanuts can do that, have a look to it’s own “evolution” and review or reset. I am ready to do that.

@Lisa – I think the point is that NP doesn’t really go any further than a “just say no” approach. Saying no needs to be justifiable, in the way Marie-Hélène describes. And there are, it must be said and as you imply, supply/demand factors at work in certain pairs and markets. There are sound economic principles behind the phrase “dime a dozen”. Maybe you just intended it as a way of saying “lots”, but it actually encapsulates part of the cause of the problem for Eng/Spa in Spain.