We know clients
want quick work, but at the end of the day they won't accept anything less than
perfect quality--no matter what they say at the hand off of the job when they
just want to get it assigned.
I know everyone
wants to win a project no matter what. And if you try to explain to the client
what is really possible and what is not, you still risk losing the work to the
many vendors who will say "yes" no matter what.
These are the
aggressive vendors, both in India and China, who will take any project, whether
they can really do it or not, on the hope that getting a job is the main thing
and they will likely get some payment even if they can't come through 100%.
This is the idea that obtaining some money now is more desirable than having an
on-going relationship with a client.
However a more
mature view is that you should not just be jumping through hoops for a client
who wants something crazy--you need to be educating them on what is and what is
not possible. This means telling them they are making a mistake by demanding
the ridiculous and impossible.
(It should be
noted that localization, for all the pretension our industry gives it, is
simply "translation" in most companies and considered a little more
than a back office administrative task. This mean the drones who are
interfacing with you in handling the project have little power to do anything
other than try to fulfill the insane demands their bosses made of them concerning
the localization work. This means to make you pitch to change the way clients do things, you have to deal with those higher up in the chain of command who really can make the change.)
So when you get these rush requests, the only way to go is to ignore the client's wishes and quote the right time and
price for what is really possible and they can take it or leave it.
Anything else
risks a bad result that hurts your relationship.
In all my years
in localization, I have been in too many staff meetings and spent too much time
trying to figure out how to do stupid things for a client that just won't work and
will mean disaster later on for the relationship.
The time should
be spent on educating the client and making sure they know that the way they have decided on doing things will lead to disaster and all of them getting
fired for botching the job.
