tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post2319271331975050585..comments2023-05-31T11:46:50.421+02:00Comments on Financial Translation Blog: ALS’s Gavin Wheeldon: A Case Study in Cheap TranslationMiguel Llorens M.http://www.blogger.com/profile/06617102771655076833noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-80168810335507983932012-07-23T23:37:07.553+02:002012-07-23T23:37:07.553+02:00Miguel, as one to have first hand experience of th...Miguel, as one to have first hand experience of the Wheeldon's methods I congratulate you on this article. I have seen his MO at first hand many years ago and have been bemused how he had managed to get away with such bullshit and self promotion. You would not believe how accurate you are , beggars belief what the MOJ and Capita due diligence teams did. GW is no victim in this, be careful though he has moved into the food industry: http://menmedia.co.uk/manchestereveningnews/news/business/s/1583810_intafood-aims-for-a-tasty-1m-turnover <br /><br />I wonder what the next angle will be?? Do feel a bit worried for his business partner looking at the photo??Dave Dempseynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-86131503627624180002012-06-17T17:32:38.862+02:002012-06-17T17:32:38.862+02:00Oh, I confess I hadn't noticed. Those ARE stac...Oh, I confess I hadn't noticed. Those ARE stacks of cash on the Dragons' desks! So literal! Is this a venture capital meeting or a drug deal. Anyway, I've never watched the Dragons, but BBC reality shows tend to be slightly less outrageous. In this case, though, it seems some producer decided that people needed a slight reminder that all of this is about MONEY.Miguel Llorens M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06617102771655076833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-53298514566454790552012-06-13T03:23:42.966+02:002012-06-13T03:23:42.966+02:00That video was hysterically funny to watch. Here ...That video was hysterically funny to watch. Here were my impressions, in no particular order:<br /><br />1. Was that cash stacked up on the desktops? I suppose visual props are crucial to convey how all this money is so real when discussing arcane aspects of investment finance like P/E ratios, projected earnings and cash flow, which might causes the audience to suddenly flee. Ack! Numbers!<br /><br />2. I thought all the stern looks and furrowed brows and the overall thoughtful gravitas on the part of the Dragons were quite impressive, until they got to the actual investment amounts discussed. 150K? Seriously? I've sponsored and hosted ATA conference events plus after-event dinners in five cities where I've spent that much on the wine for the CNN crew that was attending.<br /><br />OK, I'm exaggerating, but not by much. And of course that's dollars, not pounds, but still. Are those real investment amounts at a level to be discussed on a national TV show? Or the check for a really awesome week in New York City?<br /><br />3. By far the most shocking part was how in God's name this goofball punk of a moronic dweeb got off talking about the translation industry on a national television show under circumstances that clearly show 1) He's not a translator, an interpreter or even multilingual; 2) He's clueless about how the translation industry actually works; 3) The Dragons know more about the industry than he does and 4) He's a completely hopeless and brainless twit when it comes to reading a friggin' balance sheet. It's a BALANCE SHEET. And he's purportedly a CEO? CEO of what? Sesame Street? No, wait, they make a ton of money and are intelligently managed. He presents himself as an entrepreneur, and he doesn't even know how to calculate the P/E?<br /><br />5. Holy crap!<br /><br />6. I actually started to feel a little sorry for him as he was being lectured on subjects every 18-year-old accounting student at a community college learns. Sort of like I always felt about the poor dodo birds when those mean guys with clubs came ashore.<br /><br />7. I changed my mind when I learned that they got fat, flightless and stupid because of tons of easy food and no predators.<br /><br />8. Where was I? Oh, yeah, same thing.<br /><br />9. I wouldn't wring my hands too much about how he made some money at the end of the story. I'm not up to speed on how the authorities in the UK handle failure to perform on contract efforts, but in the U.S. those folks who swept in and bought his company on the strength of future potential (e.g. not yet real) revenue and earnings would be aware that not only can the contract be terminated for non-performance, but the federal government can come after any activities that they deem to have been committed in bad faith or with the express intent of defrauding of misleading the government. In the U.S. at least, the contracts governing the sale of companies include long, fat, protective provisions protecting the buyer -- some with no expiration dates -- stipulating the forfeiture of proceeds from the sale in the event of any bad faith actions at all.<br /><br />10. And under the law, you don't even have to be aware of them for you to violate the contract provision -- because it's a private commercial contract and not an activity covered by criminal law.<br /><br />So the final chapter on this may have yet to be written if there were in fact any bad faith actions.<br /><br />There's no law against being stupid (yet) so perhaps he can retire to Mauritius and sip on some cocktails with those little umbrellas in them until the authorities show up with their own clubs.Kevin Hendzelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13134174901029466746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-27013642020524171742012-05-15T11:02:02.510+02:002012-05-15T11:02:02.510+02:00Then ALS were caught in a data-theft scandal whils...Then ALS were caught in a data-theft scandal whilst trying desperately to deliver into this contract (some quoted fulfillment rates are as low as 18%), then the shadow justice secretary calls for sanctions, and now - ALS are caught up in a collusion scandal over another tendering process...<br />http://spendmatters.co.uk/southampton-run-procurement-conflict-interest-issues/Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-14695358202919112932012-04-02T14:47:53.125+02:002012-04-02T14:47:53.125+02:005.- You out yourself as a McLocalization executive...5.- You out yourself as a McLocalization executive in this sentence: <br />He's running a business - there are thousands of agencies out there - (most of whom however work fantastically with the linguists and pay them well) and he's won a lucrative deal. The issue is not with him but with the MOJ for ever selling off such an important service.<br />In a nutshell, that is the problem with the Cheap Translation model. Nowadays, a large agency is often just a sales team (of monolingual English speakers) and a stable of project managers (usually located in Eastern Europe or Panama). The sales people hook the bait (at any price), reel in the unsuspecting customer, and then turn the whole project over to the PMs, who look up a random name on the database and then try to arm wrestle the lowest possible rate from the bumbling “vendor.” The ALS debacle is the same dubious model multiplied by a factor of 3,000. Your formulation seems to imply that, even though ALS didn’t actually have a parallel database of qualified interpreters, it was fully entitled to go out and snag the mega-contract from the Ministry of Justice. Here is where I differ from your complacent view of McLocalization. <br />An ethical businessperson would have told the MoJ that undertaking a responsibility as large as providing thousands of interpreters would take years. Moreover, to cut people’s wages in half overnight was not realistic. The system should have been phased in over a period of at least five years, if not more. <br />The decision to jump at the MoJ contract at any cost and under any circumstance clearly was a case of a tiny, ravenous amoeba trying to bite off more than it could possibly chew in a million years (in this case, a morsel of food approximately the size of a killer whale). It is both bad business and bad ethics. However, people like Mr. Wheeldon, born salesmen who first get the contract and then worry about how to meet the service (by his own admission to the Times), are totally devoid of ethics. E-T-H-I-C-S. Business is not just about closing the deal. It is also about being qualified to provide the best possible service for a reasonable rate. The prevalence of people such as Mr. Wheeldon (and their chummy tolerance by people such as you) is symptomatic of what is wrong with McLocalization: shady businesspeople who think translation is a commodity service that simply consists in matching a project from a faceless online customer to an online translator profile cribbed from ProZ.com. I am guessing you are the head of such a pirate outfit, perhaps somewhere close to the Horn of Africa. <br />5.- True, the MoJ’s flying civil servants do not come in for a drubbing from me, but on the other hand they do not parade around on reality shows to flaunt their raging sociopathic tendencies. Yes, the civil servants should have done more due diligence. Simply auditing ALS’s database of interpreters and doing a dry run of the system in one or two regions would perhaps have alerted them to the feasibility of doing all of this. So, in that sense, they are equally responsible for this mess. Perhaps they did so due to the pressure from their political masters. When I hear the comments from the entity called “Crispin Blunt” about the whole mess, it becomes quite apparent that there was acute pressure from the Cabinet to make a transparently awful decision due to the urgency of making budget cuts. Yes, Mr. Wheeldon is not the only culprit in this mess, but the moral instincts he reveals in the media are a major factor in this entire tragic catastrophe. And the reigning professional standards among the many “thousands of agencies” you cite is also borne out by your pious little comment.Miguel Llorens M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06617102771655076833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-83613883557450365292012-04-02T14:43:43.229+02:002012-04-02T14:43:43.229+02:00Dear Anonymous Sock Puppet:
1.- First of all, plea...Dear Anonymous Sock Puppet:<br />1.- First of all, please allow me to commend you for your courage in lobbing criticism online without identifying yourself. I would wish, however, that the same degree of courage were devoted by other McLocalization personalities in denouncing egregious incidents such as the ALS-MoJ mega-snafu.<br />2.- Second of all, you sound like a real dufus of a human being. Calling the CEO of a Death Star Agency that snapped up a 300-million-pound contract on dubious grounds the “small guy” is indicative of how divorced you are from reality. And they talk about Lloyd Blankfein… <br />3.- I categorically deny that the portrayal is “vindictive.” It is satirical and negative, but not defamatory (trust me, I checked). It is based on quotations taken from Wheeldon’s own media performances and from his own mother, for Pete’s sake. I harbor no personal animosity toward Mr. Wheeldon. I just feel revulsion toward everything he stands for.<br />4.- My negative view of Mr. Wheeldon, of whom I was unaware prior to the ALS debacle (which makes it hard to view my attack as “vindictive”), is due to the fact that he is an ideal specimen of several worrisome aspects of cheap translation companies. Chiefly, that they are hollow carcasses that often function just as fronts for a database of unqualified freelancers (in ALS’s case, not even that, which is why it has been forced to allegedly filch interpreters’ details from other online databases).Miguel Llorens M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06617102771655076833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-76349775043047842532012-04-02T12:30:57.705+02:002012-04-02T12:30:57.705+02:00As with everyone else, I'm equally appalled by...As with everyone else, I'm equally appalled by the way in which this contract has been handled to ALS - who are clearly incapable of managing it and who are trying to pay peanuts to qualified staff. <br /><br />I disagree however with the vindictive way in which Gavin has been portrayed. The issue is with the MOJ who have awarded this contract to a company incapable of managing. MOJ have clearly sanctioned a huge drop in payments to our interpreters who do a fantastic job - assuming they had done their research (which maybe they hadn't) then their cost analysis would clearly dictate the drop that the interpreters would need to take in order for the arrangement to be viable. Why is there such an attack on the small guy? He's running a business - there are thousands of agencies out there - (most of whom however work fantastically with the linguists and pay them well) and he's won a lucrative deal. The issue is not with him but with the MOJ for ever selling off such an important service. <br /><br />You will get no where personnally attacking Gary Wheeldon - you need to aim your criticisms at those who count and make the decisions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-827672550407352602012-03-27T00:33:59.899+02:002012-03-27T00:33:59.899+02:00Hello, Douglas: I confess that here I'm wading...Hello, Douglas: I confess that here I'm wading into an area about which I am ignorant, but I think the hypothesis of willful negligence of pricing to fail suffers from one problem: I imagine several miscarriages of justice will be eventually taken to higher courts and others to European human rights tribunals. Quantify all that litigation as added costs. I think the easiest explanation is that the civil servants just closed their eyes, tapped their ruby slippers, clutched Toto real tight, and just hoped ALS was able to transport them all back to Kansas on a wing and a prayer.Miguel Llorens M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06617102771655076833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-25562537840276535892012-03-27T00:25:40.625+02:002012-03-27T00:25:40.625+02:00Most illuminating: a very fine blog post indeed.
...Most illuminating: a very fine blog post indeed.<br /><br />One possibility that seems to missing from both your article and the ensuing comments is that the MoJ contract was deliberately priced to fail.<br /><br />The MoJ civil servants aren't daft, though you have presented some evidence for M. Wheeldon being so.<br /> <br />In the situations where no interpreter is available, the human tendency is to muddle through, or postpone. Either way is a travesty of justice, but after all they're only foreigners who can't speak English, probably can't afford their own interpreter or lawyer, so any (legitimate) complaints they may have will be muted.<br />To say this out loud, however, would be sufficiently politically incorrect to arouse the interest of all kinds of bleeding heart liberals who believe in abstract notions of justice and equality before the law.<br />Far better to appoint an internal saboteur, and watch the service crumble from a safe distance.Douglas Carnallhttp://cabinetbeezer.infonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-18598659040377127752012-03-26T12:05:53.905+02:002012-03-26T12:05:53.905+02:00Don't get confused by the numbers. The figures...Don't get confused by the numbers. The figures are as follows:<br />Wheeldon was selling 4% of the company for 250,000 quid. This implies a valuation for 100% (which wasn't on the table in 2007) of 6.25 million quid.<br />Capita bought not 4% but 100% for 7.5 million "squid," as Ali G calls it (1.25 melons more than Wheeldon valued his company at in 2007). 4% of that is 375,000 pounds. The remarkable thing for me is that the 300-million-pound contract from the MoJ actually didn't have that great an impact on the company's valuation.Miguel Llorens M.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06617102771655076833noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-75901896880321939692012-03-26T11:57:46.934+02:002012-03-26T11:57:46.934+02:00Hang on. I am not all that hot on corporate financ...Hang on. I am not all that hot on corporate finance, but you seem to have missed a trick (but do correct me if I am wrong). Not only did Capita enter the picture several years after Dragon's Den and after ALS won the contract: but on top of that, their investment was not in 9% of ALS but in 100% of it. That, too, makes a difference!<br />JohnAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-49617531227998003112012-03-25T22:07:48.468+02:002012-03-25T22:07:48.468+02:00sorry "intelligent" people!sorry "intelligent" people!Svetlana (UK)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-62605294184022830972012-03-25T21:42:46.442+02:002012-03-25T21:42:46.442+02:00I take my hat off to you! Why ministers can't ...I take my hat off to you! Why ministers can't think like intelegent people???Svetlana (UK)noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-27712260186768934542012-03-25T13:06:59.116+02:002012-03-25T13:06:59.116+02:00Excellent piece of work undertaken. You deserve ou...Excellent piece of work undertaken. You deserve our appreciations for this. Let us hope some one in MOJ is intelligent enough to understand the clever tactics used by Gavin to secure this lucrative contract.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-14754219294806930352012-03-22T23:11:16.131+01:002012-03-22T23:11:16.131+01:00My heart goes out to interpreters mixed up with th...My heart goes out to interpreters mixed up with this awful MoJ case. It often takes a colossal f***-up for things to improve and I think this is a pivotal moment for the interpreting sector. <br /><br />Now, I carried out a couple of projects for ALS. (sorry!) But they were generally ok to work with until they started outsourcing PM work to third world countries, who wouldn't take no for an answer. Like when you say you're not available for a free test piece to win new business. Or that you're booked for the next week and you can't take this super urgent job at 5c per word. (Standard rate for Gaelic is 12c/w, by the way...) After a while, I became 'permanently unavailable' ;-) <br /><br />Oh I was offered a fiver (?!?!) for translating tattoos. I mean, seriously, you can get the translation for free on various forums. How is that ever going to develop into a viable revenue stream? And even though some kid will happily drop a couple of hundred quid on a tattoo, good luck trying to get them to pay for an actual tattoo translation. <br /><br /><br />Fantastic article, btw.Irish linguistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-7607270217393790512012-03-22T22:34:42.348+01:002012-03-22T22:34:42.348+01:00I think this guy is just a TV media whore. Did you...I think this guy is just a TV media whore. Did you know he appeared on another British reality show called 'The Secret Millionaire'? :) http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-secret-millionaire/articles/gavin-wheeldon<br />... Check out the intro! <br />"Entrepreneur Gavin Wheeldon is worth £20 million. At 14 he was already a gifted salesman, at 20 he set up his own company, and <b>he now owns a hugely successful translation business – despite not being able to speak a foreign language."</b> (bolded text by me)<br /><br />So there you go - he is all talk and always was.Irish linguistnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-666198842221425822012-03-22T15:06:07.978+01:002012-03-22T15:06:07.978+01:00Thank you, Mr Llorens!
If only the British Govern...Thank you, Mr Llorens!<br /><br />If only the British Government had your clarity of thought, we wouldn't be in this mess. Your analysis is a pleasure to read.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-73118772338880236632012-03-22T15:00:15.019+01:002012-03-22T15:00:15.019+01:00Thanks for this further insight. Although I'm ...Thanks for this further insight. Although I'm a Brit, I don't watch Dragons' Den so had missed this wonderful insight into Wheeldon's modus operandi. What a smug, slimy, jumped-up weasel. And how poor does the Civil Service's due diligence have to be to award a major contract to this crook? The mind boggles...Robhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05569133758797905525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-60456480278104275072012-03-22T14:42:55.069+01:002012-03-22T14:42:55.069+01:00There is a magazine in the UK called Private Eye w...There is a magazine in the UK called Private Eye which is an amazing read. It essentially uncovers all manner of corporate racketeering. Their site is here if you're interested - www(dot)private-eye(dot)co(dot)uk.<br /><br />They are particular "fans" of Capita (they call them "Crapita") the company that bought ALS.<br /><br />Oh the webs we weave! :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-68811135499558638062012-03-22T13:39:11.748+01:002012-03-22T13:39:11.748+01:00Just brilliant. Thank you, from a British interpr...Just brilliant. Thank you, from a British interpreter caught up in this mess.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2477329189905907968.post-28263846120918820162012-03-22T13:28:51.313+01:002012-03-22T13:28:51.313+01:00SIN DESPERDICIO.SIN DESPERDICIO.Marcelanoreply@blogger.com