AC Writers Alert: Freelance Job Scams

This is an actual account of how a writing scam using Careerbuilder dot com is soliciting US writers to edit poorly translated documents. Several years ago I removed my resume and affiliation with all on-line job sites. The reason I opted out is because nearly every piece of get rich quick e-mails were coming from Careerbuilder or Monster. Recently, I received an e-mail from Careerbuilder dot com that offered me $5 for every 1KB of corrected text on documents relating to several international dating sites. The e-mail was a automated no-reply offer from Careerbuilder.

The offer from www.dating.ru and with companion sites in various countries appeared to require small editing assignments for dating services in which at least one party preferred the English language. I have performed editing work for medical transcription companies in the United States that utilize the services of off-shore transcription services for low cost typing jobs. The problem in using off-shore companies is that certain US idiomatic expressions and phrases are totally lost on English as a second language transcriptions.

As an example one transcription I edited repeatedly mis-typed the Southern word, Ma'am, as in "Yes, Ma'am." The transcription in Africa instead typed the word "Mum." In other examples, the title Indy 500 was mangled beyond recognition and somnambulism resembled some kind of ambulance service. The low cost services of the off-shore workers was off-set by the fact that they were simply unaware of certain events, places or people in the United States. My job was to read the documents and then fix the areas that did not fit by listening to the actual tape.