Scammed in Poland again

Because of G's post, i thought that was plain and simple.

It is actually a subject to be brought up on a national level, it happens on a international level, and it is totally unacceptable upon any level. When someone agrees to so something they must carry it out whatever nationality, religion, or age it is called respect for another citizen.

What are you babbling about, read the thread and then comment. Think before you start posting drivel.

Interesting topic. I have been cheated by schools but I made damn sure to sort it out, pronto. Others didn't and they ended up with nothing, having to quit rather than take court action.

Bloody slack feckers! I've just this very moment seen a classic. If I were a pig, I'd take the translator to court. He's fuc*ed up my paper. All he had to do was write 00.05 as the time of birth and check it before giving it back to my fiancee. Not 05.00.

It's all about 'oh, I have this qualification, this very high level of education, blar dee blar'. WB is so right, they need to pull the finger out with this elitist crap. I've checked 10-15 pages of full text and maybe made one mistake in proof-reading activities. He had one page with only a few details to translate and botched it up.

I'm gonna take him to task and see how good he really is. I'm gonna get some really hard Polish to translate, words I know that are tough. It'll be worth paying for to see how he does, see if he even understands articles etc etc.

good for you, and stick it to the twat. I hate that elitist I have so and so paper tripe in Poland, besides half of em bought their papers on the black market LOL! What,s hilarious is that concern with whether or not any given employer, school, training ctr gives a paper or not as opposed to concern whether or not youll actually get any positive experience out of it....

Exactly. Besides, paper, like information, becomes invalid and obsolete very quickly these days, depending on what field you are in. As Mick Jagger once sang, 'who wants yesterday's papers?' (Yesterday's Papers, an early Stones number)

alhough the sad fact remains that Poland is still stuck in the old days of the paper that decides whether you will dig trenches or sit in the boardroom...ie you can't be a sworn translator in this goofy land even if you pass the test with flying colors, not without the right degree (only English majors can be sworn translators of English). Supposedly you cant teach in a public school either if you dont have an Ed. degree, or so Im told. Not that anyone would ever want to work in a Polish pubic school. Now that would be a silly idea!

Tried teaching in a British school without a PGCE or B.Ed?

One thing is certain in Poland - the achivement of a Masters degree isn't any certain sign of quality or skill. The system that allows you to obtain pass grades for 5 years and then walk out with a Masters is clearly absolutely mental.

A big problem here though is the over reliance on stamps - as if a stamp somehow 'proves' the authenticity of a document.

How else would you propose to authenticate a document, delphi? Stamps and signature seem to be standard practice. In Japan, they have a honko which is a personal seal. They are workable in practice and function just like a stamp does.

No no, what I mean is that people trust the stamp blindly - they won't call up and confirm that the document is genuine, for instance. Common sense would dictate that stamps can be forged easily and that they should be double checked (especially if it's a personal reference!) - but they don't!

Having said this, it's crazy that everything official gets stamped - instead of just printing out an invoice like would happen in the UK, the invoice has to be printed, stamped with different stamps and then signed on top - madness!

Poles are very creative. They keep coming up with new scams everyday. Lol

Things like that do happen. Did he botch the translation as such, or just the bit you mentioned? How about asking him to give you another copy, correct this time? It's no big deal, he just prints it out and stamps it for you, and you destroy the one with the error, end of story.

Making a small error like that is not something you could judge the quality of a translator by. You think he just has one small simple document to translate, but maybe he works full days and believe me, the small print and numbers do start swimming before your eyes if you spend 6-8 hours a day at the computer, even if what you're actually working on is simple as such. I spend at least 20% of my working time checking and double-checking for stupid mistakes, misspellings, etc., and even so I sometimes miss something glaringly obvious... Not that it makes me happy.

I don't want to be too harsh as I know that to errr (sic) is human :) Still, a deep breath and a final once over wouldn't have gone amiss. For his sake too, he could've got some vindictive cnut that could have taken him to court. Still, he's doing it again for free as we pointed out the correction. Translation is tough at times.

A fool and their money etc etc.

How much is 200pl in euro? Three days work for that little?

Edit: Its fifty euro. Is that the average wage? Fifty euro for three days work? No wonder we are swamped with them.

It's a problem everywhere. That's why, where I live, it's customary to always make them do the work first and then pay them after, when they are through. We never ever pay anyone the entire amount first EVER...the only exception was when I got my windows replaced. I paid half first so they could order them and paid the balance after they were installed.

Every so often there's a news story about a little old lady who paid first and was scammed out of her money or people who paid contractors up front before the job was done. They only pay a certain amount with contractors, so there's not much you can do, but for any small job always pay after the work is finished or they disappear with your money.

I think there is sth akin, albeit on a much smaller scale, to the Holocaust. WTF? I hear. The Jews feel that they will be eternally entitled to different things because of what happened to them. It's similar to the Poles and communism. The world owes me a living becomes their modus operandi. I understand their frustration, having been lumbered with such a regime.

Then you don't know the prevailing mentality. I've worked among them for 5 years. If they are scamming Ireland, how come they haven't been jailed? They are just getting money for themselves and their families. Politics will be politics, though.

Are Polish people making the rules in Ireland now?

Isn't that part and parcel of the democratic process? Aren't rights what Americans love and Europeans adopted through documents like the ECHR?

Please spell out some of those responsibilities.

Didn't Sarah Palin say that?

Wroclaw Boy
Seems you get scammed at least once a year, first it was the wet logs and now scammed on the cutting of those logs... I would just burn that wood and have done with it.

Once a year is about right, im sure theres plenty of smaller ones which ive forgotten about. I am happy to report i have plenty of dry wood this year, mostly all chain sawed and chopped by my own hands. If you need a job done right best to do it yourself.

In any case the above lad came back and finished his work in the end, we dragged him kicking and screaming.