u/International-Flan81

Hi everyone,

I’m writing this because I’m starting to feel very confused by everything that's been going on. I’ve been working as a freelance translator and subtitler for an agency that works with different clients. One of them is a massive app that does those trendy short vertical video shows.

To give you some background, I’m not new to freelancing. I’ve been doing this for many years on Upwork, so I’m well aware of the rules, including the fact that you should never do work without a proper contract. I signed an NDA, and my first payments were through Upwork. It’s a large company with over 50 people active on their Slack workspace, and for a long time, everything ran smoothly. We never had a single problem, and payments were on a steady monthly schedule. After that, they started paying us directly through invoices at the end of each month.

But things took a bad turn, and my last proper payment was back on February 15th. Back then, we also had a delay of 2 weeks, and they were very apologetic, saying their client changed the paying time, and instead of every month, they now pay them every 60 days. Since that moment, I’ve been delivering work every single month, but I haven't received a single cent. At the beginning of April, when our payment should have been done, they told us that they have a delay again and the most honest date they can give us for the payment is April 20. I was frustrated initially, but I honestly didn't expect to be here a month and a half later, with zero money and absolutely no updates.

On the first of June, I should be paid for the work Ive done in February, March and April. If they don't pay for every last invoice, mathematically and logically they will never be able to catch up with the pay for my work.

Whenever I check in, the project manager is very polite but gives the same answer: they are waiting for the end client to send the funds. They mentioned that a small partial payment came through, but the agency used it to clear even older debts from previous rounds instead of paying for our current work.

It feels like a trap. I truly try to understand them, as I also have a business, and things happen. But its also unfathomable to me to ask for so much work without paying anything, especially as a serious business. It just gets to a point. If I keep translating new episodes, the unpaid balance just grows and I’m essentially financing their business.

Also, during this time, they have been asking for a lot of work. Ive stopped working a few weeks ago, because they have other translators for my language that can take it, but the others don't seem too upset about it to actually stop working.

I'm honestly just sad about the whole situation, mostly because this was one of my favourite projects Ive done. It wasn't complicated, and I also enjoyed watching the shows.

Is this normal in the industry? What is the best, most human way to tell them I’m stopping all work until the backlog is cleared, without burning the bridge so badly?

Thank you so much for reading, I know this was a long post, I just wanted to be detailed.