For the second time since I became a US citizen four years ago...

The great thing about translation management software...

...is how it faultlessly ensures translation quality.

Many translators bitch and moan about translation companies who use translation management software: how tiresome it is to log in to download even small projects, log in to create invoices, and so on and so forth.
Sadly, these translators don't seem to see the big picture: by using such translation management platforms translation companies ensure the quality of their projects - no more wrong files sent out to translators, or received from them.

Everything is tidy, ship-shape and tightly controlled... or, is it?

A translation company (whose name I'll charitably refrain from mentioning), has just sent me a small project to edit. I logged in their translation management platform and downloaded the translated package: All there for me in one tidy zip file: a folder with the source file, a second folder with the bilingual translated target file to edit, a third folder with the translation memory, a fourth folder with the translation memory log.

Only...

• The source file did not correspond to the translated file (and it was not just a question of different file names: the content was also was fundamentally different); 
• The translated bilingual file I was supposed to edit had segments in which the target language appeared also in the source language place (I could more easily understand the reverse, and attribute it to a sloppy translator); 
• The analysis log referred to the source file (the one that did not correspond to the target one) and to a project with a different name and number than the one I had received.

Yep... translation management platforms work great: no longer problems for translation companies who rely on them.