| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] > | Professionals are hard to find Thread poster: Juno Bos
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Juno Bos 
Zambia
Local time: 10:06
Member (2011)
German to Dutch
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TOPIC STARTER
Josephine Cassar wrote:
I don't know how you contact translators but do you send mass emails starting hello, or hello Dear or just Dear..?
I never reply to some such email. It's not really because I do not trust the translator who sends such an email but because I think the translator sending the email will choose the first translator who replies, at least that's what I find. Or it's a translator who is just contacting other translators to find their rate or their CV, etc. But I generally do reply when someone sends me a request or an email with my name as it means they specifically searched for me or found me so i bother too, to at least reply.
No, in general I email translators the same way as I want to be contacted, so with name, the job I have and no mention of "best rate". And I certainly am not collecting CV's just for the sake of it.
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Lieven Malaise wrote:
So I think a lot of translators will only respond if they have an immediate interest in doing so.
[Edited at 2023-09-25 06:06 GMT]
Spot on! This is a matter of how to provide a good customer service/experience. Translators need to provide good services to clients. Either by learning the trade or came from a service-oriented industry before switching career as a translator.
I came from a sales background before switching into translator. Being a sales rep sure is tiring, but it teaches one or two things about providing a good customer experience.
[Diedit pada 2023-09-25 07:09 GMT]
| | | | Juno Bos
Zambia
Local time: 10:06
Member (2011)
German to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Philip Lees wrote: Juno Bos wrote:
Once and a while I am in need for translators out of my pair. I normally use this site for such, both posting a job and mailing translators.
When you say you "use this site", what exactly do you mean? If you're contacting translators individually about specific jobs, based on their profiles and activity on the site, then I agree you should expect a prompt and courteous response. If, on the other hand, you're just posting jobs using the ProZ job broadcasting system, then you should be aware that a lot of the more experienced translators using the site routinely ignore such mass job postings because they so rarely lead to anything useful.
I normally post a pretty specific job, and besides that I look for suitable translators in the directory here. I always contact translators personally. So no mass email type of communication.
| | | | Ana Cuesta
Spain
Local time: 10:06
Member
English to Spanish
| Courtesy goes both ways so what kind of mailing? | Sep 25, 2023 |
I do often get contacted through ProZ, for all kind of language pairs and specialities that have nothing to do with mine.
If you send me a message that is clearly addressed to me, I will respond even if it is a polite not interested.
But if the message is obviously sent to a whole list of people (even if my name appears in the salutation but it’s clearly automatized), I probably won’t bother unless I am interested in the job at hand or on further collaboration. ... See more I do often get contacted through ProZ, for all kind of language pairs and specialities that have nothing to do with mine.
If you send me a message that is clearly addressed to me, I will respond even if it is a polite not interested.
But if the message is obviously sent to a whole list of people (even if my name appears in the salutation but it’s clearly automatized), I probably won’t bother unless I am interested in the job at hand or on further collaboration.
Edit: I see someone else has already made that point and you clarified it, sorry
[Edited at 2023-09-25 07:22 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:06
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Juno Bos wrote:
Do translators not trust other translators? Do you need to be an agency to refer work to a colleague? Or am I doing everyting wrong?
Maybe you don't get responses because of the way in which you are wording your invitations? We all receive emails all the time offering translation jobs from people we don't know, and the habit is to give the message a quick once-over, checking it to see if it meets our criteria, and then 9 times out of 10 trashing it. In my case there are many reasons why Iwould trash an email invitation to a job. Some of them are:
1. It's clear that the same invitation has been sent to a number of people
2. The email is written in a cloyingly friendly, unprofessional style. Particularly annoying are things like: "pleased to e-meet you"
3. The email is clearly from an agency that is just "bombing" the internet trying to harvest names, CVs, email addresses etc.
4. The email says something like "we have selected you for this job because your Proz profile fits our requirements" (which is probably the same message they are sending to thousands of others)
5. The rate offered is too low
6. The subject is outside my fields of competence
Etc.
The way to attract my interest would be a strictly personal email that gives comprehensive details of what the job is including the subject matter, the deadline, the proposed rate, etc. It should be polite and professional; friendly but not cloying.
Having said all that, in many years of translation I have only ever been contacted by two fellow-translators. Both were friendly and professional, and understood how important it is to offer a good market rate. We collaborated multiple times, always successfully. But it has been a long time since the last time.
[Edited at 2023-09-25 07:55 GMT]
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I’ve never posted a job on Proz (for fear of being flooded with hundreds of replies), although I outsource work from time to time. As I said before I have a small group of trusted translators with whom I have been working for ages. If they happen to be not available or interested in a particular job, I prefer selecting a small number of translators in the directory and contact them directly. I have always been answered, some more quickly than others.
But there is another side to ... See more I’ve never posted a job on Proz (for fear of being flooded with hundreds of replies), although I outsource work from time to time. As I said before I have a small group of trusted translators with whom I have been working for ages. If they happen to be not available or interested in a particular job, I prefer selecting a small number of translators in the directory and contact them directly. I have always been answered, some more quickly than others.
But there is another side to the coin! When I’m contacted, I’m always very prompt to answer any potential client (even more so if it is from a peer). Only yesterday (Sunday), I received an email at 09:07 a.m. which was answered twenty minutes later with my availability and rate. Did she acknowledge my mail and thank me? Of course, not… ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 10:06
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
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| Dutch/German | Sep 25, 2023 |
Are you addressing Dutch and German translators, or other languages too?
When I used to post multilingual jobs, I would get up to 50 responses in other pairs and 1-2 or none for Dutch and German.
| | | | Juno Bos
Zambia
Local time: 10:06
Member (2011)
German to Dutch
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Sounds familiar | Sep 25, 2023 |
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida wrote:
I’ve never posted a job on Proz (for fear of being flooded with hundreds of replies), although I outsource work from time to time. As I said before I have a small group of trusted translators with whom I have been working for ages. If they happen to be not available or interested in a particular job, I prefer selecting a small number of translators in the directory and contact them directly. I have always been answered, some more quickly than others.
But there is another side to the coin! When I’m contacted, I’m always very prompt to answer any potential client (even more so if it is from a peer). Only yesterday (Sunday), I received an email at 09:07 a.m. which was answered twenty minutes later with my availability and rate. Did she acknowledge my mail and thank me? Of course, not…
Yeah, that sounds rather familiar. It certainly works both ways.
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Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 10:06
Member (2009)
English to German
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| my experience | Sep 25, 2023 |
I have found quite a few long-term clients who contacted me directly
through profile messages (almost all agencies).
As a Proz member you get a lot of job requests.
These are often mass messages sent through the directory search feature,
and less often through the profile messaging feature.
The former are impersonal and clearly mass enquiries with lousy rates
in 99,9% of the cases, and I rarely reply to them,
the latter are usually personal and ... See more I have found quite a few long-term clients who contacted me directly
through profile messages (almost all agencies).
As a Proz member you get a lot of job requests.
These are often mass messages sent through the directory search feature,
and less often through the profile messaging feature.
The former are impersonal and clearly mass enquiries with lousy rates
in 99,9% of the cases, and I rarely reply to them,
the latter are usually personal and more often in line with my areas of work,
and the requester generally gets a reply from me.
If the offer is not something I am immediately interested in,
my approach is sometimes similar to that described by Lieven Malaise:
I feel free to ignore new client job requests if I'm not specifically attracted by the proposal and/or language service provider. As a translator you get all sorts of e-mails all day long and ignoring the least relevant is just a way of saving time / staying focused on your work at hand. I wouldn't immediately conclude that there's something wrong with the professional attitude of translators. I often don't respond, but save the e-mail if I think the provider could be interesting in the future.
However, it happens I forget to reply, mostly when I am very busy.
I'll mark these messages as important, but very soon they'll get lost in the flood of new messages... ▲ Collapse
| | | | | Some precisions | Sep 25, 2023 |
Juno Bos wrote:
Don't get me wrong, I am seriously trying to find out what I do wrong from my side as well.
Hello Juno,
I've read all the contributions so far and I still don't understand what's going wrong. Whenever I've passed on requests that I couldn't meet to colleagues, I've always received replies, and I've always replied when I've been asked to. To help us understand, can you tell us in which pairs you sometimes have opportunities and give us a model of the letter you send in such cases?
Kind regards
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Zea_Mays wrote:
As a Proz member you get a lot of job requests.
These are often mass messages sent through the directory search feature,
and less often through the profile messaging feature.
The former are impersonal and clearly mass enquiries with lousy rates
in 99,9% of the cases, and I rarely reply to them,
the latter are usually personal and more often in line with my areas of work,
and the requester generally gets a reply from me.
If the offer is not something I am immediately interested in,
my approach is sometimes similar to that described by Lieven Malaise:
Sorry for fooling around, but the way you wrote it looked like a hip-hop verse:
As a Proz member you get a lot of job requests -
These are often mass messages sent through the directory with stupid tests!
and less often through the profile messaging feature -
The former are impersonal and are immediately out of the picture -
in 99,9% of the cases, and I rarely reply to them - just to tell them about their places!
the latter are usually personal and more often in line with my areas of work,
and the requester generally gets a reply from me, if he's not a dork!
If the offer is not something I am immediately interested in,
my approach is sometimes similar to that described by Bob in Berlin!
| | | | | Opposing trends | Sep 25, 2023 |
How does this "hard to find" relate to the recurring "we've all been replaced by AI at 12 noon yesterday" theme? It's actually the first time I get to read a thread on this topic here, while AI threads have been inundating the forum. Minimising human input in translation is a tempting idea, but the number of people (including translation customers) who get overenthusiastic about it is annoyingly large. When checking translation tests, I often find that with most of them I can quite accurately pr... See more How does this "hard to find" relate to the recurring "we've all been replaced by AI at 12 noon yesterday" theme? It's actually the first time I get to read a thread on this topic here, while AI threads have been inundating the forum. Minimising human input in translation is a tempting idea, but the number of people (including translation customers) who get overenthusiastic about it is annoyingly large. When checking translation tests, I often find that with most of them I can quite accurately predict how certain words will be translated and how they will be ordered: it's not the variety of translation solutions that grabs your attention but the striking similarity across over 90% of them. Even translation old-timers who can deliver clean and clever outputs often get lazy and start doing a sloppy job. So yes, professionals who are always ready to work in good faith are hard to find. In fact, I only know one person whose high professional standing in my language pair is unquestionable (if you ask me). Of course there are more on proz, it's just that I don't know them. It must be a real problem trying to find a pro in a language pair you don't know without knowing anyone you're sure you can trust. Even academic credentials don't amount to much in this pursuit (unless they've been issued by a top-tier unitversity). So, maybe while certain translation firms are trying to automate as much of their translation workload as possible, other firms will instead revert to the old-school practice of gold-digging for real proz? I just don't want to believe the corrupting influence of technology can kill markets that easily ▲ Collapse
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Jo Macdonald
Spain
Local time: 10:06
Italian to English
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| Checked spam and Proz notification settings? | Sep 25, 2023 |
Hi Juno
If you're sending a personal mail to someone you're interested in working with it's very strange people aren't answering, and quickly too, at least to thank you for your mail and say they'll get back to you asap.
Have you checked your mail client and server spambox, and Proz notification settings?
I think if you turn Proz mail notifications off to stop receiving mass mails you won't receive any mails through Proz.
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 04:06
Member (2008)
French to English
+ ...
| Employees vs freelancers | Sep 25, 2023 |
Kevin Fulton wrote:
A number of years ago when my daughter was attending university in Montréal, she needed to have some documents translated into French and certified (by my estimate, a 2-3 hour job). Rather than go through an agency I decided to contact OTTIAQ-certified translators individually. I sent several email queries and left voicemail messages on answering machines, offering a good rate, cash on delivery with a reasonable deadline. I identified myself as a fellow translator, hoping that professional courtesy would at least elicit an acknowledgement, if not an acceptance. I was kidding myself. Eventually I found someone, but it was an unnerving experience even dealing with the person who eventually accepted the job.
From my observation, I suspect that the majority of OTTIAQ-registered translators are employees of large companies, not freelancers. As such, they may have limited interest in freelance-type inquiries. In Montreal alone, I know of companies that together employ around 1,000 in-house translators. This is undoubtedly a portion of the actual total and does not include translators working for the federal and provincial governments. So randomly selecting names from OTTIAQ lists is quite likely to come up dry.
[Edited at 2023-09-25 21:23 GMT]
| | | | | response time | Sep 26, 2023 |
Normally I respond within an hour if some one asks for my service ( more like 15 minutes during my daytime) except for requests which I ignore, like mails coming thorough
1. gmail /yahoo/hotmail etc. and not some organization mail id
2 China, Egypt, Poland etc. where payment recovery is an issue.
3. Those without address/phone no etc.
Mostly stick to US, Canada, Australia and UK agencies/ attorneys as I do mostly legal.
May be one of these above filters is the caus... See more Normally I respond within an hour if some one asks for my service ( more like 15 minutes during my daytime) except for requests which I ignore, like mails coming thorough
1. gmail /yahoo/hotmail etc. and not some organization mail id
2 China, Egypt, Poland etc. where payment recovery is an issue.
3. Those without address/phone no etc.
Mostly stick to US, Canada, Australia and UK agencies/ attorneys as I do mostly legal.
May be one of these above filters is the cause of not receiving a response.
If price is right I am available 24x7: as the demand may come anytime, with varying degrees of urgency, if you are serving globally. ▲ Collapse
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