Hi all, Scenario: you stumble upon a badly translated site. Most likely, the company falls into either of these categories: a) If it's a global, well known brand, they most likely already have a translation provider, and it's most likely a (multilingual) agency. In that case, they wouldn't consider dealing with solo translators anyway. They'll be grateful that you point out a quality flaw, but they'll use it to pressure and haggle their existing provider, not choo... See more Hi all, Scenario: you stumble upon a badly translated site. Most likely, the company falls into either of these categories: a) If it's a global, well known brand, they most likely already have a translation provider, and it's most likely a (multilingual) agency. In that case, they wouldn't consider dealing with solo translators anyway. They'll be grateful that you point out a quality flaw, but they'll use it to pressure and haggle their existing provider, not choose your services. b) If it's a "here today - gone tomorrow" dot.com or unknown company, their budget/brand consciousness/ambition is low, that's why they ended up with a bad translation in the first place. The content was translated internally, by a non-professional translator or 1-cent-agency. Worst case, they might give you a translation job but end up not paying! c) The company is serious about their image, but their content is static. Many sites have versions in EN/DE/FR/IT/ES, but treat the content as a placeholder that doesn't need to be updated. OK, you might convince them to get a proofreading/updating assignment, but there's a lot of canvassing and pitching for a tiny one-off job, and you'll never hear from them again. d) This is the kind of companies that you should target: small enough to want to deal with solo translators (vs. agencies), but big/successful enough to have a continous flow of new content that they will send you. Think ROI (return of investment): does the company have the funds and consider your language/market to be important enough for the "product" they're selling? Would they spend maybe 300-3000 EUR on your language, confident that the investment will come back to them in the form of more business? - Sometimes, a badly translated site means the answer to this question is "no". It might even be a better signal to come across a mono- or oligo-lingual site that is not translated to your language yet. If you're lucky, it's a native company, just about to break and become successfull abroad. If your timing is right, you can convince them to translate the site into a new (your!) language. With this approach, it would probably pay off more reading the business pages to find out with companies are securing new deals overseas, than searching for tacky translations... Of course, this is just one field of translation. If you work for NGOs, government authorities, etc it's a completely diferent ball game. Someone else with have to chip in on that. Just my two cents worth.... Good luck, Jan
[Edited at 2007-05-22 08:43]
[Edited at 2007-05-22 08:44] ▲ Collapse | |