How to submit a convincing quote - suggestions needed

Mahdieh Kandoei wrote:
are there any templates to know how to make the best quote?

Natalia Mackevich wrote:

Make sure you understand and meet all the requirements specified in the job description.
Make sure your application is grammatically correct and contains all you need to say to the customer to let them know that you're the best match for the job (if you really are!). Nothing guarantees that you will be selected though: some requirements are often not known to the applicants, so during the selection process the customer might think that your price is too high or too low; that you are not perfectly qualified to translate in this particular area (because you're not a pilot or because you are too young, you name it...). Don't be discouraged and keep trying. Your goal (I suppose) is attracting customers that find you, not vice versa.
Good luck!

Sheila Wilson wrote:

Templates are examples of the worst quote. They may have been the best quote for the person writing them, for the job they were going after, but they are NEVER the best for what YOU are going for TODAY. Your experience and your skillset are unique. In fact, your uniqueness is what might, notice the word, get you the job.

I have no idea of the numbers who quote for jobs you go for, but occasionally there's one posted here on the public job board for FR>EN that gets 50-100 applicants. Even with the very best text, you don't have a very great hope of getting it. We don't know what happens when posters ask for email quotes, but I wouldn't mind betting it's more.

Mahdieh Kandoei wrote:

Dear all,
I have submitted several quote recently; however i haven't got any of the projects.
I think maybe my quotes are not convincing enough to help me win the outsourcers' attention.
Are there any especial tips to make a better quote and win the project?
or are there any templates to know how to make the best quote?

Natalia Mackevich wrote:

The note you made about not to make a low price bid was very useful. I try to take them into account an make some imaginary quotes for practicing. Thanks a million Natalia, your advice was a great help.

Nicole Schnell wrote:

For example:
- "My translation rate includes a minimum of two rounds of editing and proofreading by myself before delivery"
- "I adhere to ISO 9001 standards"
- "My rate includes final proofing of PDFs after typesetting, which means checking for errors that may have occurred during the typesetting process and ensuring proper typography"

... and such.

Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz wrote:

Dear Mahdieh, the key to being convincing is to skip templates. Originality or the benefit of it is subjective, but in order to be convincing you need to be sure of what you're saying. You can't have and project that certainly if you're essentially replicating someone else's ideas. I would ask other translators how they write quotations that win, and I'd ask agency staff (PMs and others) what quotations they choose and especially what quotations are best received by their clients.

Łukasz Gos-Furmankiewicz wrote:

To gain attention in the West, you need to be confident and professional, and you probably need to cut down a little on the eastern politeness and flowery language. You definitely need to speak the outsourcer's lingo unless you can get away with imposing your own. Bottom line is always confidence. As a Chinese wise man said, the best warrior is not the one that handles his sword the best but one that doesn't even have to draw it; in that concrete example, the best warrior was a stone—try to beat one in a sword fight. You need to be that stone in your professional image.

I usually find a blend between language that comes natural from my pen and the language that sounds natural to the reader, which usually results in more grammatically and syntactically advanced English than most native speakers get to read (or write), but at the same time I rely a lot on confident use of informal, even colloquial language, to the point that I don't shy away from writing several paragraphs in a conversational tone (that, and the fact I tend to avoid Latinate words in favour of Anglo-Saxon ones whenever viable, so my quotation would sound very different from e.g. Nicole's). When those guys aren't native speakers, I look at whatever culture they come from and adjust accordingly. (For example, PLEN for German customers is a separate pair in its own right.)

Bottom line, you need to find your own style. Probably a blend of projecting your own (particularly splending) culture and fitting into theirs. It needs to work for you. What works for you is not the same that works for other translators, partly because they're selling a different kind of translation, as there are as many kinds of translation as there are translators (minus the boring guys).

Mahdieh Kandoei wrote:



I can't thoroughly agree with what you say, when I say template I don't mean some set of magical sentences that can convince any outsourcer, but some tangible guidelines to follow, some steps to be taken toward realizing our capabilities in making a quote. It's like saying that if you want to write a book and you have no idea of where and how to start, the first step to take is to read some magnificent books by some great writers to take out the major steps and guidelines of being a successful writer. You are from Poland and you have some legendary film directors, I can claim that the best university for a student of cinema is to watch Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieślowski films and learn from them, not copy them.

Mahdieh Kandoei wrote:

These words of yours are fantastic, they are really invaluable, the difference you make about cultures and trying to fit in the outsourcer's culture reminds me of NLP and rapport, I think you should be really good at this. But sometimes there are problems in this part too, when most of the projects are posted by eastern people who live in Western countries, we see an eastern name who is posting from England for example. Defining this clear cut difference between the posters of jobs is sometimes near impossible so we should count on the chance to do its part (and that is a great part).
So far When quoting I was trying to be as much specific and short as possible. I thought maybe the poster of the job wants to go over the quotes very fast, so they are more happy with posts which are short and to the point; however the results have been disappointing. This makes me think of long and elaborated quotes.