| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | How long does it take, and how much marketing is needed, to get established as a translator? Thread poster: kylefoley76
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Kevin Fulton 
United States
Local time: 21:15
German to English
| One suggestion ... | Oct 27, 2010 |
I haven't looked at your résumé, don't plan to, but I'm going to suggest a means of getting your foot in the door.
I may get grief for this, but I'll suggest it anyway.
There are often very short jobs (less than 300 words) posted here on Proz. Experienced translators can't be bothered to bid on them since the time consumed bidding and negotiating would take longer than performing the translation. Try putting in a zero EUR bid, stating that you would perform the trans... See more I haven't looked at your résumé, don't plan to, but I'm going to suggest a means of getting your foot in the door.
I may get grief for this, but I'll suggest it anyway.
There are often very short jobs (less than 300 words) posted here on Proz. Experienced translators can't be bothered to bid on them since the time consumed bidding and negotiating would take longer than performing the translation. Try putting in a zero EUR bid, stating that you would perform the translation as a test, and if the customer likes your work, then your rate would be .xx EUR/word henceforth. But do this only once per potential customer.
Why offer to do it at no cost instead of some low amount? Because in many cases, once you set a rate with a customer it's hard to increase it, especially if the rate is quite low. If you offer the work as a test, then you're free to set your own rate afterward.
Nothing ventured nothing gained. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Lingua 5B
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Local time: 03:15
Member (2009)
English to Croatian
+ ...
and what will happen next? The client who got the job done for free will look for another person "gaining experience" to get another work for free? And this circle will go on forever?
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kylefoley76 wrote:
Nevertheless, I'm just a little disgruntled by the fact that people actually put value into these things when in my experience I know that you can't judge whether or not someone can do a complex job based on a piece of paper.
You can get an idea about how professional translators/copywriters are by the way the choose to present themselves in writing, including layout. If you care nothing or little about how you present your most valuable asset - yourself - I will assume you care even less about the material you produce.
Let me give you a non-freelance example (but in my eyes, the same would apply for hiring freelancers).
My in-house company recently considered hiring someone to join me in working on our Swedish content - translation as well as original copywriting. I spent quite some time creating the ad making sure I focused on the most important skill, the ability to write very good copy, whether as translation/transcreation or as original copy.
When I, as the first layer of filtering, received applications I did skim through the CVs, generally giving about 2 seconds to each. I then spent a considerable amount of time going through their emails/personal letters/statements. Although I only found a few instances of split compounds (särskrivning - not acceptable in Swedish and can seriously change meaning), there where numerous instances of redundant commas as well as English capitalisation and incorrect prepositions.
If these applicants are unable to produce correct copy when writing about their most important asset, how can I be sure they would be more careful when writing on behalf of our company?
I also placed particular emphasis on presentation - if you're only able to send me a text file of your CV/letter/presentation, you're unlikely to be able to handle the tools we use on a daily basis. You are also unlikely to understand the basics of content writing for the web.
On the very few occasions when I outsource work, I generally apply the same approach.
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