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Cold-calling companies about their websites
Thread poster: Libero_Lang_Lab
Libero_Lang_Lab
Libero_Lang_Lab  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 12:25
Russian to English
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
All credit to you... Apr 3, 2003

Fuad, for persisting. It can only come good in the end.



I hope though, that when you approached French Connection, you spelt their name right. I hope even more that you didn\'t misspell their acronym - that would probably have marred your pitch


 
LJC (X)
LJC (X)
France
Local time: 13:25
French to English
+ ...
I tried it too Apr 3, 2003

With no success at all. I targeted all sorts of sites including web site creators and a few personal sites.



The only response I got was from my local ‘international’ airport whose site was only in French. I thought I’d got lucky when they invited me to a lunch conference at the Chamber of Commerce. It turned out that they were negotiating with one of the low-cost airlines and wanted to make the area more attractive for the British, so I found myself eating a very
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With no success at all. I targeted all sorts of sites including web site creators and a few personal sites.



The only response I got was from my local ‘international’ airport whose site was only in French. I thought I’d got lucky when they invited me to a lunch conference at the Chamber of Commerce. It turned out that they were negotiating with one of the low-cost airlines and wanted to make the area more attractive for the British, so I found myself eating a very good lunch with a few other British people who lived here, hotel owners, estate agents, notaries and representatives from the Chamber of Commerce and the Tourist Board – about 25 of us in all. Most of us exchanged business cards and the theory was that we would give each other work and boost the local economy with the hoards of British the airline would bring in.



Well, we had a second meal at the airport itself and it soon became obvious that the Chamber of Commerce and the Tourist Board wanted us to work for free. I never heard from the airport about translating their site until a couple of weeks ago (about eighteen months later) when I received an e-mail thanking me for my offer and telling me their site is being translated at the moment – obviously not by me! They then e-mailed me last week asking for a quote for a fairly long document – unfortunately, it was from English to French (I do French to English), so I had to decline.



By the way, the meal at the airport was lousy! Plastic plates with compartments, foie gras sweating under Clingfilm, limp lettuce, etc.



I hope you have more success than I did!

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Edward Vreeburg
Edward Vreeburg  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 13:25
Member (2008)
English to Dutch
+ ...
also suggested some inprovements to a (well-known) translation agency May 23, 2003

Hi Dan,



Goodluck, I suggested some improvements to for the site of a translation agency, and I corrected 1 page for free as a sample (about 20 errors!!) - Being a translation agency, you\'d expect them to make money from their website...,

Well, I never heard anything, but a few months later there was a new version of this page, with the corrections I made - unfortunately the rest of the Dutch version is still as bad as before....



Ed


 
Haluk Levent Aka (X)
Haluk Levent Aka (X)
Local time: 15:25
Japanese to Turkish
+ ...
I did it with success... Apr 15, 2004

But I didn't call companies or the proprietor or the owner of the website. I called design studios which design and market web based solutions to such companies.

Telemarketing to companies regarding their website would mostly be a pointless attempt –as mentioned by many in this forum. You all know how things work with companies. You'll have to have a talk with the IT Manager to get to know their technical requirements. You'll have to talk with (and convince) S&M Department Head t
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But I didn't call companies or the proprietor or the owner of the website. I called design studios which design and market web based solutions to such companies.

Telemarketing to companies regarding their website would mostly be a pointless attempt –as mentioned by many in this forum. You all know how things work with companies. You'll have to have a talk with the IT Manager to get to know their technical requirements. You'll have to talk with (and convince) S&M Department Head to allocate funds in her department's budget because probably her department will be shelling out for the website –a promotional/marketing tool. Moreover, most companies will have a Purchasing Department, consisting of people who are paid to be very selective, if not cheap So telemarketing about localization to medium to large companies may not be fruitful. As for the small companies, they are very hard to convince to make major investments. So time you set aside for calling and inquiring and researching etc. is not generally worth the outcome.

I tried calling major design studios, which design websites for medium to large companies. People working at such studios are aware of "the language issue". They were interested in hearing what I had in my arsenal. In fact, just last week I have managed to take this quite large localization project, turn key, which should keep me busy for the rest of the month, after a few phone calls (I am a trained telemarketer though, my former employer paid lots of money for Brian Tracy seminars and similar marketing trainings…)

Good luck,
Hal
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Soonthon LUPKITARO(Ph.D.)
Soonthon LUPKITARO(Ph.D.)  Identity Verified
Thailand
Local time: 19:25
English to Thai
+ ...
Another issue Jan 4, 2016

This topic is quite old but I need to add comments for benefits of translators.

In December a UK agency hired me to do translation in Trados. After delivery they told me to edit the translation output (html codes in Excel files). This consumes more time than translation. The agency is reluctant to pay for extra fees that were never discussed and quoted before hand.
I found that the html codes needed deep revision for localization into the Thai language and they were not easy t
... See more
This topic is quite old but I need to add comments for benefits of translators.

In December a UK agency hired me to do translation in Trados. After delivery they told me to edit the translation output (html codes in Excel files). This consumes more time than translation. The agency is reluctant to pay for extra fees that were never discussed and quoted before hand.
I found that the html codes needed deep revision for localization into the Thai language and they were not easy to edit since they were in Excel file while the final output would be a web-based document.
Lesson: ask for the entire html processes before accepting the job.

Soonthon L.
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Cold-calling companies about their websites






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