| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | A Difficult Beginning Thread poster: TRADLINGO
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Hi everyone,
We are a new Ivory Coast based translation agency. We started our activities just two months ago.
We target mainly western translation market. Because we beleive this market offers more business.
Ever since we have started we have not yet got any client, though we have contacted some translation agencies for possible sub-contracting and registered on major websites targeting translators such as Proz.com.
What could be the best way to get... See more Hi everyone,
We are a new Ivory Coast based translation agency. We started our activities just two months ago.
We target mainly western translation market. Because we beleive this market offers more business.
Ever since we have started we have not yet got any client, though we have contacted some translation agencies for possible sub-contracting and registered on major websites targeting translators such as Proz.com.
What could be the best way to get some clients?
[Modifié le 2016-02-10 14:25 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Erik Freitag 
Germany
Local time: 10:17
Member (2006)
Dutch to German
+ ...
| What can you offer? | Feb 10, 2016 |
What do you have to offer that would make you an attractive business partner for possible clients? Why should a "western" (as you say) translation agency need you? What can you do for them that others can't, or that they can't do better themselves?
| | | | AlchemyDK
Denmark
Local time: 10:17
Danish to English
| Spelling and grammar | Feb 10, 2016 |
Also I'm sorry to say that there are several spelling and grammatical mistakes in your post.
If you write to agencies with spelling mistakes or grammatical errors in English, the odds of them replying are obviously low. When people hire a professional translator, they expect it to be as close to 100% perfect as possible.
| | | | | Local markets? | Feb 10, 2016 |
what could be the best way to get some clients?
How far have you already tried to actively discover your local markets by visiting fairs, local import / export companies and government institutions? There is some trade between Cd`I and the EU and other Western countries or even with Latin America, therefore there must be a need of professionally translated documentation and interpretation.
And I´m not sure whether just running a translation webshop to broker translation jobs will be sufficient.
we have contacted some translation agencies for possible sub-contracting
This reminds me of the somehow exotic Indian agencies contacting me (resp. a lot of us in Europe) sometimes but offering nothing more than peanuts although they have high caliber jobs from major global industrial players in stock. I´m not sure whether it would be wise for you to act as a bottom feeder, too. Your reputation then can be ruined very quickly, when being confronted with the results of the persons willing to work at the very low end of the food chain (mostly beginners, hobbiests, students, etc.).
Nevertheless, maybe your first job you should assign would be to have reviewed the German part of your website
Good luck and I´m looking forward to more contributions here from Africa!
[Edited at 2016-02-10 15:07 GMT]
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| How would you go about finding translators | Feb 10, 2016 |
with writing skills at a native level proficiency for German, English, French and Spanish as these languages are used in "western" countries? If their writing and translating skills are not good enough, it is cheaper for clients to use machine translation. So why would they contact you? When contacting translators, please bear in mind that minimum wages in "western countries" are around EUR 8.50 / USD 9.50 per hour, plus paid health and pension insurance, plus four weeks of annual leave, plus 10... See more with writing skills at a native level proficiency for German, English, French and Spanish as these languages are used in "western" countries? If their writing and translating skills are not good enough, it is cheaper for clients to use machine translation. So why would they contact you? When contacting translators, please bear in mind that minimum wages in "western countries" are around EUR 8.50 / USD 9.50 per hour, plus paid health and pension insurance, plus four weeks of annual leave, plus 10 public holidays. So you will find no one with a native level proficiency in these languages who will work for a word rate which doesn't correspond to the minimum wage of their country. The overwhelming majority of translators will want to earn more because they invested heavily in their education.
[Edited at 2016-02-10 14:53 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:17
Member (2008)
Italian to English
TRADLINGO wrote:
Hi everyone,
We are a new Ivory coaste based translation agency. We started our activities just two months ago.
We target manely western translation market. Because we beleive this market offers more business.
Ever since we have started we have not yet got any client, though we have contacted some translation agencies for possible sub-contracting and registered on major websites targeting translators such as Proz.com.
what could be the best way to get some clients?
Don't be depressed. It's well known that any new business takes two years or more to get on its feet.
Greetings to the beautiful Cote d'Ivoire! I presume your mother tongue is French. Don't worry if your English isn't perfect. I deal with many agencies who can't speak English at all. You can't expect every translating agency to speak perfect English. For example, my language pair is Italian to English and most of the agencies in Italy with which I deal don't speak English very well. So ignore the criticisms about your English.
My suggestion would be that you create your own website (but in this case if it's in English, your English will need to be very good and up to professional standard!). This should be done professionally, by someone who is very good at graphic design. They don't necessarily have to be in the Côte d'Ivoire. The quality of your website should be international and should compare favourably with the websites of other translation companies. You can learn a lot by looking at other people's websites and copying their best features.
The main thing about a website is that it must attract people to come back to it. There are so many websites that you only visit once and never go back to because there's nothing interesting to see! And as Erik suggests, your website should differentiate you from the websites of other translation companies. In a competitive sector like translation, where everyone is selling the same thing, the keyword is *differentiation*: something you do that not many others can do. BUT this should NOT be that you are CHEAPER than everyone else !!
When your website is ready, you can then contact all the potential clients who interest you, and send them a link to the website.
If the information on your website is sufficiently interesting and is designed to encourage direct contacts, so that people get in touch with you by email, I'm sure this will help your business to begin growing.
[Edited at 2016-02-10 14:32 GMT]
| | | | TRADLINGO
Cote D'ivoire
Local time: 08:17
TOPIC STARTER | Many thanks to all of you | Feb 10, 2016 |
I have to admit I was shocked by your “harsh” comments but to be honest you are right and I have to consider all these aspects if I want our agency to grow and meet the required standard.
Many thanks for your contributions.
| | | | AlchemyDK
Denmark
Local time: 10:17
Danish to English
TRADLINGO wrote:
I have to admit I was shocked by your “harsh” comments but to be honest you are right and I have to consider all these aspects if I want our agency to grow and meet the required standard.
Many thanks for your contributions.
If you were referring to my comment about the spelling and grammatical mistakes, apologies, I didn't mean to sound harsh. My own company is only two months old as well, so I was actually only trying to be helpful. My brother has worked as a Project Manager for a large Danish translation agency (from which I used to get most of my jobs while translating part-time) so he is actually the one that mentioned this to me when I first started out.
He told me that project managers/clients have a few favorite translators who perform consistently well and deliver on-time, and all the rest mostly only get one chance. A single misspelled word or a wrong comma can be enough, especially if you are writing to them in the language pair that you are interested in working with (such as English).
Getting clients as a new company is not easy; it is only these last two weeks that I have actually gotten favorable responses from agencies and that was after a lot of work on my website and CV.
And that is only the first step.
The second step is delivering quality results, as if you hand in an assignment full of typos, spelling mistakes, and grammatical errors they will not give you a second chance most likely since there are always other freelancers to work with. I am talking here about the agencies that pay 0.08-0.12 euros per word, at least.
I wish you good luck though!
EDIT: I took a look at the English section of your website, it's very possible that you don't get clients for that language because there are quite a few mistakes there too. I know not everyone speaks perfect English, but if you are a translation company offering high quality professional translations into English, the text on your website has to be completely error-free.
[Edited at 2016-02-10 16:16 GMT]
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Sheila Wilson
Spain
Local time: 09:17
Member (2007)
English
+ ...
| Some comments | Feb 10, 2016 |
Tom in London wrote:
Greetings to the beautiful Cote d'Ivoire! I presume your mother tongue is French. Don't worry if your English isn't perfect. I deal with many agencies who can't speak English at all. You can't expect every translating agency to speak perfect English. For example, my language pair is Italian to English and most of the agencies in Italy with which I deal don't speak English very well. So ignore the criticisms about your English.
Suppliers will forgive a lot if they want the work, Tom; it's the clients that have to be impressed, not us. The end clients you're dealing with are mainly Italian speakers, I would imagine, so the agencies will be communicating perfectly with them in Italian.
My suggestion would be that you create your own website (but in this case if it's in English, your English will need to be very good and up to professional standard!).
There is a website online, and the English is extremely patchy. In places it's very good so perhaps there was an attempt at quality, but then things got updated and translated by non-native speakers (I'm just guessing here). Update: the further away from the home page you get, the worse the quality. Some is very poor.
as Erik suggests, your website should differentiate you from the websites of other translation companies. In a competitive sector like translation, where everyone is selling the same thing, the keyword is *differentiation*: something you do that not many others can do. BUT this should NOT be that you are CHEAPER than everyone else !!
This is an area where the website is VERY weak, as is the ProZ.com profile. The reasons given for choosing this agency over others are as follows:
1- An Accurate and reliable translation
2- An on-time service
3- A discounted price service
Well, if there are any agencies in the world that aren't promising the first two, I'd be very surprised! So I guess it's all down to price. I know it's the bottom line and all that, but most clients want decent quality for a decent (or rather lower, if possible) price. They don't really want very cheap rubbish (not that I'm suggesting that's what's on offer here ).
Of course, price is a likely USP for an agency based in Africa that's offering European language combinations. And the website does make that clear, but only hidden way down on the Rates page:
Our prices are competitive with those translation tariffs in Europe. Our competitiveness is explained from an economic point of view, by our presence in Côte d’Ivoire and the use of independent translators from African countries where labor costs are much lower than those prevailing in Europe or North America
Mind you, I wonder how capable most of those Africa-based translators are of translating between two European languages. It's true that the prices are fairly competitive when compared to European agencies, but not excessively so. I'm sure a lot in the Eurozone quote EUR 0.08-0.09 per word or even less. There are certainly many translators who report having been offered just a few cents by them.
Basically, there doesn't seem to be much to attract clients, other than price, and plenty of potential red flags to warn them off.
| | | | Iris Schmerda
France
Local time: 10:17
Member (2016)
French to German
+ ...
| German translation is bad | Feb 10, 2016 |
Sorry, but:
I just had a look at the German translation of your website, and it is really bad.
Example:
"Absolventen von Universitäten, unsere erfahrenen Übersetzer führen Europäischen Muttersprache und eine zweite europäische Sprache seit dem Gymnasium. Die Agentur arbeitet mit Übersetzern mit hervorragenden Kenntnissen der europäischen Sprachen Englisch, Französisch, Deutsch und Spanisch. Sie sind in verschiedene Bereiche, einschließlich Marketing, Jura... See more Sorry, but:
I just had a look at the German translation of your website, and it is really bad.
Example:
"Absolventen von Universitäten, unsere erfahrenen Übersetzer führen Europäischen Muttersprache und eine zweite europäische Sprache seit dem Gymnasium. Die Agentur arbeitet mit Übersetzern mit hervorragenden Kenntnissen der europäischen Sprachen Englisch, Französisch, Deutsch und Spanisch. Sie sind in verschiedene Bereiche, einschließlich Marketing, Jura, Gebäude- und Ingenieurbau, Strom, Telekommunikation, Landwirtschaft usw. spezialisiert."
Total gibberish that was not done by a native speaker.
The two sentences want to give information about the competency of your translators and how experienced they are ...
As a customer, I would run away immediately.
I would just be too frightened that my translation might be done by the same person or another one with the same level of (non-)professionalism.
(I hope you don't see this as "harsh", I just found it important for you to know).
[Edited at 2016-02-10 18:54 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 04:17
Member (2008)
French to English
+ ...
| Local markets | Feb 10, 2016 |
I would expect you would have the most luck approaching local clients, where you can meet them in person and develop a personal relationship with prospects. You are located in a big city with quite a lot of international trade, so there must be demand for translation services. There are sure to be large companies, institutions and government agencies that use the services of a translation agency. I once did a large document for some UN agency based in Abdijan, so there is definitely work avai... See more I would expect you would have the most luck approaching local clients, where you can meet them in person and develop a personal relationship with prospects. You are located in a big city with quite a lot of international trade, so there must be demand for translation services. There are sure to be large companies, institutions and government agencies that use the services of a translation agency. I once did a large document for some UN agency based in Abdijan, so there is definitely work available.
[Edited at 2016-02-10 21:27 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Jeff Whittaker
United States
Local time: 04:17
Member (2002)
Spanish to English
+ ...
| If that's all it took... | Feb 10, 2016 |
... everyone on the planet would open an agency.
TRADLINGO wrote:
...we have contacted some translation agencies for possible sub-contracting and registered on major websites targeting translators such as Proz.com.
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I agree with Iris, the German on the website is really bad.
I do also think that every new business needs at least 2 or 3 years to work.
I am not sure there is much more place for new agencies in Western Europe though, the concurrence in that market is really hard and e. g. in my region in France there have a been a lot new agencies the last few years, most of them have real difficulties. (Know some of them personnally.)
My opinion is you should trie to get... See more I agree with Iris, the German on the website is really bad.
I do also think that every new business needs at least 2 or 3 years to work.
I am not sure there is much more place for new agencies in Western Europe though, the concurrence in that market is really hard and e. g. in my region in France there have a been a lot new agencies the last few years, most of them have real difficulties. (Know some of them personnally.)
My opinion is you should trie to get local customers in your country. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Heinrich Pesch
Finland
Local time: 11:17
Member (2003)
Finnish to German
+ ...
| Why do you want to be an agency? | Feb 11, 2016 |
Do you think you can more money as an agency than as a freelance translator? Perhaps on bottom rates you might get by in your country, but do you think a German native translator could manage with the rates you offer him/her in Europe? If your net presence shows you cannot afford decent translators for your own business, why should anyone believe you will find the right translator for them?
| | | | jyuan_us
United States
Local time: 04:17
Member (2005)
English to Chinese
+ ...
| About the tagline on the OP's profile | Feb 11, 2016 |
It is "Quality for your satisfaction!" but shouldn't it be changed to "Quality TO your satisfaction!"?
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