| Pages in topic: [1 2 3] > | Translation Directory.com Thread poster: Mohammed Majeed
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Dear colleagues,
Does anyone know if Translation.Directory.com worth investing?
Best wishes
Mohammed majeed (Arabic translator)
| | | | Signe Golly 
Denmark
Local time: 16:06
English to Danish
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| search forums | Mar 31, 2012 |
Try searching "translationdirectory" in the existing forum posts. I think you will most likely find the answer to your question.
Best,
| | | | | Not worth at all | Mar 31, 2012 |
No it is totally worthless. I think the ROI is close to ZERO.
Everyday we have new-born translation portals...... they promise gold but if you subscribe you do not get anything on return!!!
I would suggest you not to get attracted by any of them. If you do so, you will save money and time.
Bye
Paolo
| | | | Mohammed Majeed
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:06
English to Arabic
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TOPIC STARTER | translationdirectory | Mar 31, 2012 |
Dear colleagues,
Thank you ver much for your responses. What I meant is the investment of buying lists of agency details from Translation Directories.com and contact each and everyone of them to register with them, is it worth it?
best wishes
Mohammed
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DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
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the more prospective sources--the better, but my point is that (if I remember correctly then) as a 'member' of ProZ you can check agencies and their contact details--you have prepaid for it, haven't you?
| | | | Jenn Mercer
United States
Local time: 10:06
Member (2009)
French to English
| Avoid mass mailings | Apr 1, 2012 |
Mojo 59 wrote:
Dear colleagues,
Thank you ver much for your responses. What I meant is the investment of buying lists of agency details from Translation Directories.com and contact each and everyone of them to register with them, is it worth it?
best wishes
Mohammed
Regardless of how you find agencies, you will get very poor results from contacting "each and everyone." Try looking at the Blue Board, but don't just mail them all blindly. Go to their websites. Are they looking for your language pairs? your specialties? Do they require more years of experience than you possess? On the other hand, if they are promising to deliver the cheapest product available, do you think they will pay you what you are worth? Taking a little time on the front end can save you time and preserve your reputation.
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Mojo 59 wrote:
Thank you ver much for your responses. What I meant is the investment of buying lists of agency details from Translation Directories.com and contact each and everyone of them to register with them, is it worth it?
It is not worth it at all. Very many agencies in these lists do not exist, and the rest don't care at all about unwanted emails. They will treat you as a spammer.
There are other much better marketing options around, the first one of them being to create a proper profile with your actual name and a clear definition of your abilities, samples of your work, etc. in portals like proz.com etc. Instead of relying on unwanted emails received, agencies look for their translators proactively and if you have an attractive profile (as well as your own, profesionally-made website) you will be contacted often.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 16:06
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| Do you speak from experience? | Apr 1, 2012 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
It is not worth it at all. Very many agencies in these lists do not exist, and the rest don't care at all about unwanted emails. They will treat you as a spammer.
Paolo Sebastiani wrote:
No it is totally worthless. I think the ROI is close to ZERO.
Do you guys know this for a fact, or are you just speculating (based on comments that others have made in the past about similar lists)? Do either of you have any experience using this list?
The buying page contains 47 references with contact details. Has anyone contacted these people to find out what their ROI was?
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Mohammed Majeed
United Kingdom
Local time: 15:06
English to Arabic
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TOPIC STARTER | Translation directory.com | Apr 1, 2012 |
Dear colleagues,
Thank you very much for your responses. It would seem to me that the more clients you network with the more results you get. I think this strategy is worth a try. One sub strategy would be to phone each one of them and ask them if they are either recruiting for translators, instead of sending CVs blindly; or ask them if its ok to be on their database. As our last colleague mentioned that some 47 references on their buying page tried these lists. I would appreciat... See more Dear colleagues,
Thank you very much for your responses. It would seem to me that the more clients you network with the more results you get. I think this strategy is worth a try. One sub strategy would be to phone each one of them and ask them if they are either recruiting for translators, instead of sending CVs blindly; or ask them if its ok to be on their database. As our last colleague mentioned that some 47 references on their buying page tried these lists. I would appreciate any comments from any colleague who tried these lists in the past?
Best wishes
Mohammed ▲ Collapse
| | | | | How old are the references? | Apr 1, 2012 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
The buying page contains 47 references with contact details. Has anyone contacted these people to find out what their ROI was?
How old were these references? No date of the references is shown, and that is most revealing. The world has changed over the years, and people are most distrustful these days with people who feel free to spam everyone else. Sensible agencies today will not favour spammers, and will always look for their translators actively. Emailing 7500 translation agencies (the figure sounds quite ridiculous) just creates spam nobody reads.
| | | | | More questions | Apr 1, 2012 |
Their website's FAQ says:
Did the companies from your translation agency database give you permission to list them?
All translation agencies from our database of translation agencies have either confirmed they wish to be listed or have registered directly through this portal.
This is so very hard to believe! I bet they cannot prove that. Or maybe a majority of the companies gave their approval many years ago and now regret it. The thought of agencies "confirming their wish to be listed" in modern times is laughable. Who enjoys being spammed?
Isn't it also very revealing that --at least I cannot find them-- they do not show references of agencies who are happy to be contacted by freelancers using the service, the same they have references of freelancers saying how successful they were with the list (nobody knows when that happened)?
I also find it interesting to see that this website does not report any kind of contact address, or at least I fail to find it. Lots of different thoughts come to mind when someone forgets to add their physical address to their website.
Edited to add this after Tony's information: Indeed I was wrong. A physical address can be found. I apologise for not looking harder!
[Edited at 2012-04-01 19:50 GMT]
| | | | Tony M
France
Local time: 16:06
Member
French to English
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SITE LOCALIZER | translationdirectory.com | Apr 1, 2012 |
First of all, we need to be careful here about which site we are talking: in effect, there are several sites with similar names.
On the www.translationdirectory.com site (NB: no spaces or -), I found these contact details:
Postal address:
TranslationDirectory.com
Vyshenskoho st., 36/4,
Lviv, 79010
Ukraine
Telephone:
+38 067 7792346... See more First of all, we need to be careful here about which site we are talking: in effect, there are several sites with similar names.
On the www.translationdirectory.com site (NB: no spaces or -), I found these contact details:
Postal address:
TranslationDirectory.com
Vyshenskoho st., 36/4,
Lviv, 79010
Ukraine
Telephone:
+38 067 7792346
and they propose the following e-mail addresses:
CEO at TranslationDirectory.com
GlobalBusinessMail at Gmail.com
I do find it slightly worrying that in their 'Photos of translators', they feature only 3 translators, with several photos of each that seem to have little to do with a professional profile.
Having looked at some of their 'testimonials', a few do have valid websites, while for certain others the links do not work; this might be an indication that they are out of date.
Personally, I would not feel inclined to invest in membership of this site or purchase of their databases without a lot more background information. ▲ Collapse
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| | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 16:06
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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| Report-back on TranslationDirectory.com's references | Apr 2, 2012 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Their website's FAQ says:
All translation agencies from our database of translation agencies have either confirmed they wish to be listed or have registered directly through this portal.
This is so very hard to believe!
I agree that it is hard to believe, especially given the sizes of those lists. I guess one must take it with a pinch of salt -- perhaps the list is opt-out, not opt-in. Either way, I did some digging and what I have found may be useful fuel for further speculation. I checked the old versions of their web site at archive.org, and I sent e-mails to everyone on their list of references (about 10 people replied).
The list went through at least two editions. By the time they made the first edition available to the public, in or about September 2002, the list had 3300 addresses. The list cost USD 189, and some people say there were free annual updates. Apparently there was an additional servive whereby TranslationDirectory.com would send out the mails on your behalf. It would appear that this list was just a list of addresses, with little or no extra information about each agency.
The list increased in size but the price didn't go up for a while. In Dec 2002 there were 3470 addresses, in June 2003 there were 5800 addresses, and by Dec 2003 there were 6200 addresses. For some agencies, multiple addresses were listed, and a number of freelancers' addresses also ended up in the list.
The second edition of the list appears in June 2005, and had 950 addresses. It is this edition that first carried the claim that all agencies in it gave permission to be in it. This list initially cost EUR 89, and one could buy smaller lists specific to certain countries.
Over the years, the size of the second list also grew, but so did the price. The current price for the full list is EUR 743, although a number of the references told me that they bought only the lists particular to their markets, which was cheaper for them and yielded better results. The size of the main list (that contains all countries) grew as follows: Dec 2005: 2203; 2006: 5363; 2007: 4100; 2008: 4432; 2009: 5439; 2010: 6912; today: 7470.
Two of the references that I contacted told me that they would not recommend buying the list. Interestingly, all the people who used the first edition of the list (which was basically a spam list) reported having had acceptable levels of responses, including once-off clients, regular clients, and even clients who contacted them only several years later.
The references that bought the second edition of the list (which is more detailed) reported lesser results. Two of the people contacted agencies individually (not in batches) but got a dismal response. Several agencies showed interest but hardly any turned into clients, or if there were clients, it did not recoup the investment.
I haven't had any responses from people who had used the spam method using the second edition of the list. All of them simply used the list as a reference point for doing individual submissions. Several of the references told me that they now consider ProZ.com (one also mentioned TC) a better investment (I did not mention ProZ.com in my initial mail). A number of the people also said that spamming was a lot more acceptable in earlier years but that they have doubts about how well it would go down in modern times.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 16:06
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| How long to get 7500 addresses | Apr 2, 2012 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Emailing 7500 translation agencies (the figure sounds quite ridiculous)...
I did a quick test to see how many e-mail addresses of real value I would be able to get in 5 minutes. The answer: 38. That means 400 e-mail addresses per hour. If I spend just 1 hour a day for a month, I'll have 10 000 addresses of people who really work at translation companies.
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