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Well, we've finally laid out the big wad(of cash$$) for a combination of web and paper directory advertising/listing with a Yellowpages company. It was necessary to get more exposure for my translation agency. Expecting people to occasionally pick up an actual phonebook next year and call us or go to our site; and find us on the Internet directory website.

Update, January 2010: So far I don't see how this Yellowpages listing has helped us get new translation clients at all.

Meanwhile, back at "Lazy Dog Summer Freelance Translator Ranch", life is slow. People aren't buying translations this month, companies, return customers are thinking twice about purchasing translations, some unreasonably expecting me to offer the same rates as in 2006!

Have put up new ads for translators, translators needed. We are trying to get more local translators of French, Italian, German...we have a surplus of Spanish already. Lots of people filling out the online application form. I will have some work to do downloading the information into my translator CV and resume folders.

Got some documents today, medical records and prescriptions for medications, in French. Everyone knows how notoriously messy doctors' handwriting is on prescriptions. I had to notify the client that these parts would be noted as "illegible", or he'd have to type up the names of medications.

Put a banner and link to your translation agency on this blog: One-time fee, $75

Yep, spend a lot of time collecting email addresses of prospective clients; then I send our agency info to about 6 addresses at a time.

I thought direct regular mail advertising might be good. I went to click2mail or some company off the USPS postcard mailing page. I ordered 100 street addresses of import/export companies and 100 postcards, created the postcard with our company info and sent them(had them sent- the company prints up the cards and sends them for you)- you can do everything online at the site.

Biggest problems was figuring out how to upload the the address list I ordered. They delivered it by email and I had to put it into Excel file, and get it into proper order on the file from a .txt file. This turned out to be a mess with this Click2Mail service. Already 20 postcards returned with "insufficient address"!

I got no instructions on how to do this with the order of my addresses!! I got a zip file with .htm, .text, files and had to dig through these to find the actual list of addresses, which was full of extra stuff and numbers! Several trial and errors, finally figured out how to get the addresses aligned in proper cells on Excel and have this new file accepted by the postcard mailing system.

Even then , the preview, which I approved, showed a few extra numbers and letters besides the address, so not perfect, but the mailman will be able to deliver these cards hopefully.

Click2Mail mail marketing service has not worked well for us at all. Daily we receive returned postcards with "insufficient address".

Not sending out interpreters anymore but trying to set up a 5-day French interpreter assignment as a "referral". This is the email I sent my French translators(can they do interpreting , too?)

Hi,
I got a call from a client about a French interpreting job Sept.12-16th, in Lompoc and Pasadena. Travel and lodging paid.

Because of liability issues, I do not send out interpreters directly anymore from my agency; but I do set up jobs as "referrals", meaning you would take the job directly and invoice and collect directly from client.

All responsibility for the performance and billing is yours. I collect a commission directly from you for referring the job. We agree beforehand and I send you a referral invoice, which you must pay me after you receive payment from client.

If handled efficiently this could be lucrative for both me and you. Emphasis is on the "gentlemen's agreement" aspect, meaning that you have to agree not to forgot your obligation to pay me a fee for referral to this job and not go directly to client without sufficient mark up to cover my commission. So the element of trust is essential.

As an agency , I used to send out interpreters at $** to $** per hour (3 -hour minimum payment required). Translators were paid around $**.00 Since this is a longer assignment, you'd have to work out your fee, which must include markup to include my 20% commission on the total fee you charge the client directly.

So, you will quote to the client your fee + my 20% commission. This will be your quote to the client, which you will make directly.

Be sure to get a down payment from client on larger jobs. Have 24-hour- beforehand cancellation policy.

Tell me if you are willing and able for this assignment, your fees(which you must quote with my 20% markup direct to client).

It has only happened twice in the history of my Los Angeles translation agency: Once when a native French translator translated some advertisements into French. The end client, a French native, wildly criticized the translation, and the paying client, in a knee-jerk reaction, relayed to us that the translation was not acceptable. The translator emailed the French client who criticized the translation and defended her work. I also sent her resume to the American client, which showed that she was an experienced and educated professional. Eventually, we got paid and the bitchy haute-couture Madame that berated our service was silenced.

Another time was just a poor translation, but it was 3 months after the job was done, which is beyond our time limit for corrections. I had already paid the translator and she did not agree to do a correction, so she did not reimburse me , and I had to pay back the client!!!

Yesterday, we had a client, typical rude Los Angeles American engineer or advertising exec, who knows nothing about foreign languages, bitch about a translation because the German associate read over our German translation and said it was "unacceptable". This time I fought back and got the translator to DEFEND her translation work!!

As I do not speak or write or understand German, I had no say technically in the dispute, but reminded client of our corrections policy.

Here is my translator's email to the client, defending herself and her translation work. I had given the American client her email so he could discuss the translation directly with her.

Hello,
my name is ….. I translated your document from English to German and I have some things to say regarding your email. I have to start by saying that your email was quite offensive and not fair at all.
To begin with, I do not agree with your presumption that my work appeared to be a computer translation. I am a German by birth and my mother tongue is German. I did the translation with all due care and had German speakers proofread the document.
I would like to touch the points you criticized about my work and explain where I think our perception of the whole issue differs:
-          Capital letters in random places. I am not sure if you know but the German language capitalizes nouns even in the middle of sentences. After proofreading again, I did not find any misspellings regarding capital letters.
-          First sentence wrong in overview.doc (in red). The translation I did followed the content of what the English document says. The sentence you intended me to come up with was totally reworded. I am not paid to translate to a different meaning, but to translate in the best way possible (following the text) to German.
-          As I compared your texts to mine, I saw that you made some changes, however I feel that some of them were just a change of style and a personal choice, therefore, not wrong.
-          Several technical words not used. I agree that some of the technical words you used are better choices than the ones I used, but I am not an expert in the topic and I used the more colloquial words that apply. Nevertheless, I do not think this is a reason to not pay for the service. In any event, if the words I used were not satisfactory to you because they are not technical, then we could have discussed these to make the documents to your liking. I am sure you understand that translators are not going to be experts in every topic they translate.
-          Misspellings. I do not think that two misspelled words (two “Umlaute” were not corrected to ö/ü) count as an unprofessional job. In the corrections you made I found several misspellings. Again, I do not think this is a reason for you to not pay for the service.
-          Words such as ‘recycle’ and ‘enter’ are being used in German as well. Sometimes a translation into a German word does not sound as fluent as the English word.
The mistakes you are pointing out are nothing compared to the amount of words translated. I think this does not merit the harsh criticism and the nonpayment of the service. I think, that to be fair, the mistakes should be discounted from the total fee. But not paying at all is just bad.
I am also attaching a new version of the power point document in which I have made some changes to reflect your wishes.
Thank you for your time and hope that you will find a fair solution.
Regards,
----------Translator

ONCE AGAIN, our Corrections Policy(This is something all translation agency entrepreneurs, agency startups, and freelancers need to use!)

5.1 The translator will correct the following errors free of charge: omissions, grammatical and spelling errors, not using approved glossaries. Nevertheless, if the corrections are based on the client’s preference of a particular style and/or terminology, or in the event that there is more than one way to interpret the meaning of a source text, All-Texts.Com Los Angeles Translation Service/Global Translation Service, will not be obligated to correct mistakes or errors free of charge, unless preferences of style and/or terminology have been communicated to All-Texts.Com Los Angeles Translation Service/Global Translation Service before commencement of translation or project.

5.2 The client recognizes that the translator will not bear any responsibility or obligation for possible errors of translation, unless such errors are indicated in writing within seven (7) days of the delivery of the final material to the client.

5.3 The translator's responsibility will be that of correcting the final material free of charge within time limit.

Sending translations to customers via Fedex or other overnight express delivery, signature upon delivery of documents, notarization fees for certified translations, translation customer disputes, waiving postage fees on translation documents

Had a dispute with a recent translation client in L.A.. I added a $5 extra fee to his Fedex fee for delivering a certified notarized translation document, signature-confirmation secure delivery. He argued, saying it was "abusive".

My counter-argument was that this procedure took extra time, and it does take about 45 min. extra. When I send documents regular mail, I just stamp them and put them in the post office mailbox; often using the automated postage machine, which weighs the envelope and prints out postage. Usually no waiting involved at all.

He argued that he was a regular customer, that the $5 fair and necessary added fee was excessive, etc., blah, blah, blah. So, after that attempt at shoving a guilt trip on me, I just capitulated and waived the extra $5.

A recent client wanted me to do a French translation for him and lop off 40% of the total price! He also wanted to pay in installments over 2 and a half months! The total was only like $200.00, but he couldn't afford to pay.

Doing Internet advertising for past 4 months. I have a listing. Pay $77 per month. So far, I don't see what difference it makes. Is it worth it?

I have done a search for keywords and phrases like "Los Angeles translation services" "French translators L.A." , etc. Yellowpages.com does not show up, neither does my listing; and finding my listing amongst the hundreds in L.A. on Yellowpages.com itself is not easy, as it is behind so many others.

Worldwide recession hit us, too, as we add up our gross profits from 2009. Clients shopping for lower and lower prices for translation projects. Of course, they will get what they pay for, quality will suffer.

Late paying translation clients: One client , a week late with payment, when informed says check will be in mail soon; a month later, still no check. Another translation client, $8,000 project, down payment not sent as they switched accounting offices, down payment still a month late, total payment due within a week, client hasn't even issued the check yet.

Shall we demand all translation clients to pay in advance the total sum, like when you buy a book on Amazon?

AT&T and Yellowpages.com....be careful with them(Updated warning: Do not use AT&T Advertising Solutions unless you have a lot of money to waste- it is a big gamble)

Through salesman persuasion from an AT&T Yellowpages.com rep, I did a phone authorization of renewal of my listing on their site, for a continued $77 a month. Now I am trying to get out of it. Listing is renewed in August for another year!! Now they are playing me a recording of my phone renewal, which was done while I was still under duress/undecided, but they say they may try to discontinue my subscription. Luckily I pay by check each month.

I renewed, but was doubtful of the AT&T Yellowpages.com benefits...see, if they do it by phone you don't have time to consider and think about whether it is a good decision, so you make the wrong one and order the listing or renew it!

I pointed out that Yellowpages.com does not come up for a keyword search for "translators los angeles", but both of my websites do. Trouble is if someone is looking for translators in LA, they won't find it on yellowpages.com through Google, but only if they go directly to yellowpages.com first; they have to look for yellowpages.com first, who does that?

Then, yellowpages.com does come up on Bing, and as a pulldown tab on AOL, but doesn't go directly to translators category of their listing

I remember when I initially subscribed to Yellowpages.com and put up listing , even though I am #1 and on like page 4 of Google searches for pertinent keywords with both of my sites. The salesman was really aggressive ....

Update, June 2010: I still have not received contract cancellation papers or any official confirmation of cancellation of this account, which makes me nervous, as this advertising contract is supposed to terminate as of August 2010. It was over a month or two ago that I sent a certified letter to the cancellations office and spoke with the account manager on the phone!

AT&T and Yellowpages.com: Moral of the story - do not respond to high-pressure aggressive sales techniques from this company if you want more exposure for your website. What they promise is not delivered.

My warning on online advertising and SEO marketing goes as well for Google Adwords. The Adwords program can gobble up a large amount of money with absolutely no result. I see how Adwords can be effective IF YOU SPEND A LOT OF MONEY AND TIME ON TAILORING IT TO YOUR BUSINESS. But, as an effective lower-cost quick way into internet advertising and exposure for you web site, it will NOT work!!

I would also be careful with Adsense. The return for placing their paid ads on your website is minimal if that. Moreover, you will have a lot of links to competing businesses on your website that a potential customer may choose to click as he or she shops around!

A secretary of On....co( name disguised with ellipsis), an L.A. company, called for a Russian interpreter. I called back with phone numbers of my interpreters. As soon as I asked questions about the assignment, basic questions like location (!) and the name of their company (!)they rudely said, "Just give us a quote!". I told them that I needed this info, blah, blah.

They were so rude as I was trying to set up the assignment and get information that I just ended the conversation with a firm "F-You!" and hung up - this is not advisable, of course. But, as a sole-proprietor, I do what I want, and I hope they got the message. .............people at On...co(name disguised with ellipsis) in L.A. sounded like they had just woken up with a hangover.

My Playlist on this page(automatic music player you are listening to now): Mason Williams "Classical Gas", Ennio Morricone "Carillon", Bruno Nicolai "Il Mio Nome", Paco de Lucia's interpretation of "Concierto de Aranjuez", etc.

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