This is the sequel to How (not) to contact an agency.
We keep receiving this email (see below) from the same translator, on average twice a week – and this has been going on since June. This is a good example of what has been outlined in the previous article, so let’s have a closer at that email.
First red flag – and a big one – is the fact that this exact same email continues to be sent weekly, sometimes two or three times a day. This is my definition of spamming, yet there is no way to unsubscribe and my numerous replies begging the sender to stop were never responded to. At first I thought it was a bot, or even a scam (though I fail to see the point of such a scam) but funnily enough, the emails stopped during the entire month of August and resumed last week, so this has to be an actual human being. I tried to Google her name and it seems she really does exist, though there were not many hits. Result? Her emails became such an annoyance that I blacklisted her – and now she goes straight into my spam folder. I stopped wasting time by asking her nicely to stop the spamming. So, while she may think she’s doing herself a favor by repeating the same message over and over again to translation companies, it has completely backfired… and she has no idea.
Then of course there’s the actual content of the email. I have obviously removed her name and her language pair to protect her privacy.
Dear Messrs.:
I was checking your website, http://gxplanguageservices.wordpress.com/about/, and I am very interested in working for you and being part of your staff as a AA in BB, BB in AA, CC in BB, BB in CC Translator.
I am attaching my curriculum vitae. As you can notice, I have a degree in Business Administration. Although I do not have a Translation degree, my command in AA is very good, and of course, my mother tongue is BB. On the other hand, my experience of 14-year track record in different businesses and industrial settings has let me work with different documents in both languages, and has let me develop the creativity, the accuracy, and the promptness.
Likewise, I have working tools such as SKYPE and MSN, and a very good laptop. If you need to contact me for further information, please do not hesitate to email me. I will be more than glad to enlighten any doubt about my persona and my professional background.
Awaiting for your kind and positive feedback.
Okay, there are a few points here I would like to highlight:
- ”Dear Messrs.:”
See my opinion and suggestions on this in the other article. It’s even more annoying when that person has been writing you for months and you have replied using your own name asking her to stop (which still makes me wonder from time to time if it is not indeed some kind of new bot).
- The second paragraph
The first two sentences are fine – she honestly and openly admits she’s no background translator and gives her actual background, which is fine – there are many excellent translators who do not have a translation degree but come from other industries. This is more than okay. However, we are a medical LSP and she fails to give me a brief summary of what her areas of specialization are – but since she has a degree in Business Administration, I guess she does not do clinical trials or SPCs. Clearly, as stated in the previous article, no research has been done to see what the company does and what kind of translators they need.
-”(…) has let me develop the creativity, the accuracy, and the promptness”
Well. This is not exactly an exceptional quality. All translators are supposed to be creative, accurate and to deliver on-time – this is nothing that makes you stand out from the competition because it’s something your clients expect from you. Right?
-”Likewise, I have working tools such as SKYPE and MSN, and a very good laptop”
Yay!
To clarify: I did not post this to make fun of her or anything like that. If this was my intention I would have left her name in the email. I have merely used this email as a representative sample of emails that PMs receive and that can really hurt your credibility as a translator, because that sample illustrates some simple principles that, in my opinion, are not adhered to – not to mention the worst part of all, which is the actual spamming.
On the other hand I am perfectly aware that there are a lot of PMs miscommunicating with translators and who do take spamming-like approaches. Being listed as a freelancer/outsourcer on ProZ.com, I receive a lot of those as well, so I’m not questioning that. My goal here is to give freelancers a few easy tips to help them improve their applications to agencies and LSPs.
Now however, here is an interesting question I don’t have an answer to: how important is the cultural factor? Is it my culture that makes me react negatively to these emails? Is this kind of email perfectly fine and normal in other cultures? Culture does play a role in business communication in general; we can all cite examples of exchanges with translators/PMs from another culture, where the codes and etiquette of communication are really different. Though this translator does come from a similar culture as mine, I don’t believe that any culture would tolerate being spammed with the same email over and over again despite numerous requests to be unsubscribed. Nonetheless, how important is the cultural aspect in this?
14 years of experience ruined by msn and skype… such a pity.
Pingback: How (not) to contact a translation company (Part 2) | LinguaGreca | Scoop.it
A similar thing occurred to me just this month, but the other way around, that is, I (a freelance translator) was spammed (in a way) by an agency. This agency sent me a mail, addressed to me personally, telling me that they were a small start-up agency and were looking to build a translator database, etc., the usual spiel. I answered and got deep silence. Two weeks later, they sent me, again, exactly the same mail. To which I replied with a forward of my earlier reply and a comment that she (the mail’s author) was apparently not checking their mail or not tracking replies…
Pingback: Weekly favorites (Oct 8-14) | Adventures in Freelance Translation
I think it’s good to have a lot of messages like this going around – this way, hopefully, the meaningful ones will get more attention.
I made the mistake of registering my tiny translation agency on various websites that are set up like directories. Now I probably get about 8 to 10 e-mails a day from translators applying for a non-existent job. The quality of the applications is mostly disastrous – starting with the quality of the English used. For educational purposes I drew up a little template as a reply to those that look like they actually are professionals, whose mother tongue isn’t English, but the crappy mails keep coming.
Many translators have a deep-seated problem with valuing their own profession. It’s a service they themselves hardly ever make use of, because they think they can do it themselves, even if English isn’t their mother tongue. I am convinced that only a small minority of my colleagues would actually pay a professional translator to help them with an application mail, their website, or any other material they use for marketing their skills. How can you expect others to respect your profession if you yourself don’t respect it?
As it is, the horrendous English in most translators’ mail casts a very bad light on the profession as a whole and I am starting to lose my patience with the hoards of moonshiners and kitchen table top translators that clog my inbox daily.