turktrans blog

This post would well be categorized under the “hot bloopers.” But the point to be covered here has more to do with marketing than with bloopers.

Successful promotion is the key to success in any business, and first impression is the critical element in it. And a well-written message (be it an email reply or a short promotional message posted at forums, mailing lists, etc.) is the most critical factors of all in translation business, since the text is the only measuring rod against which our target audience measures the quality of our service. That is why I am posting this message under the “Business” category.

For the last couple of weeks I am receiving a promotional message from one of the Yahoo translation groups to which I am also a subscriber. The message originates from an Istanbul based agency that claims to have decades of experience, professional staff, and the like. But reading the first line of the message, you would probably think that it is the last one to whom you would trust your translation projects. I am including the whole message here:

Our company which is giving translation services and written and orally translations (simultaneous, concecutive) for any subject in whole world languages for five years, has all sorts of knowledge, aggregation and technological supplies.

Each of our written and orally translator staffs approximately near to 1500 in all over the world are formed by expert persons who have at least 5-10-15 years knowledge, aggregation and experince and are at the world standards.

Our translators are orientated through the translation projects which are classified one by one about their subjects, such as technical, medical, law, engineering etc..

Our translators’ professionalism and our coordinatos’s efforts are effective on submitting the translation businesses on time.

For all of your written and orally translation projects, you can get into contact with us by contentmently through the following addresses…

This is really a terrible first impression for a translator claiming experience and expertise. Anyone reading this message would hardly consider assigning a translation job to its originator. They would simply ignore it.

For freelance translators, self-promotion (bidding for a particular translation project, writing personalized emails, submitting CVs and references, counting relevant experiences, or designing a profile page) is the only marketing tool available. If used effectively, it may help us to attain a high level of “conversion.” And if not used properly, it can forestall our efforts to win new clients. Using this tool effectively means nothing more than using the language effectively (fluent, grammatically correct, focused, succinct: neither too long to be boring, nor too short).

We can theorize about the stages of winning a new client in freelance business such as: plausibility (first impression), capability (relevant experience, having required qualifications, credentials, etc.), affordability (cost), and the like.

As in any other human interaction, here too first impression plays a determining role in establishing or failing to establish a relationship of any duration (short-term or long-term). It is necessary but not a sufficient condition for winning clients. Necessary, because without a good first impression, the potential client simply turns away to other alternatives. Not sufficient, because we have to meet a couple of other criteria set by the potential clients. And since the words are all that we have for yielding a positive impression enough to have potential clients consider using our services, we should be extremely careful in our first attempt at contact.

Mostly, outsourcers have an initial, but mostly accurate judgment as to the quality level of your services simply through your first email. (I said “mostly,” because there may be cases where the outsourcer himself may not be good at the communication language, and therefore may fail to form a sound judgment on the language skills of the translator. But this is the exception, and not the rule.) Therefore, writing a good email, or a message is essential in yielding a favorable first impression.

Then, how can we learn to write a good message? We can study messages written by native-language speakers: How they introduce themselves, how they address the issue, and how they conclude the message. Sooner or later, we would notice a discernible pattern: A proper greeting, stating the reason why the message is written, elaborating on it, concluding about it, and closing the message with a thanks and regards phrase.

After all, this pattern is easy to learn. What is difficult is to convince the outsourcer that we are capable of delivering quality services, and meeting their requirements. To this end, text of our message should give the impression that we know the language in question well, that we are capable of expressing ourselves well in that language. Failing to give this initial impression amounts to a lost client!

In summary, writing a good initial message may draw the line between success and failure. Therefore, a non-native speaker should check every single line of his message, every phrase and term he uses against reliable resources to ensure that the text of his message is grammatically correct, the phrases are appropriate, and the terms are used properly. Never write a message like the one mentioned above. It would be better not to write it at all!

If you reached this page while searching for a Turkish translator, please visit our English to Turkish translation homepage.

Bir İngilizce Türkçe tercüman ve amatör bir İnternetçi olarak, Türkçe konuşan topluluğa İnternet konusunda sunabileceğim katkıların, turktrans çatısı altında zor olacağı düşüncesiyle, yeni bir alan adı alıp bu katkılarımı orada sürdürmeye karar verdim. Kullanıcı katkılarına da açık olmasını arzuladığım ip numaram adlı yeni sitede, İnternetle ilgili hemen her konuda bilgiye yer vermeye çalışacağım. Ayrıca IP numarası, IP adresinden ülke, şehir, ISP numaralarına ulaşma, IP whois, alan adı sorgulama gibi hizmetlerden yararlanmak da mümkün olacak.

Arama motorları, İnternet sitesi tercümesi, lokalizasyonu ve optimizasyonu konularında yazılara da yer verilecek siteye, bir de internet sözlüğü ekledim. Sözlüğün, bitmiş bir ürün değil de, henüz başlayan ve her gün yeni yeni terimlerin ekleneceği bir proje olduğunu belirtmeme gerek yok.

Although English is not my Native language, I do frequently translate Turkish texts to English. And translating to a foreign language has its own difficulties, since understanding a foreign language is one thing, expressing “into” it is another. One can understand a foreign language well, but may find it really difficult to express himself in that language. That is why most of the translators (including myself) prefer translating into their own Native language rather than the other way around. The same holds true for the outsourcers: They too prefer native language service providers for the target language.

But often, I encounter added difficulties, since I receive poorly written documents in my native language for which I am expected to provide an exceptionally good English translation. Borrowing a saying from the moving pictures, a good script does not guarantee an excellent movie. But not too infrequently, we are provided with a very bad script, and supposed to make a superb film out of it!

Currently, I am translating some contract documents from Turkish to English. The contract covers clinical trials of a certain drug used in the treatment of some psychiatric disturbances. Being a sponsored research project, it has a well-defined format, and I think a substantial budget. And the contract is supposedly drafted by some university staff. It is so poorly written that I almost lost confidence in my ability to understand my native language, let alone English as a foreign language. And since it is a contract, you have to be as accurate as possible in reflecting whatever involved in the original text. That is to say, you have almost no room for playing with the words, or suggesting alternative expressions. A though task indeed! I struggled for hours to translate certain paragraphs, and after completed and returned the job, I exchanged a couple of e-mails with the outsourcer who happens to be a native English (UK) speaker to clarify the issues for him.

Such poorly written source texts have some real payoff for the translator: They tend to erode our credibility in the eyes of readers of the target language. Having no idea as to the low narrative quality of original text, they tend to think that the poor quality results from the translator’s inadequacy. Because, they probably presume that the original text has a perfect quality, since it is written by someone who is the native speaker of the source language. But our experiences as translators evidence that such presumptions are not always true. Quite to the contrary, in many cases translated versions are more fluent, more smooth to read, and more easy to understand than the source text. For example, I had to rewrite many sentences in Turkish version before translating them to English to make the text more readable.

As I said, a good script does not guarantee a superb film. But we translators do sometimes produce much better translations than original texts. Because this is our art, and because this is what we are supposed to do, and we are paid for!

In international translation forums, the implications of Turkey’s accession to the European Union both for the freelance translators as well as translation agencies are discussed frequently. The generally held opinion is that the process itself would create massive volumes of translation jobs. Some people speculate that there are hundreds of thousands of official pages (AC directives, decrees, regulations, the so called acquis communautaire, etc.). Many seek opportunities to work with EU offices. And I am aware that some translating companies are being established with the EU in view.

With the start of accession talks, a surge is expected to occur in translations. But translation requirements with respect to the Turkey’s accession process are not limited to official documents. IMO, it is only the tip of the iceberg. When Turkish language becomes officially another EU language, it would create huge volumes of translation jobs in every conceivable field from package labels to inserts, to product catalogues, instructions for use, maintenance manuals, etc. We already started to see Turkish in user manuals, etc. of many products with EU origin. And Turkey will need a much greater number of good translators in the process than available now.

When we take this view into consideration, we can see that both pre- and post-accession periods carry really promising implications for the translators. I would like to call the coming one or two decades as the Golden Age of Turkish Translation business.

Fortunately, I feel myself prepared for this process, since I have already did numerous (and voluminous) translations with a direct relevance to EU, especially within the context of such projects as MEDA, and the EuropeAid. I translated also some AC Directives.

Right now, I am translating some documents related to a certain grant scheme of the EU. And I am expecting to receive more.

If you reached this page while searching a Turkish translator with some relevance to EU, please visit Turkish translation homepage or my portfolio page for some recent EU related translation projects.

I added a universal unit converter to the tools section of turktrans. It converts almost anything and is capable of converting almost any unit in the following fields: Length, area, volume mass, weight, force, energy, pressure, temperature, velocity and time. The code is written by someone else, but I am planning to expand its functionality to include computing units (bits & bytes). It can prove to be very useful in localization projects involving conversions from one system of units into another.