 Okay, so today I'm going to go through some of my emails that I get from freelancers. So what happens is, as I mentioned before a couple of times, I'm a freelancer, but I also hire freelancers. I basically have an agency now and hire a lot of freelancers. So I've been wanting to do this for a while. I've been wanting to go through the emails that I get from prospective freelancers. These are basically cold emails from freelance translators who would like to be hired or would like to do business with my agency. I imagine all agencies get these and imagine you as a freelancer are probably sending something similar out. And so I kind of want to go through these and show some good points and bad points. Basically, I'm going to go through and kind of point out all the bad points. So you're going to hear a mean version of me here. But I think it'll be very useful to you guys. I wasn't sure how to do it because my editing skills aren't too good and I didn't want to show people's names. In the end, I just decided to do screenshots of their emails. I figured that's the next best thing. So yeah, here we go. Let's start off with the first email. So once again, these are emails that I receive unsolicited in my email inbox from prospective translators. So these are the emails that if you're emailing translation companies and trying to get hired, if you're emailing 10, 20 companies a day or whatever it is, these are the types of email you're sending out, basically. So let me go through this quickly. First of all, the thing that stands out is this is all centered. I have no idea why it's centered, but that should not be the case. And obviously something like this doesn't leave a good impression. It basically makes me think that they don't pay much attention to composition and layout, probably not much attention to detail. So yeah, things like this are very obvious and you shouldn't be doing them. Let me go through a bit more in detail after this. Well, first of all here, French freelance translator. I would say that's good, but usually you want the language pair. So French to English. I'm going to assume because it's written in English, but I'm assuming here. I don't know for sure. And so I feel it's always best if you write French to English freelance. The important thing is the language combination, French to English, English to French, whatever it is. Then here, let's go into the email. Dear sirs and madams, it should be sir or madam. Fine. I am, I mean, name is redacted. I was born in France 1965 in 1965. I've been working as a freelance translator since 1987. Fine. I have got a lot of certificates from different universities and countries, master's degree in international relations, blah, blah, blah. So right off the bat, the English isn't bad. It doesn't sound like someone whose native tongue is English. So I'm going to assume they translate from English into French. I'm a good computer user. I can deal with Microsoft Word, blah, blah, blah. My linguistic service offered. This just sounds odd. And plus here, I don't know if this is supposed to be a sad face or dot, dot, and then everything in parentheses. It seems weird, I mean, but fine. Also, anyway, it should be services offered. Or my, I always translate from English to France. It should be English to French. And vice versa is misspelled for the next fields of specialization. Should be for the following fields. So right away, this person, obviously, I'm not going to hire them to translate into English. Now, look, a lot of these mistakes, they aren't big. They might not have been caught by someone whose native language is in English, but always assume that whoever you're emailing, their native language is whatever language you're emailing, usually English. And so look, it should be in perfect English. If you're more comfortable doing, say, English to French translations, even though she says she does both, if you usually only do English to French, that's fine. But have someone look over it. At least it shows that you do pay attention to detail. And people don't want to see odd mistakes. And they definitely don't want to see this odd layout here. Then the rates are pretty high here, 10 Euro cents per word. These are all on the high end for everything. So I would expect more from someone who's charging so much. Now, many times when people charge this, it kind of doesn't matter because I can go back and say, oh, I'll only pay you, I don't know, seven cents per word or something. And many times they'll say yes. At least I've had that because usually whenever I hire someone or go through a test, I tell them right away what my rates are. And then we see if it's OK. But I've had it many times when I was sending these emails out that I would give a rate. And then they have me go through all the steps and even go through a test and then tell me, oh, by the way, our rate is like five cents a word. And I'd be like, oh, great. You're waiting until now to tell me. Anyway, so those are basically the issues that I have with this. I honestly, this doesn't give me too good of a feeling just because the rates are pretty high. But there are a lot of careless mistakes here that I feel are easily fixable. And so there we go. Let's go to the second one. And I'll get through these a bit more quickly now. So first of all, the subject. I have the required skills and ability to work in challenging work environment to fit into this position. I don't know what this is. Just put your language combination. This is really weird. And plus it's not fluent English. And so it just sounds odd. Because right away, before I even open this, I don't know what your language combination is. So I don't. And that's the main thing you want to convey. Because if I'm looking for someone who can do French to English, then I'll open it right away. Anyway, dear sir, dear sir or madam anyway. No, that's fine though. This application is referenced to the requirement posted in employment for the position of Turkish freelance translator. I never posted anything. So like I mentioned, these are all cold emails. So it's weird to post it like that. I assume he's using some template he made from when there was a posting and he just keeps that, or he or she, I'm not sure. But anyway, it just sounds awkward. I have the required skills and ability, blah, blah, blah. I have sound knowledge and understanding of the ideas and concepts between different languages and have ability to interpret them in appropriate manner. So this is broken English, but it seems like very kind of complicated sentences. I'm not sure why it's doing that. He should just try to keep it simple and not having sound so broken. Having said that, my main issue here is have someone who is, first of all, change this here, English to Turkish or whatever it is, your language combination and also, I don't know what Frerich is, but oh, sorry, I think that's just my. All right, that was, this is Mark on my screen. This is French. So apart from Turkish, I have expertise in English and French. So there's probably more information on the resume, but here, I'm not going to click on any downloads until I know for sure that you're legitimate and I'm interested in you just because you never know what's in the download and I don't want to risk anything. So you should list here what exactly you do and too many people just put this, Turkish, English and French, that doesn't mean anything. Turkish to English, English to Turkish, Turkish to French, French to Turkish, English to French, like which language combinations are we talking about? Right away, I don't think English is your native tongue and so I'm going to assume it's English to Turkish but I'm assuming all this and I don't know. So here, change this, have someone read through this, have an English native speaker do it and yeah, I mean, deciding your language combination because you can't say that you can do it into English and then not be fluent in English. Let's take the next one, freelance translator, Japanese English, okay, that's better and you have this, this means in both directions which always gets me iffy but that just might be my issue. I prefer when you have just one direction or at least you specify that you're better in one direction. Dear sir, madam, my name is So-and-so and I've been working as a freelance translator for the last six years, for the last six years, but fine. I'm very reliable and accurate. I'm very confident I can deliver high quality translation. There's an issue with the formatting here but that might, I mean, I don't know. This doesn't bother me as much. Also because it's short and sweet. I am native in Japanese. I mean, my language combination is English, Japanese, Japanese English. So here he specifies, he or she, I'm not sure, specifies native in Japanese. So actually, this isn't bad. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions. I'll be looking forward to working with you. This frankly isn't too bad. I would still have someone read over it and a native English speaker but otherwise I would go forward and you don't specify any rates, which is fine because as a language service provider I'm gonna have my own rates and the important thing is this and your field of expertise. Then if I'm interested, then I'm gonna click on here and I'll expect to see more information about your background or references I can contact and stuff like that. But otherwise it's fine just for this. Yeah, like I said, sometimes I'm iffy about clicking on the attachment. So if you wanna put your history or references in the body of the email, that won't hurt at all. But otherwise, yeah, there you go. So let's go to the next one. Here, English to German. Freelance translator, English to German. And here, simplified Mandarin. I have no idea what this means. So right away, okay, any glaring mistake, by the way, in the title usually means I'm gonna delete the email. I get too many of these emails to notice a glaring mistake in the title and then continue with it. So quite frankly, that's a huge no-no. You don't want that. Just like you don't, if you're applying for any job you don't want spelling mistakes in your resume. I feel like I'm pretty relaxed with a lot of the stuff in the body of the email but come on, this shouldn't be here. Because look, here obviously there's a spacing issue because it's not the same as there and then there's too much space here. And from Germany territory with considerable expertise in different areas of translation fields this is obviously broken English. So there are quite a few issues. I let a couple of them slide assuming that this will be German to English but I don't know what this simplified Mandarin thing is doing here. And so that's definitely a mistake. Notice, by the way, all these emails none of them are directly to me. They always say two undisclosed recipients or just nothing. Which means they're sending these emails to 10, 20 different providers at the same time. That's fine. I have no problem with that. If I understand that you have to send it to everyone especially if it's not for a specific job I'm offering and that's fine but that just means that you're sending this to 10 to 20 people with broken English and with that simplified Mandarin up there. So make sure you correct that. So here we have another one. This one, yeah, English, Norwegian, Polish. Now this is kind of weird because you have a bunch of odd combinations. And if you go here, I'm excellent in the following pairs, English to Norwegian, English to Polish and sometimes Polish, Norwegian. Both of these, both arrows. That I don't like. I'm going, now I remember the person's name and it sounded Norwegian. I think it ended with son or something. And so I'm gonna assume the person's Norwegian in which case English to Norwegian will be their main combination. Also because the English will sound a bit broken. So I'll assume English to Norwegian is the best and I'll leave the Polish out. But I'm assuming all of this. I have to kind of deduce it. I shouldn't have to. You should be specifying this. I understand you wanna include as many language combinations as you can. And that's fine. But then at least put them in order. And you can put my main language combination is Norwegian to English. I also work in blah, blah, blah and then list them down here and then that's it. And if you wanna charge a higher rate for your main one than for your other ones or something, then you can do that as well and see what works best for you. But I just, for someone who has experienced a language server provider who has experienced dealing with a lot of translators, it just sets off a red flag when you always see these, so many language combinations, both every which way it just seems odd. Anyway, I have many notable skills that must be mentioned such as, so English is fine. It is a bit broken, but yeah, it's fine. But still that kind of makes me iffy about all the language combinations. But from Norwegian to English, I might think about it even though I had to deduce it myself. As long as I take the time to go through it, which you could never guarantee that's the case. Because like I said, you get a lot of these all the time. I don't know how many of these emails I'm gonna go through by the way, but I just wanted to do some and see how it went. So, let's see, top quality translation into Turkish. Leave out top quality and it's obviously not top quality if you don't even know how to do spacing here. I don't know what these underscores are. And so yeah, don't do that. Dear sir, obviously the spacing here is off. Don't say top quality when it's obviously not. So translation into Turkish. So I'm gonna assume this person is fluent in Turkish. Although he or she only mentions it up there. Fields of expertise are all these ones which again, seems like quite a few, but fine, you know. And here again, actually what I would do is put them in the main order. If business and law and say telecommunications are your main ones, put those in the top three and then just say other areas of specialization, other areas of expertise, you know, something like that. And that's absolutely fine, but at least it's kind of ranked. By today I can translate more than 2,500 words that's incorrect English. I assume you mean you can translate that many per day. I use Tredos, Adobe Framemaker, and I guess that's the sentence. Okay, raise negotiable, I'm available for work, full time, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, broken English again, have someone read over it. Get rid of this, because that sounds weird and it's definitely not top quality with the odd mistakes. And just be more clear about what you're offering. You know, that's all you need with his emails, just to be clear. I offer this and this language combination, these are my specialties, boom. You can include more information, you know, but otherwise, you know, just include it in your resume. Another Norwegian, we have quite a few Norwegians for some reason. I feel like lately I've been getting quite a few Norwegian freelance emails. I'm not sure why. Anyway, Norwegian into English. So this Norwegian into English, I like that, because this is specified in English, but this also means I'm gonna expect perfect English. Dear sir, madam, great. My name is blah, blah, blah, and I'm very interested in taking part in your projects as a Norwegian linguist. I believe I have the qualifications, experience and enthusiasm that you're looking for. Boom, this sounds perfect. This sounds to me like perfect English, and so I like it. My fields of expertise include blah, blah, blah, blah. By the way, I'm saying blah, blah, blah. I obviously read through these when I'm interested in something because, you know, if I'm looking for someone who's good at finance, I'll see here accounting and auditing, okay, that's good, business, commerce. You know, I don't see finance per se, but I see something that ties along with it. So depending on what I'm looking for exactly, this could be of interest. Anyway, so all of this is important. Moreover, I'm a hardworking person with a strong professional. Okay, right away there, I assume you meant professional something, but now I assume you don't have that professional something because you didn't include that email, an email that went out to quite a few people, apparently. So, you know, look over that. Again, read over it yourself. If you're not fluent, have someone else read over it, but this person apparently is fluent in English and just neglected to, you know, read through their own email. I have the ability to prioritize tasks, but I also have a very good eye for detail. Apparently you don't because of that. See, and that's why you put too many odd details like this and, you know, I can call you out on them. So anyway, blah, blah, blah. Here it goes. He hit return one too many times, I guess, I don't know. Blah, blah, blah. So anyway, I would be fine except for those odd things, which means to me that this person does not have much attention to detail. And I'm kind of iffy about that too, because I like someone to be kind of, you know, paranoid about detail, especially with financial translations and stuff like that, because you have a lot of, a lot writing on it and a lot of numbers. Here's the next one. Again, Norwegian. Freelance translation offered German, Norwegian, English. Doesn't specify which direction, once again. Hello, I'm a freelance translator. I'm interested in long-term contractual operations. So not native in English. Okay, I'm a native German. Oh, okay, fine. Full-time professional translator language with German, English, Norwegian. So here again, specify English into German, Norwegian into German, you know, because I'm not gonna want to hire you for English into Norwegian. And so you should specify which direction it goes into. Translation proofreading, average daily output, that's fine. Now your average daily output, a lot of people add that and a lot of people ask for it. So that's fine, add it if you want. Obviously, and you know, it always seems weird to me because that obviously depends. You know, if you're working just on what I'm assigning you, then that's fine. But if, you know, two people assign you something at the same time, then your daily output is gonna be less. You know, this doesn't mean that you can't work. Like maybe I have something that's only like 50 words, but it's a certificate that I need translated and you get paid well. But, you know, if someone else has something that's 200 words, you know, you can still do many smaller jobs, but then your average output is less. So I don't know, it really depends. Also, you know, a daily output, if it can depend if you're trying to type in an Excel sheet or in a Word document or trying to, you know, do a balance sheet or something like that. Anyway, but yeah, this gives people an idea. So feel free to include it. I know a lot of people want that depending on the nature of the work. Yeah, so that's good. Depending on the nature of the work, obviously. I can handle almost any file type or use SDO Trados immediately available. Anytime you need just contact me, I'll be glad to meet your request. Okay, so that's fine, but I would specify the languages and I would also specify your specialization because I don't see that here, you know, finance, legal, whatever it might be. And have a native, you notice a certain theme here. Have someone read through them. It needs to be in perfect English if you're sending any in English. If you're sending something in Chinese or Norwegian or in Spanish, that needs to be perfect in those languages. But this needs to be in perfect English. By the way, even if one of your languages isn't English, it still should be in perfect English. Just, you know, just because. Just if you want to sound professional, find a way to sound professional. And you are a translator. So I'm going to assume you know how to find a translator who can, you know, go over your stuff and edit your English. But, you know, definitely if you include English there, you need to find a way to have it in perfect English. So anyway, hello, I'm ready to apply for the position of freelance English to Japanese translator. Once again, you can leave out translating job opportunities, I mean, fine. English to Japanese, you don't specify the direction, which again, I don't like. Here's an extra space, but fine. I have many qualifications and many studies. So somewhat awkward English. I'm going to assume that your expertise is from Japanese or English into Japanese. I have nine years of experience. My high qualifications in skill language is computer software. Yeah, just kind of awkward English here. Oh, and here, one of my clients said about me, experienced, good and reliable translator, easy to communicate with, fast and punctual one. Now, if you want testimonials, that's fine. In fact, that's good. Ideally, with a testimonial, you can put the name of the person who said it or at least what company they're in or organization or something. But I understand many times people don't want that. So that's fine. If you can't, then at least say, just say here or what some of my clients said about me, here's a testimonial, something like that. Then hit return, go to the next line and then have this as a quote. And then under it, you put either the name or put someone in so-and-so company or put someone in the financial industry, a client in the financial industry, client working for a big bank, whatever it might be under it, just so it looks cleaner. Also because one of my clients said about me, experienced, good and reliable, easy to communicate with, fast and punctual one. Already this sounds like awkward English. And it kind of makes me feel iffy, like who's this one of my clients? I understand even if you put it and make it look nicer, I could feel the same way, but I'm a lot less likely to because it just feels more professional. So here, like I'm not saying the person invented it, but it still sounds, it just looks weird, just put it like a real testimonial. It'll be a great honor to introduce my language services for a company. That's fine, okay. So here, we only have three left, so why don't we just try to race through these? So Russian Belarus native translator, here it doesn't specify this into what? I'm gonna assume it's English, because these are similar enough that I'm assuming it's not in between these two. But yeah, it's into English, again, doesn't specify which direction. With more than seven years of experience in translating and proofreading, there are several advantages that your company will receive while cooperating with me. Now, this English is actually pretty good. It sounds like a tad awkward, but it could be a native speaker in a sense. They are as follows, competitive race and good profit for you as a result, and an experienced translator whose mother languages are both Russian. There we go. Mother languages are both Russian and Belarusian. An enthusiast. So right away, she should have specified here that specified at the beginning and put it even as a list or bullet points. Russian or English into Russian and or Belarusian are my native tongue and then that's it. And anyway, she specifies it here, so I guess that's fine. And yeah, so otherwise it looks fine. I would try to make it a bit more clear, just because once again, so many people get so many of these emails that you really wanna make it quick for them to notice. And luckily this isn't Norwegian, so I haven't been getting a ton of these lately. So if I am looking for someone in this language combination, then I will read it more thoroughly. But you could just make it easier to identify and just say English into Russian, but I also work in the other direction if you want. And I can tell that her English is great here and it's not bad at all. And so I'd probably trust her for both. I might want to have a quick edit of the English if she does it into English, but obviously English into Russian is her main combination here and that's what I'd be seeking her out for. Here, let's do, oh yeah, this one just quickly, right away again the title, Top English, Danish, German translator. No, you're not top anything if you can't figure out that in the title you shouldn't have that misspelled. So, like I said before, I see that, I'm not gonna even read the email, unfortunately. And so, I'm sorry, try to make that correct, at least in the title, please. Last one, Korean to English, quality is my number one priority. Now there's a space here, which again in the title you don't want, but I'm gonna choose to overlook that for now. Dear sir, the advertisement for translators in all languages interested me very much. Now I never put up an advertisement, so again, this is odd, it must be some stock email this person has from before, since I recognize it's a new great challenge in my career. I'm well-called five for Korean to English and English to Korean localization translation products, as I've handled diverse projects in business, finance, legal IT and other high tech fields as represented in the attached resume. This English is actually very good, so I'm kind of inclined to believe that probably English is the native tongue here. I don't remember what the name was or where they were based out of, but anyway. As a freelance interpreter translator, regularly translate various business legal documents for here's some good names. Again, name dropping is good. If you've worked with them, of course I might ask for references or something along those lines, so you need to be able to back them up, which I understand as a freelance translator can sometimes be hard, but if you can, definitely name drop. I've used Trialscat tools for over five years, so this to me seems like someone who knows what they're doing. This is very see how it's spaced out, it's easy to read, it doesn't have to be written like an essay, but each sentence is quick to the point and shows me something new. That's here in one copy of my CV and one copy of a sample translation, boom, I already have a sample of English and the Korean. So now I'm gonna assume, if Korean is his main language, his English is extremely good. And so, or he was smart and has been doing what I've been saying and got a native speaker to actually edit the whole thing. Regardless, this leaves a very good impression. I'm ready to carry out any test translation that you require. My motto is quality is number one priority. Quality is the number one priority, but fine. I can assure you to a very high quality translation and reliable service. So, yeah, to me this looks good. Definitely correct that one. You wanna do that. I mean, don't, you don't, I don't know. I think taglines, I'm not sure what they serve, maybe for marketing or something. I'm not sure it changes much of anything. When I'm looking for a Korean to English translator, I'm not gonna be paying attention to this. I'm gonna be paying attention to the business stuff. Anyway, but having said that, this is good. If I'm looking for an English to Korean translator, this again is someone that I'm gonna look into. I'm gonna look at the sample translation and then gonna make my decision based on that. And yeah, so that was pretty much it. I hope you found this useful. If you did, feel free to let me know. Feel free to leave a thumbs up or anything along those lines. And yeah, I'll see you in the next video then. Thanks, bye.