Ireneusz Wysocki's database of translation companies Thread poster: Samuel Murray
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Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 10:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
Hello everyone
I have just received this e-mail for the second time, and I'm wondering if anyone has had any experience with it.
[If you haven't, or if you can't shed any extra light on this except for flames and negativity towards such services, then I'm not interested in your opinion. Thanks!]
From: "Ireneusz Wysocki" <translationdb-at-gmail-dot-com>
Subject: 30 000 translation companies database for sale
Hello,
Would you be interested to have a database of translation companies? We have several options:
*1. TOP 100 translation companies* - biggest translation companies in the industry. The database includes names and e-mail addresses of the vendor managers. Since big companies have offices in many countries this database includes contact names of around 1000 people.
*2. Language related companies* - language schools etc. 10 000 contact e-mails.
*3. Translation companies* and agencies 30 000 contact e-mails.
4. European companies - 4 million companies divided into 50 categories, incl. business name, address, phone number, web-site, contact person name, e-mail.
Send me a request if you are interested in one of these databases.
Best regards,
Ireneusz Wysocki
I haven't e-mailed him back yet, but it would be interesting to see what he has on offer... if indeed he has anyting on offer.
Samuel
[Edited at 2013-11-06 13:50 GMT]
| | | | Hanna Burdon
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:16
English to Polish
+ ...
I have just received it for the first time. To me, the very act of sending out information like that is spam, and I am going to apply the appropriate filter immediately. I would never buy anything from a spammer.
| | | | | Samuel says... | Nov 6, 2013 |
he's not interested in negative comments. He may have to wait a while for some positive ones
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 10:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
philgoddard wrote:
He's not interested in negative comments.
I'm interested in negative comments from people who have either used the service, received the e-mails or have investigated this service previously. What I'm not interested in is people whose only contribution is to say negative things about such services in general, without having anything useful to say about this particular service specifically. The purpose of my post is not to provide a platform for ranting and raving about such services in general.
Hanna's comment was useful.
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| It is not about what he has to offer | Nov 7, 2013 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
I haven't e-mailed him back yet, but it would be interesting to see what he has on offer... if indeed he has anyting on offer.
[Edited at 2013-11-06 13:50 GMT]
Samuel, I am not sure if it is about what he has to offer, I think it is more about what you want to achieve with these databases.
I can only comment from my own position, owner of a small specialized agency receiving 3 to 5 applications from freelancers per day. I can't remember when we last time received an application that really made sense. In most cases it is clear that the person contacting us, did not research my name or the names of any of our employees, they applied for specialties/areas of work that we don't offer etc. etc.
We just throw them all away. If you want to mass email agencies - judging from our experience I don't think it is a rewarding exercise. If you want to target special agencies with a personalized approach I would recommend using Google and doing some research for each and every contact before you contact them.
To find new translators for a specialized job, it is easier for us to search and find from our side using LinkedIn or the databases e.g. of the ITI, the BDÜ, the SFT. Even the ProZ database is loosing its importance as there are now more reliable sources to find qualified people.
For me it would be key for a freelancer to improve his/her visibility so that he/she is easier to find by somebody looking for the services offered. Actively approaching agencies per email does (at least in our case) not work. It would be even better to use e. g. LinkedIn which is in my opinion a totally undervalued marketing tool.
| | | | Jack Doughty
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:16
Russian to English
+ ...
In memoriam | Before the Internet | Nov 7, 2013 |
There used to be such directories. I bought one from an American company and used it with some success.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 10:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Some feedback on Mr Wysocki's lists | Nov 7, 2013 |
Samuel Murray wrote: From: "Ireneusz Wysocki"
Subject: 30 000 translation companies database for sale I haven't e-mailed him back yet, but it would be interesting to see what he has on offer... if indeed he has anyting on offer.
Okay, I e-mailed him, and he sent me a price list, and I asked for samples, and he sent me samples. I wasn't interested in the list of EU companies, so I didn't ask for its price. From this I'm able to report the following:
1. The "TOP 100 translation companies" is an Excel spreadsheet of the 100 biggest tranlation companies/agencies, ranked by publically known annual turnover. The price: EUR 100.
What makes this spreadsheet somewhat more useful than others that I have seen is that there are two columns for contact details, namely a "Vendor" column which contains the e-mail address of the person to whom applications should be sent, or the URL of the online application form, and an "Other" column that lists the contact details of various other people from the company, though not necessarily involved in vendor registration.
Is this list worth EUR 100? Well, I suppose if you don't know how to get a list of the largest translation companies yourself, and you don't want to spend time trying to figure out what is the freelance application process for each one individually, then this may be EUR 100 well spent, particularly if you consider it to be tax deductible. However, I think that anyone who knows how to use ProZ.com's search feature and who is willing to spend 2-5 minutes on each web site will be able to get similar information and save himself EUR 100 in the process.
2. The "Language related companies" (including language schools) (10 000 e-mail addresses) and the "Translation companies" (30 000 e-mail addresses) lists are plain text files with just one e-mail address per line. The purpose of these lists is clearly to dump your résumé or application on as many people as possible, in the hope that some of them will think that you wrote to them personally. The price: EUR 400 for the 10 000 list and EUR 600 for the 30 000 list.
Unlike the top 100 list, which was compiled by a human, these other two lists appear to have been generated using some kind of automated procedure that might have involved matching lists of domain names against a list of language and translation related keywords. That's not to say that they aren't useful or that they can't be trusted, but you have to keep this in mind when deciding to purchase or not.
I received a sample of 10 addresses from each list, and I visited their domains in my web browser, and all 20 of the sample items were for real web sites that were truly either a translation company or a language related organisation. What's more, all of the e-mail addresses from the list were mentioned on the front page or the "contact us" page of those web sites. This means that it is likely that although there was an automated procedure in detecting companies, each web site must at least have been visited by a bot to ensure that the e-mail address isn't a black hole.
Only about half of the web sites's home pages were in English, though, although all of their web site addresses contained English words, and almost all of them had a link to an English version.
Is 30 000 e-mail addresses from translation companies truly worth EUR 600? That's one euro for every 50 addresses. In the light of the question "how long would it take you to gather 50 e-mail addresses manually", I would have to say "definitely yes"... if you're willing to live with yourself.
Samuel
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:16
French to English
+ ...
| Unclear what the raison d'être of these "databases" is... | Nov 7, 2013 |
If you want a list of the "Top 100" translation agencies or whatever, then I would type "translation agency" into Google. That's what clients will be doing. It's hard to see how you're going to get much work from some database of "secret" translation agencies that don't appear on Google...
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 10:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Neil Coffey wrote:
If you want a list of the "Top 100" translation agencies or whatever, then I would type "translation agency" into Google.
Typing "translation agency" into Google will yield the nine or ten translation companies whose SEO teams did a good job. I tested your method and only 4 of the 10 web sites were "large" translation companies. In fact, 2 of them were simply freelancers using words like "our" and "we". Clearly typing "translation agency" into Google isn't going to get you the top 100 translation agencies.
The big advantage of the top 100 list, I think, is that it saves time and effort. But like I said, anyone can get that list themselves with just a little bit of effort and a little bit of knowledge.
| | | | Luca Tutino
Italy
Member (2002)
English to Italian
+ ...
Unbiased approach and interesting findings, thanks!
About the Top 100 list it I believe that the Vendor is not the main contact a translator would need to have. But I second your considerations on this.
For the 30k list, considering the price, I do not think it would be right to rely on a generalization of the quality of the material based on such a small sample. The time needed to polish and QA the first 10 "samples" is incomparable with the work needed for 30 thousand... See more Unbiased approach and interesting findings, thanks!
About the Top 100 list it I believe that the Vendor is not the main contact a translator would need to have. But I second your considerations on this.
For the 30k list, considering the price, I do not think it would be right to rely on a generalization of the quality of the material based on such a small sample. The time needed to polish and QA the first 10 "samples" is incomparable with the work needed for 30 thousand addresses! A decent demo should provide a way to pick a small number of samples casually.
Samuel Murray wrote:
I wasn't interested in the list of EU companies, so I didn't ask for its price.
Do you have any general rationale to share for this choice, or just personal preference?
[Edited at 2013-11-07 21:24 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 10:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
Luca Tutino wrote:
About the Top 100 list it I believe that the Vendor is not the main contact a translator would need to have. But I second your considerations on this.
The column is called "Vendor" but the column does not contain vendors (it contains information that is specific to vendors). The vendor is you.
For the 30k list, considering the price, I do not think it would be right to rely on a generalization of the quality of the material based on such a small sample.
The sample was clearly taken from an alphabetical list, so I'm reasonably confident that it was truly a random sample, and therefore an indication of the quality of the list in general.
Samuel Murray wrote:
I wasn't interested in the list of EU companies, so I didn't ask for its price. Do you have any general rationale to share for this choice, or just personal preference?
Erm, I just don't see why a translator would want a list of EU companies. Maybe I'm short-sighted.
| | | | Luca Tutino
Italy
Member (2002)
English to Italian
+ ...
[quote]Samuel Murray wrote:
Luca Tutino wrote:
so I'm reasonably confident that it was truly a random sample, and therefore an indication of the quality of the list in general.
I would suggest to ask him for some more evidence about this paramount detail. Or at least a guarantee - almost worthless, but still better than shear trust.
A positive note is that I could not find his name associated with negative comments online. I think that if the list was worthless, a buyer would probably report it on the web.
About the last point, I am personally more inclined to use less expensive and more focused channels to identify and contact the relatively small number of translation agencies worth the effort. But I might consider this kind of a lottery about direct clients - for which most systematic strategies seem too expensive and time consuming.
[Edited at 2013-11-08 10:45 GMT]
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 10:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | On sheer trust | Nov 8, 2013 |
Luca Tutino wrote: Samuel Murray wrote:
So I'm reasonably confident that it was truly a random sample, and therefore an indication of the quality of the list in general. I would suggest to ask him for some more evidence about this paramount detail. Or at least a guarantee - almost worthless, but still better than shear trust.
Well, it's not "sheer trust". The trust is based on what I can see and on what seems obvious to me. A dishonest person can easily fake all of the things that we may base our trust on, and if you want to distrust then you will always find something to base your distrust on. I do not trust Mr Wysocki's list blindly. I make a judgement call on whether the list is likely fake or not, and the things that would normally indicate a fake are absent, and things that would normally indicate a non-fake are present.
But I might consider this kind of a lottery about direct clients - for which most systematic strategies seem too expensive and time consuming.
That is indeed the advantage of this approach. I now see why someone might be interested in all EU companies, for if you spam the lot then you're bound to get some work.
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