On-Line Job Mediation Services: Are They Worth It?

My name is Lionel Dersot. I have been doing translation—mainly from Japanese to French—for some 15 years before I left for a corporate stint of a few years in an unrelated work environment. When I stopped doing translation, agencies in Japan were still starting to timidly use email for communication and document management. I am now back in a market that is totally Internet savvy, with work opportunities seemingly expanded beyond one's own local market.

I wish to share an interesting—at least for me—experience I had with such online services. Translatorsbase.com is client-meet-translator online scheme where you register as a translator in the hope to find work assignments. The service gets a commission on transactions. I have been curious and somewhat doubtfull about the efficiency of such online marketplace for translators. Does one really get actual work assignments in such environment? While browsing the list of registered translators, I stumbled on the name of a friend I had lost contact with for many years. Each entry features a function that seemingly allows to send a message to the registered translator. While writing a message to my friend, I came to the idea of quickly setting up a simple online survey and send an invitation to a bunch of registered translators asking questions about the efficiency of the service to get them assignments. I did this in no time. After half a day, I had received not a single answer and started wondering whether my invitations mail had really got through. The answer came as a mail from Translatorsbase.com stating that messages sent to translators were checked for approprieteness before being processed. It was the first time indeed I received a clear statement of censorship practice from an online service provider stating that "we are snooping on your mails."

Translatorsbase.com provides no details on who is behind the service, and you have to register to find out that full service is available at a price. As for what this price means in terms of benefit, not a single meaningfull word. Talk about Trust!

Anyway, I am still interested to hear about experiences or opinions from translators on the value of such online marketplaces as an effective way to get work.

Lionel Dersot