Who says I’m an agency/Ich komme auf eine Liste von Agenturen

Die Übersetzerwebsite GoTranslators hat mehrere Einzelübersetzer, die keine Agenturen sind, als Agenturen in eine Online-Datenbank gestellt. Ich bekam mehrere Bewerbungen, u.a. von Leuten, die meine Adresse zusammen mit 49 anderen anschrieben, egal, ob mein Fachgebiet und Sprachkombination mit ihren eigenen übereinstimmen.

Ohne mich zu registrieren sehe ich die Liste nicht. Ich registriere mich nicht, da ich schon mehrmals unaufgeforderte Werbung von GoTranslators bekam und nicht mehr bekommen will.

Angeblich ist mein Name aus der Liste jetzt entfernt, d.h. meine zwei Adressen wurden entfernt (nicht ohne nochmalige Bitte wegen der zweiten Adresse), aber andere sind noch auf der Liste. Und vor allem haben anscheinend viele die Liste vor Monaten heruntergeladen und benutzen sie noch.

Die Website von GoTranslators ist nicht sehr aufschlussreich. Aber Robin Stocks hat, laut ProZ, mehr erfahren.

bq. Zu “gotranslators.com” – den Hintergrund hatte Robin Stocks auf der PT-Liste erleuchtet:

bq. Laut SWHOIS-Suche ist der “Administrative Contact” für diese Domain Benoit Lhoest; dessen dort hinterlegte Mail-Adresse führt zu www.translatin.com, und auf dieser Site steht unter den FAQ: “TRANSLATIN is a division of the Belgian Web-Refer Consulting group” – und das ist wiederum auch der Betreiber von “gotranslators.com”…

Belgien ist aber in der EU – fehlt hier nicht ein Impressum?

www.gotranslators.com apparently put a number of freelance translators on a list of agencies some months ago. I think both my addresses have been removed, but I can’t look at the list without registering. I don’t want to register because I have already received unrequested advertising from GoTranslators, often both in private and via mailing lists. GoTranslators never enquired whether I was an agency.

The amazing thing is that some translators download the list of agencies and paste 50 addresses into an email address field. They don’t check the ‘agencies” websites to see if they cover the same fields of specialization or language combinations as the applicant. Sometimes they download the list and only use it many months later. Good grief, the applicant could have told from my website that I am not an agency.

I wonder what GoTranslators is – where it’s located (I find the website very uninformative). One of the emails they sent me said it was the ‘5rd month of our web life’, which suggests they aren’t native speakers of English. But I must have missed a posting on the pt group at Yahoogroups by Robin Stocks, who traced them as the creation of Benoit Lhoest in Belgium. For the information (in German) from Robin, see the German quote above.

I put off posting this for a while, but this week I heard that another translator in Fürth gets almost daily mails from a Japanese translation agency. She asked them to remove her from their mailing list, and they told her they had her email address from GoTranslators.

GoTranslators is one of a number of websites for translators – see earlier entry.

5 thoughts on “Who says I’m an agency/Ich komme auf eine Liste von Agenturen

  1. I’d forgotten about that. I traced them back then so I knew who to get at for spamming me with adverts for gotranslators.com. Shouting at Lhoest by email eventually did the trick.

    The English on their website doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in their capabilities as a translation company.

  2. I keep getting CVs from people wanting my “agency” to give them work. I finally worked out that this was because GoTranslators had put me on that list too. I wrote to them and told them to take me off, which they say they have done.

    I did actually join GoTranslators for the free 3 month period and got a job through them. For a paid subscription, though, I decided to go with Proz.com.

  3. One thing about ProZ and Translatorscafe at least is that you can have a good look around before joining. At GoTranslators, I have the impression you have to register before you see what it’s like. Of course, I suppose even if I had registered, things couldn’t have been worse – I got advertising spam, I was put on a list as an agency – but anyway, what’s it like? Are there a number of people actively involved, or is it more of a one-man show?

  4. I thought the EU had banned spamming, or do we have to wait for the directive to filter through into national legislation? Someone called Halliday is hosting a mail message on the Heriot Watt site in which Lhoest, along with Christian Linck and Luc Destruvaux, own up to spamming but say they only sent two mails before destroying the list, or, as sounds more likely, selling it on to others. The Whois information helps form a fairly clear picture of who/what, if you’re interested in pursuing it. Lhoest himself is/was a schoolteacher with local political ambitions which, were this not Belgium, he might have to forget fairly rapidly.

  5. Thanks for the links.
    I kept the original GoTranslators mails. They sent me six, starting in May 2003 and following at about monthly intervals. I also saw some of these on mailing lists at the same time. I don’t know what date that message you link to is, but probably very recent, if they say GoTranslators is a year old. By ‘we have created a mailing list’ they may mean ‘we created a mailing list’ (i.e. in May 2003).

    I have just got two more spams from the first person who wrote to me, from Sweden. He no longer includes 49 other addresses for me to see. He sends me a link to his updated CV. This is despite the fact that I wrote to him on March 27th telling him that I am not an agency and not to spam me:
    >>Hello.
    Please add my updated CV to your records: http://www.mbst.se/cv.htm
    Thanks.
    Best regards
    Mattias Bergström
    Swedish Translator

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