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For ColleaguesGeneral TopicsFound by Google: The Downside of Findability
Found by Google: The Downside of Findability
The average patent translator owes a lot to the highly sophisticated search functionality provided by companies such as Google. I myself use Google numerous times each day. But perhaps some thought is in order about the situation in which you and the circumstances surrounding you and your business are on the other side of the search engine and are easily findable by someone doing a search. Things such as your opinions, your use of a virtual office, and content you thought you deleted from your site are easily findable.
The Internet: Sometimes Ephemeral and Sometimes Annoyingly Permanent
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have absolute control over at least the discosure of the content of your own website. Think again. The cache memory of Google will keep your content floating around the Internet long after you have revised or even removed a webpage. There are apparently ways to have Google remove the cached content, but it makes the process more more time-consuming than simply deleting a file from your server. What this means for the translator or other person with a website is that more care is required when posting content, to assure that you do not regret the posting or need to back off from the content later.
Deceptions Become More Difficult: The Virtual Office Revealed
Numerous companies with no physical presence try to project the appearance of having bricks and mortar, when in reality they only have a contract for a few hundred dollars a month to use a virtual office. Translation companies are no exception.
Sometimes the virtual office is truly virtual; nothing more than a mail drop, but no individual physical presence for the customer the virtual office service. Other times there is a tiny cubicle for each "resident," often with walls that do not extend to the ceiling. Some of these places in Japan--perhaps in an effort to be honest to their potential clients--provide photos of the "offices" they rent on their websites. One I saw the other day revealed a very tacky-looking set of cubicles linked together at the top by a framework of unfinished wood members. The address was in a fashionable part of Tokyo. Yet another I discovered by Googling recently is in a building at least formerly owned by a huge international insurance company just a stone's throw from the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Being a bit sharper than the above-noted comany with the cubicles connected by unfinished wooden members, this virtual office company cleverly does not provide photos on its website. Even without photos, however, the mere knowledge that an entity purporting to have bricks and mortar has neither does not instill a feeling of trust in the entity proclaiming the virtual office as the home of their business.
Hint: The information that outs the virtual-office users is unbelievably simple to obtain. Simply plug the address claimed by the entity for their office into the Google search box. Wham, you have a picture of the reality behind the projected image.
Advertising Your Low Rung on the Translation Food Chain by Participating on a Reverse Auction Site
It appears that many translators in industrialized nations feel the need to compete with colleagues locked into their Third World venues by political, or economic factors. You can find them on reverse auction sites (which generally see jobs going to the lowest bidder) such as ProZ. I have been surprised on numerous occasions to find translators I thought were much higher up in the translation food chain mixing with such translators offering Japanese-to-English translation rates less than 1/5 the normal market rates. It is their choice, of course, but I wonder how many such translators realize that not only customers looking for cheap translators, but also those who could pay much more money will discover them feeding down there on the bottom of the lake. It does not make negotiating a reasonable rate very easy.
Watch What You Write: It Could Come Back to Bite You
I had done deposition interpreting for almost 20 years when it came my turn to be deposed. The object of the deposition was to attack an opinion I wrote as an expert witness on translation. I will spare you the details. When I got into the deposition room, I was presented with a copy of a webpage that I had on my website at that time. The other side said that what was on my webpage was at odds with the content of my expert witness opinion. I survived the ordeal, but swore to be more careful about what I write in public.
Strategies
The lessons from the above are clear:
- Don't believe that you are deceiving potential clients (or competitors) with your virtual office presence;
- Write only things that you won't need to refute later;
- Don't assume that your web content will actually go away when you delete it from your website; and
- Compete at the bottom only if you don't mind all classes of potential clients discovering your low translation rates.
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