As a professional localized translation company, we need to find native language speakers for our translation jobs. And we have to reserve translators of native speakers of different languages in our resource database.

When we have a project of rare language translation, first we try to contact translators in our resource database, but for some reasons like didn’t check mail timely, can’t connect with internet because of vacations, translators sometimes can’t take the job within the time you are given.

Or sometimes, we may have no translators of this language reserved in our resource database. If this situation emerges, we need to go to some recruitment websites like elance, odesk and proz, to issue translators needed Ads. Always several hours after you issue this Ad, bidders on these websites will bid on your job.

Some jobs like English to Japanese, there are always dozens of bidders want to get your job. This is for a common language. But for rare language like Samoan, there are rare bidders bid on it. When seeing this, you will go to find bidders to bid on your job. Actually there are ways to find high-quality translators. Here elance will be taken an example.

First, after you sign in elance and issue a project, a page like the screenshot will come out. Here “overview” talks about the outline of the project. We need to use the function of “invite” to find more bidders.

“Project Summary” include all the description and detail info of your project and also skills needed for bidders.

“ Public Messages” is for the messages given by our bidder; “ Attachments” is the file attached for the project; “Team” shows your info as a job provider, you are a person or a team; “Settings” includes “Bidding Settings” which shows whether bidders can communicate with you via messages, and if you want to extend, cancel or end your project, you can make it through this column. “Payment settings” is about the method you use to pay bidder, we always use paypal for that.

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Let’s go back to the “ Overview” to “invite”.

This menu can help us invite some high-quality translator to bid on your project. “Invite” includes two columns, “Invite Elance Providers” and “Invite Other Providers”. Here we just need to invite Elance providers, so we click on this button.

If you have reserved some high-quality translators in your Elance resource database, you can enter the translators’ user names, then you can send your invitation by click the button of “Send Invest”. If you haven’t reserved translators you need, you can click the button of “Go to Provider Search” to search and choose translators.

In “Search Contractors”, you enter “Samoan”, and choose “Writing & Translation” in the left “Provider Category”. Then come to the “Location” part. Since Samoan is a rare language usually spoken by the people in America, so we can make limitations on translators’ location like “North America”.

In the “Feedback”, we choose translators with 4 or 5 stars. After all these screening procedures, we can reject some translators who don’t match with our requirements. It can save us a lot of time in browsing translators’ CVs or job history.

Click on the user’s name, a new website page comes, and there are several points we need to check on this page. This is very important for our judgment on whether this user is a high-quality one or not.

First, “Last Sign-in” shows the time provider last sign in, the closer the date is, the more active the provider is in Elance. If someone doesn’t sign in during the last ten or fifteen days, then we may make no consideration him.
Second, the parameters of “ Skills”.

These are the results of self-tests taken by providers, this can be an important reference to whether we should choose him or her or not. If his or her scores are much higher than the average level, then he or she will be chosen to invite.

Third, look at “Job History”, look at the feedback of provider’s recent projects, if there is no negative comment on him or her, then this provider can be counted in.
The providers pass the screening procedures, can be invited through click the button of “Contact or Post a Job”.

Choose the project name, click “Continue”, and your invitation is sent to this provider. The following job is about the reply.

The procedure of sending invitations is over, and the following is how to pick the high-quality bidders. Some jobs like English to Japanese, there are always dozens of bidders want to get your job. When seeing this, you will hesitate on which bidder to choose. Actually, you can make your final decision through comparing the following aspects.

First, check whether the bidder is Japanese native speaker. Since some bidders from other countries may bid on the project as well, we can ask them directly or pay attention to their samples attached.

Second, make comparison on the bidding rate. Some bidding rates are very wide of the mark, too high or too low. If the rate is too high, we can’t afford this bidder because of the limitation of budge. If the rate is too low, we just don’t have the nerve to hire this bidder, because there is always a saying goes that you will get what you pay for.

Third, check the time the bidder can finish the project. Some bidders said they can get this job done within a very short time. And we need to “look before we leap” on this situation, because this bidder usually use some machine translation in this job, like Google translation, which may directly lower the translation quality.

Finally, after all these aspects are checked, there are several candidates left for further communication. We need to make these candidates clear on our job requirements and schedule.

After all these are confirmed, we can assign the job to them. If the feedback is good after they finish the job, we can enter them into our resource database for further cooperation.