Italian to English newbie translator needs help!

pentastic wrote:

Hi everyone,

I am new member of the proz.com website. I have been a member for the past three months. I have submitted quite a few bids for translation jobs over this period of time and have had some positive feedback. However, I have not yet landed my first translation job. I realize that there are many qualified translators but I was hoping to secure some work to start building my reputation. I would love to have a veteran in the translation industry act as my mentor. Perhaps even to make some suggestions as to what I can do to improve my translating skills or establish myself in this community. Thank you for taking the time to read my post and I look forward to hearing from anyone who would like to be my mentor.

Regards,

Andrew

socrates wrote:

Sorry haven't got time to be your mentor as massively overworked, but always found bidding for these jobs to be a complete waste of time. Send your CVs to the agencies (do several hundred, highlight your specialities)/offer to do a test piece for free/don't overcharge/if they ask you to fill out zillions of forms then pass on them. You're basically doing direct mail advertising of yourself and for direct mail a 1% hit rate is good, 2% is brilliant. You could buy an E-mail list for about 80 bucks - try Alex Eames - run google search. If you understand the underlying business and your product is up to scratch, then the kind of salary figures ($100K a year) he mentions are achievable with half a dozen good agencies to whom you've proved you're reliable. Particularly with Italian. No names mentioned, but my best agency admitted to me that if they need to find more than 6 lt>Eng legal translators at once then they're screwed.

Saw your quote in passing& don't normally hang out here.
Good luck.
Soc.