The Wholesale Forums

[Andy777]

To: tasha75

How are you getting on with customer support in French? Or you're good @ it?

[ADC]

Yes, the language barrier is what puts me off going on other ebay sites. I can only speak english. I wouldn't know what they were on about if they had any questions.

[Ultravox]

Would translators not be an option?
I know they can sometimes be unreliable, but if you stated that your first language is English, I'm sure they'll get the drift of what you're saying.

[tasha75]

Originally Posted by Andy777

To: tasha75

How are you getting on with customer support in French? Or you're good @ it?

My husband is a native French speaker, so he's my secretary-translator on a (not so) voluntary but unpaid basis .
He also wrote for me a set of templates-answers to the most common question.

[tasha75]

Originally Posted by Ultravox

Would translators not be an option?

I use online translators to read customers messages when my husband is at work and sometimes they are alright, and with the smaller phrases can be relatively good. But sometimes the result is a total nonsense, especially with longer sentences. I've also found that putting a coma where I think it could separate sentence into smaller parts, often changes the end result. Go work it out.
My husband banned me from using online translators to reply to the customers after he'd read some of the translations.
Ocassionally I get questions from customers both in French and English (they use online translator). So I suppose if you state you only speak English then the customer will find a way of contacting you if they are interested in your products.

[BeemerMad]

Very informative topic, many thanks to the OP and all who have replied.

[Ultravox]

Originally Posted by tasha75

I use online translators to read customers messages when my husband is at work and sometimes they are alright, and with the smaller phrases can be relatively good. But sometimes the result is a total nonsense, especially with longer sentences. I've also found that putting a coma where I think it could separate sentence into smaller parts, often changes the end result. Go work it out.
My husband banned me from using online translators to reply to the customers after he'd read some of the translations.
Ocassionally I get questions from customers both in French and English (they use online translator). So I suppose if you state you only speak English then the customer will find a way of contacting you if they are interested in your products.

I'm aware of some services where you pay monthly and get a personal translator (real person) who will translate for you. Would be effective for those who deal with different languages daily.

[Andy777]

I believe listings are not the problem as you can always hire a freelancer on Elance.com for any language you need. The problems starts with customer support.

Now, depending on product you sell you may get huge amount of support e-mails or the very opposite - very little to none.

Here's one option, you could make some kind of agreement with the writer who translated listings in first place so that you can send support e-mails for translation.

I personally wouldn't use translation software as it just doesn't offer quality of service I'm up to.