These days, we’ve been keeping busy by re-thinking the entire Taiwanted.com Classifieds Ads website. We are looking to do a fresh start, and find ways to simplify things. We also want to make it as accessible to the Mandarin speaking community as it is to the English speaking community.
Could you help us translate the site’s language set into Mandarin? I’ve created an “open” Google spreadsheet, which you can edit. It lists the words that our software uses. I am hoping you will find this both a worthwhile group effort and an interesting challenge for your translation skills.
If you would like credit for your work, just drop us a line at admin (at) forumosa (dot) com - we’ll create a links page on Taiwanted to recognize all of you who help us put together another useful website for Taiwan.
Hi,
Will the organization be making money off Taiwanted?
If it is pro bono, that’s one thing. If the organization will be making money from the translation, the right thing to do is to hire someone competent and have them do it for pay. “Crowdsourcing” is putting a lot of us out of work – not to mention the crap translations it produces in many cases.
Taiwanted will ultimately make money (we hope). As we have always said, we will charge for placing ads looking for teachers, but all other classified ad placement will be free of charge. There is no plan to change that.
The translation is for Chinese speaking readers - so since ads for English teachers will not target that audience, one could say that the translation is not for making money. That said, I would not rule out developing a paid service sometime down the road if the Chinese speaking audience ever grew.
[quote=“ironlady”]Hi,
Will the organization be making money off Taiwanted?
If it is pro bono, that’s one thing. If the organization will be making money from the translation, the right thing to do is to hire someone competent and have them do it for pay. “Crowdsourcing” is putting a lot of us out of work – not to mention the crap translations it produces in many cases.[/quote]
I could support a foundation, template and standards set up by the crowd. But once content is integrated on top of the foundation, further translation needs to be bought. That’s where ad revenue comes in. I’ve done this with a corporate forum: the team volunteered set up and layout, but content was paid. Granted, it failed within two months because the client didn’t want to pay and they didn’t have content.
what? i could do that when i have extra time. my chinese and english are both at a native level. but no $$$?? cmon
maybe you could throw in a bling bling avatar or special status on the forum to make the translation work worthwhile…or the power to ban people would be nice too :lick:
Yeah, I love you guys and all that, and I support the site, but I assume you do pay for your legal and technical work when you need to outsource it.
The people who are in a position to do the job right deserve to be paid for their efforts, even if it’s a barter of some sort. The site is easily able to trade things that cost it little or nothing (advertising) to at least make a nod towards paying a professional to do a professional job.
How do you expect to compete in services with, say, Tealit, if you’re going to charge for placing teaching jobs?
Keep it free, and it will thrive.
Use that to generate income from online ad placements.
Forumosa once had classifieds that were worth checking.
Regulate it like that and you’ll kill it.
If you have a budget, hire someone for at least a token wage if you can afford it out of respect for their time; or barter in kind.
that’s the spirit.
[quote=“yaoshema”]How do you expect to compete in services with, say, Tealit, if you’re going to charge for placing teaching jobs?
Keep it free, and it will thrive.
Use that to generate income from online ad placements.
Forumosa once had classifieds that were worth checking.
Regulate it like that and you’ll kill it.
If you have a budget, hire someone for at least a token wage if you can afford it out of respect for their time; or barter in kind.
that’s the spirit.[/quote]
This simply is not what we have observed. People are not going to post ads - especially teaching ads - if the software doesn’t work well, and if they are not shown how to do it. Gone are the days of putting up something in Beta and then watching use it because it is free.
Tealit charges for teaching ads - how could we not? We might not charge for teaching ads in the beginning as we learn how schools and agents use the website. But at some point, charging for teaching ads is more than reasonable when the rest of the classifieds are free.