I suggest a permanent ban for translation companies and third parties. This site is intended for freelancers, and "middle-man"-ing it will ruin the experience for many, many translators.
Also, I suggest forming some kind of test committee to verify users' claims of being proficient in a language. Some users are clearly utterly ignorant in the languages they say they've mastered, and a potential buyer who needs help with the language might end up hiring a horribly bad translator, because the buyer himself has no real idea about the language either.
Such is the case, among others, with the user (company) malik
Please take a look at their profile, and see what I mean for yourself.
Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful.
You are making a good point. We haven't decided what to do with agencies yet. There are both advantages and disadvantages with having a middleman. Obviously there is an extra transaction cost associated with having a middleman. However, buyers will receive a service in return. Agencies that use Lingbay to find and assign jobs could also be a benefit to freelancers on Lingbay as they could select a group of trusted freelancers to work with continuously.
We are considering making this a possibility. We are beginning to realize that some buyers may not want to go through the process of selecting a good candidate for their job and instead want to pay a bit more for that service to an "Lingbay agency".
I hope you follow our reasoning.
Lingbay Admin - Always looking for Chinese translators, Arabic translators, Italian translators, French translators, Dutch translators, German translators, Danish translators, Japanese translators, etc.
I think it depends entirely on whether you aim to please the buyers, or the translators. If you go with the buyers, you will keep companies and they will, in turn, get faster, cheaper results. Those two parties will profit one way or the other, along with Lingbay. The translator, however, will have no more reason to stay on this site. Since only companies will be getting feedback, and companies will have dozens of employees (or freelance translators working for them for pocket change), no one will want to hire a solo translator with 5 positive feedbacks, when the company which quoted half his price right under him has 500 positives. The individual translators will lose any kind of chance for business, and Chinese money farms will profit. Did you look at malik's profile? Their prices match their quality, and if you help them drive individuals out of business, this site will be known for little more than another project which produced horrible online goods. Have you ever read a Chinese toy packaging or technical manual? That's the "English mastery" they advertise in their profile.
If, however, you go the other route and help the individuals by banning such corporate slave labor, you will no doubt lose some potential profit. However, your site will have a reputation decent enough for honest and hardworking people to visit and to rely on. I work in an Open Access publishing company, and a lot of our authors (currently numbering over 10000) need help with proofreading and translating their materials into English for publishing purposes. Would I recommend this site with groups like malik owning the market? Not likely.
I strongly suggest you take the individuals-route. If you do end up supporting the companies though, please at the very least implement some sort of testing, so that low quality translators can be weeded out. A bad translation will be sold, because the buyer is below-average at the language too, but in the end low quality dealings like that come back to haunt one, one way or another.
By saving the site's face and rejecting companies, you might end up making more money in the long run from ads by respectable parties, or larger projects encompassing multiple translators.
My two cents dollars.