Saturday 26 January 2013

On choosing a translator or translation agency: Part 1, Analysing the translator's business

I have been in the translation industry for over 10 years now, and over that time have seen more than the odd translation disaster. In fact, as a business, a significant amount of all our work is re-doing someone else's translation or taking over where the original contracted translator is unable to complete. So how do you avoid falling into that situation?

Now no two translators will ever agree on anything. Most professional individual translators get into the industry because of their love of language, and all of its intricacies. By nature, translators tend to be highly opinionated, supremely confident in their own skills, and hellishly stubborn! Mistakes do happen from time to time, that is the nature of being human, but what we often see in our remedial work (where we are asked to fix up or take over part way through someone else's translation) is that the issue lyes, in part, with the original translator selection process.

I want to outline some tips here for translation buyers of what they should consider when choosing a translation provider. There are two parts to this selection process; the business of translation component, and the language skills component (to be discussed in a second post). When selecting a translator, for most translation buyers I believe you should start with the business questions first before moving to the language skills questions. In this discussion, unless otherwise stated, "translator" refers both to an individual translator contracted by you and a company providing translation services.

Part 1: Analysing the business of a translation provider.
The translation industry is not small. Globally it is estimated to be worth some USD $23 billion in 2013. The scale of the players runs from multi-language corporations doing 100 million dollar turnovers to individual single language freelancers. So what criteria should you apply from a business perspective when trying to select a suitable translator for your project?


Can the translator cover down time caused by sickness or other unforeseen circumstances?
This a problem we see often. Client A chooses a translator to take on a project with a set deadline. But something unforseen occurs; a person is sick, a scheduled holiday is forgotten about, a file format is un-openable. You need to verify what will happen if the individual translator assigned to the project is unable to complete, or your whole project could come unstuck very quickly. While most translation agencies will have established redundancy systems, individual translators often do not. If time is of the essence, this needs to be taken into consideration.

Can the translator scale their workforce to meet your future volume and timeframe requirements?
Usually, translation is not a one-off. You may translate your initial content, then require ongoing additions/edits as content is expanded or updated. Often a customer will start with a small amount of content to translate when testing a certain market (e.g. an introductory brochure), and all going well, will then need a much larger volume done at a later date (e.g. a full operations manual and website, ongoing email translations etc.)

Ideally you will form an ongoing relationship with the translator, not least because that translator will then build up knowledge about your content, enabling a better understanding and a more consistent translation. Can the translator you select handle an expansion in volume to translate? What are their capacities? What happens when you need to ramp up volume and/or compress timeframes?

Understand that time and quality have a direct relationship
Sometimes there is no getting around it; you need the translation yesterday and the translator is going to have to rush. But accept that in these circumstances the chances of clumsy translation or inaccuracies will increase. The less time available, the more the risk of error.

It is also important to understand that, while translators may quote standard turn-around capabilities (e.g. "3000 words per day"), that doesn't mean they can do 3000 words right now for delivery within 24hours! All translators will have work booked up in advance, and translation companies don't have translators sitting around waiting for work. More accurately, the translator should be saying "3000 words per day from an agreed start time".

Allow the maximum possible time to your translator. And your translator will love you for it!

Does the translator have the technical language (i.e. jargon) skills to draw on?
I think I am a well read and well educated person, with a pretty good command of the English language. I recently sold a house and attempted to read the actual legal contract for the sale. Within 5 minutes I was reaching for the whiskey. 

Most industries have "jargon" (specialised words or phrases) associated with them that may not be familiar to the lay person. Often the problem is, you, as the customer, are so familiar with the jargon in your industry that you don't recognise it as being jargon, you think of it as "common knowledge". 

You need to ensure that the translator has the technical language skills to competently translate your content. In some cases, that may mean that while the person does not have a formal qualification in translation per se, their in-depth knowledge of the industry far outweighs this.

Any translator that claims they cover "all fields" is not being truthful. For example, we as an agency generally do not cover pharmaceutical, chemical/chemical engineering, or patent translations; we don't have the individual translators with the necessary background and competencies to translate these competently.  Beware those that claim to be all things to all people.

Can the translator work across the range of file formats you require, such as tagged (XML, HTML etc.) or common DTP formats?
Most translators can handle working in most standard office work formats (e.g. .doc, .xls, .ppt). But what about your brochure (created in InDesign)? Or your mobile web files (built in HTML5)? One major source of error we often see is where a translator cannot work directly in the original source files. No problem says the translator, I can cut and paste from an InDesign document to a spreadsheet, and then your DTP staff can cut and paste the translation back into the InDesign document. 

Don't do it! This is the source of so many cut and paste errors; the DTP operator does not know the target language, doesn't understand the rules around punctuation, word and line breaks in that language, misses one or two letters here and there in the process etc. Always insist that the translator works directly in the original source files, and if they can't, find someone else.

Does the translator provide full, independent checking of their translation?
It took me a couple of hours to write this blog post and I probably re-read it 3 or 4 times, but no doubt there is still the odd typo and not-quite-right phrase in this post. No-one is perfect (and auto-correct can sometimes make us less so!). Every translation should be checked by an independent translator (i.e. not the individual translator who performed the original translation). 

There are two basic kinds of checking; editing and proofreading. Editing is where a second translator reviews the translation for accuracy against the original text. Proofreading is where the translation itself is checked for typos, spelling errors, punctuation etc. Preferably you will do both, but of course this has cost implications.

Now as I mentioned above, no two translators will translate anything exactly the same, each will have their own turn of phrase/style, and judgement calls must be made from time to time. But without checking, you risk at the least things like a missed decimal point, an "off" translated to an "on", an error of date, a measure not converted from Imperial to metric etc. A translation is only as good as its lack of errors, and just one error can make all the difference.

Does the translator carry full professional liability/indemnity insurance, and under what jurisdiction does it apply?
NOTE: I am not a lawyer and the following does not construe legal advice but is merely opinion. 

Probably the single most overlooked issue in the translator selection process. In NZ all the service providers I contract, whether they be my accountant, my web hosting company, the BPM consultant etc. are required to carry liability insurance. For you, the translation consumer/purchaser, you should insist that your chosen translator has full insurance to cover any issue that may arise from the translation. Not just for the actual value of the insurance, but just by holding such insurance it shows that the translator is professional and committed to what they do. 

Furthermore, you need to ensure that said insurance covers the translation wherever it may be used. This is of particular concern when you contract an off-shore translator; does their insurance apply to New Zealand and to any of the countries where you may be releasing the translation? In the event of a claim, under which jurisdiction will the claim be heard?



I hope this has given you some food for thought the next time you go to contract a translator. I will follow this post up with a second one on assessing a translator's language skills, probably the hardest of things for a non-translator to do.

Thanks for reading.

Mark Berghan
A2ZTranslate Ltd.


1 comment:

  1. Awesome post you have here! Thank you very much for sharing! This'll be very helpful for everyone. Choosing the perfect translation agency might be hard but will be worth it in the end.

    ReplyDelete