your opinion on translation service providers

Sheila Wilson wrote:


Right. That's a little clearer. So you provide training materials in multiple languages to your clients, if I've got it right?

I suppose outsourcing everything to one multinational that deals in every service in every language seems to make sense. However the biggest, in my IMHO, treat translation as a commodity rather than as an intellectual service, and put little emphasis on real quality, while shouting about QA, QC and ISO-this-and-that. They generally pay on a strict "rate per new word" basis, so the translator is racing the clock and consulting other material means less paid work per day. Also, rates tend to be very low. The worst ones actually pay their translators and proofreaders about the same per word - acknowledging that there will be lots of work (too much) for the proofreader. The result will never be as good as if the best translator had been paid the best (!) rate, and then a good proofreader paid to catch any slips (e.g. 'form' in place of 'from' in English). You could throw money at a second proofreader, but it would still be a flawed text as it isn't a proofreader's job to retranslate.

I personally think you would do better to approach smaller, more specialised agencies. I'm thinking about ones that specialise in the training sector or in voiceovers (a very different kettle of fish from text translation, of course), or in languages that the founders speak personally. Such agencies tend to rely on their good reputation for quality of service and the end product - and happy suppliers and clients are both needed to build that reputation. Their quote to you would include time for a suitable translator to take your context into account, and for a suitable proofreader. They may seem pricier at first but getting it right first time is usually cost-effective. You can search for suitable specialist LSPs through the directory here.

On the other hand, if you work mainly with just a few languages you could contact freelancers who list the relevant skills and services. You can do that here, too. By filtering your search and reading individuals' profiles you should get an idea of who is likely to do a good job, then you can contact a few for quotes. You could either arrange for proofreading yourself or commission the freelancer to get it done. I personally quote extra for that second pair of eyes if non-agency clients request it. For agency clients, I assume they'll have it proofread.

Basically, I'm saying that no ISO standard is going to make your job a success. It's better to have confidence in a conscientious supplier. Those proverbial monkeys might be able to write the Bible, but I bet even a thousand of them working together would leave a whole load of mistakes.

José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:





Indeed, that's been my main specialty for years: complete localization of training programs, no matter if it's just a self-learning booklet or a complex system involving printed materials, video, software, board games, whatever.

However I only cover ONE language pair in either direction: English (US as target) Portuguese (BR as target).

I'll try to give you as much useful input as I can, without writing an entire book here.

A while ago I put together some GENERIC pointers to guide the decision between hiring a translation agency or a freelance translator at http://www.lamensdorf.com.br/trxag.html . Try to adapt it to your present situation.

FYI many great translation agency PMs don't have a clue about video/AV dubbing or subtitling. All too often in such cases they ask me to contact the end-client directly, trusting my ethics that I'll present myself as someone from their agency, because they are unable to ask the questions I need answered, and equally unable to interpret the answers they get in a useful manner. Of course, I never failed their trust. If the client asks me about prices, I tell them that I don't handle money matters, that's up to the PM. Fortunately so far I haven't had to introduce myself as a staff member of different translation agencies to the same end-client.

If your time is valuable enough to justify the extra cost of always having an agency to manage all the bills, deadlines, deliveries, sequential stages, file transfers, integration etc., but you'd remain available for direct contact with translators on technical issues, draw the line, and make the setting blatantly clear to all parties involved.


I would like to add a short story on cutting corners/costs.

Long before CAT tools came up, I was doing translation and DTP of training programs that usually comprised: a) Course leader/facilitator's guide; b) Participants' workbooks; and c) PowerPoint presentations. Of course, most of (b) and (c) content are repeated verbatim in (a).

At a certain point in time, some chicken-or-egg moment, some clients had to find a way to cut costs. How did they do it? They began assigning me only the Leader's Guide to translate. Then they'd have a sesquilingual staff member of theirs painstakingly (of course, a sesquilingual non-translator will know nothing about CAT tools) copy and paste my translations from (a) onto (b) and (c).

Of course, it would be very rare to have (a) covering 100% of the (b) and (c) content, so they either guessed whatever was missing, or used machine translation.

The final result was that the course leader got my supposedly pristine translation. Participants received the sesquilingual staffer's act, which was widely distributed, even management had an occasional glimpse at it.

As it was less-than-perfect, the big question came up: Who translated this @#$%&???

As the staffer shall forever remain anonymous, my name came up as "the same guy who always did it for us", oblivious that my actual work was privy to the instructor. Some may have ventured that I'd become addicted to hooch or whatever.

To avoid that, thanks to CAT tools, I began offering repeated segments for free, provided I was assigned the entire training package to translate. A win-win for all involved.

Adjoa Ano wrote:
not too sure about working with freelancers and being burned out in the process. W sometime handle many projects at once and I am not sure how reliable freelancers are with deadlines.