The decision-making process for purchasing translation services can be problematic at the best of times. Whether you’re an experienced purchaser of translation services or someone who purchases on an ad hoc basis, following this simple, yet effective guide to choosing a translation company will relieve at least one of your business challenges.
The more information you can provide a translation company, the greater the chance of producing quality translations. A number of factors to consider are:
- Who is the target audience? Clarity regarding who will be interacting with your content is important so that the translator can tailor the translated material accordingly. Whether they are consumers, academics, senior executives or from a particular region will have a major impact on the tone and style used in the translation.
- What style of translation do you need? If you have a style guide which outlines the rules for how things should be translated, this will be of great help to the translator and enhance the consistency of your translations. Don’t worry if you don’t have one because a good translation company can provide you with theirs or help you to create your own.
- Do you have any industry specific acronyms and terminology? Being able to provide this information for the translator will save a lot of research time, guarantee a higher level of accuracy and reduce the number of revisions. This can ultimately impact on costs – important for everyone!
Many translation companies will offer you a whole host of features for your translations. Rule to remember – “features” are nice to haves, but they aren’t essential. How can you distinguish between a feature and a benefit? Ask yourself – what’s in it for me?
A translation company which focuses on results over features is more likely to have a deeper understanding of your needs as a client and consequently enhance your satisfaction.
So, the question you need to ask is what are the results you need a translation company to help you achieve? Some of the factors which I’m sure will be important to you are:
- Increasing the accuracy of your translations > Eliminating those embarrassing mistakes which can be inherent in converting text from one language to another.
- Improving the quality and consistency of translated material > Reducing the need for lots of revisions which can take up a lot of your time and impact on your project schedule.
- Enhancing your organisation’s credibility with your target audience > Developing localized content which is tailored specifically for the people who will be interacting with your translated material.
Once you’re clear on the results you need, then you can sift through the features to find the translation company who has the right experience, knowledge, internal processes and attitude to meet your needs.
A simple Google search will provide you with a vast number of translation companies worldwide, so how will you choose? Ideally, the answers to the previous two steps of this guide will make this step infinitely easier. These following additional points will also help you narrow down the selection to the best 2-3 companies which you can contact to discuss your requirements.
- Experience will impact accuracy: Do they have experience in your industry or with the type of product/service your organisation provides? It’s likely that a specialist wrote your original content – someone who knows your industry, product or service. So you’ll need a specialist to translate your content.
- Knowledge will impact credibility: Are they knowledgeable about the region where your translations will be used i.e. cultural nuances, dialects, trends etc.? This is absolutely essential if your translated material will be used to sell or promote products, services, ideas or events to a particular group.
- Integrity will impact quality: Do they have recognised/accredited quality assurance processes such as ISO9001 and are they members of any translation associations? Accreditation processes require companies to demonstrate their competence in completing specific tasks. This in addition to membership of professional associations encourages compliance with industry standards and will give you some assurance that you’ll receive quality translations.
- Technology will impact consistency: Does the translation company employ computer assisted tools (CAT) to develop databases of regular vocabulary and jargon? Uniformity is important for business branding and is a good way to maintain a professional image. Companies that don’t use these tools are more likely to produce translations that rely on human judgement which can vary significantly.
I hope this guide has been useful and will help you to make better decisions when considering a company to trust with your translation services. Our team here at Creative Word are extremely results-driven and consistently strive to produce translations which fully meet our client’s needs. Contact us for help enhancing your translations.
