We all want to save time and money –that is just part of good management, isn’t it?  However, when it comes to critical services such as translations, we must also pay attention to quality.  A cheap translation work is the least efficient type of translation:  your corporate image is at risk, not to mention potential lawsuits.  The cost of having to edit a bad translation, or having to re-translate it all from scrap, can end up being much higher than doing it right from the start.

There are, nevertheless, smart ways to save time and money when it comes to translations:

1.      Make sure your translator knows who to contact for any doubts that might arise during the translation.

• This is particularly important in the case of rush jobs, when the translator will be working during non-business hours.  Often, the person requiring the translation is not the author of the documents, or the person who will be dealing with them.  Would they be able to answer technical questions?
• Provide email and mobile telephone number, and make sure that person is aware of what is going on with the document.

2.      If you have a glossary from previous jobs done by other translators, please provide it. 

• This will not only help save time with terminology searches, but will also ensure coherence among your documents.  Job positions, department names, corporate policies... There are many ways to translate the same thing, and often it is just a matter of preference.  

3.      Do your best to provide the final version of the documents.

• Every time something is changed in the document, the translator needs to stop and go back to make such changes, sometimes having to delete whole sections that had already been translated.
• This might not always be possible, due to time constraints, however.  If you can, please make sure you use the “track changes” feature in MS Word.  That way, the translator will not need to review the whole document word by word to make sure no changes are missed, but will be able to go straight to the changes instead.

4.      Translate only the parts you need.

• As a translator, I have no way to know which parts of the document you will need unless you tell me why you need the translation.  If you need to register the document for official purposes, then you would need all tiny details translated, including stamps and signatures.
• I often find that clients do not really need the whole document translated.  For instance, in the case of a previously signed power purchase agreement a client wants to use as base for a new agreement, those first introductory pages written by the notary public are not going to be used;  neither are those pages identifying the parties (name of representatives, ID numbers, addresses, powers of attorney), or the boundaries of lots.  Eliminating those and other unnecessary bits will save you considerable money –and time.

5.      Format –the simpler, the better.

• First of all, if you have the document in editable format, make sure that is the version you provide.  Converting is possible, but it takes time and there are always glitches.  And yes, as a translator I have to re-write everything, but if you give me a document in editable format, it is much easier for me to give you a translation in the exact same format as the source text.
• Columns, tables, graphics, etc., slow down the translation process. Simplify the layout before requesting the translation. 
• When you hire a translator, you’re hiring their time, whether it is for translating or for formatting.  Just as if you hire a brain surgeon to disinfect a wound –you’ll still have to pay them at brain surgeon rates. 
• If you have document full of tables with figures that do not need translation (other than changing the periods for commas and the commas for periods), you might just as well delete those figures and later have an assistant copy/paste the figures to the translated text. 

6.      Are there any bits that you already have translated?

• Often, there are bits of text that are repeated over and over again, from document to document.  Disclaimers in press releases, stock market info, incorporation info, etc.:  keep a folder with those documents and just insert the corresponding parts.  There’s no need to re-translate them every time.  If you always work with the same translator, just give these documents to your translator and they can access them whenever needed.
• Is there a previous version of the same document?  If you have it in Word, for instance, it is just a matter of running an automatic comparison, and translating only the changes.  You can even ask your translator to run such automatic comparison:  it really takes less than two minutes.

As your translator, I am interested in saving you money and making you look good.  The better your business goes, the better my business goes.  This is how long-term business relationships are built.

If you go through a whole HR process to select the members of your team, why not ask yourself a few questions when choosing the translator(s) that will provide language services for your team?  Ideally, they will be part of the team for the life of the project....

Most managers and team leaders pay utmost attention to the quality of the engineering and legal professionals in their team, often forgetting that the bad or inaccurate translation of a carefully-crafted report can destroy any chances for the approval or funding of a project, not to mention the potential costly legal consequences resulting from something as simple as a missing a comma.

However, most people have no clue on how to choose the right translator to work with their teams, and the aspects to consider go beyond a simple diploma.  I do admit this might be a very confusing aspect for many, even for experienced hiring managers and team leaders, so after many years working with technical translations in the energy, mining and legal industries, I’ve prepared this checklist to help you choose the right language services provider for your project.

1. First of all, you need to define the language combinations you will need.
This may sound obvious, but it is a key aspect in choosing the right translator.  Most translators are good translating into their own native language but not the opposite.  Of course, some translators can translate into and from more than one language, but if you’ll be needing this kind of service, make sure your translator is one of them.  Once the project is rolling at full speed and deadlines fly by, changing translators might be quite distracting and time-consuming.

Make sure your translator knows who is producing which document:  I once landed in the middle of a due diligence in which one third of the team spoke Portuguese, another third spoke Spanish, and another third spoke English.  They all thought they understood each other.  By the time the documents first reached me, they had been translated to and from all those languages, repeatedly.  However, I noticed the bid was to be presented in Spanish but the figures had been determined by the English-speaking team.  The Spanish-speaking team was talking about bidding X “billones”, until I asked if they were aware of the difference between “billones” and “billions”.  They were not.  So they were actually about to bid for “000” more than had been approved by the parent company and the financiers.  Needless to say, they would have certainly won the bid, but only to head into a huge lawsuit.

2. Diplomas and Certificates are not enough.

Although a University degree or the certification from a Translators Association such as ATA, ATIO, etc., can establish a baseline of quality, they do not guarantee a good translation of an Environmental Assessment Study or a PPA.  The translator needs to be educated in the field, so previous work experience and/or studies in the field are critical.

3. Deadlines. 

Big projects usually deal with long documents and impossibly tight deadlines.  Make sure your translator knows the extent of each document and the deadline required and, if necessary, that your translator can supervise other translators.

You can either hire other translators yourself or let your translator set up a team they trust.  Either way, everyone needs to be realistic about what can and cannot be achieved.  Regardless of the promises of software developers, there’s only so much a single translator can do in a day.  Experienced professional translators, in order to guarantee the quality of their work, can usually translate between 2,500 – 5,000 words per day, depending on their experience in the field, the format of the document, and a few other variables.  It is possible, though, to translate more working overtime (personally, I’ve managed to translate up to 12,500 words in a very long day and part of the night, but that is my record, not my usual performance).

4. Confidentiality - the key of the business.

Do you know who’s handling/reading/translating/proofreading/editing your documents?  Nowadays, perhaps all you know is that you send a document by email but, after that, you have no control whatsoever.  You should always be able to ask your translator which kind of measures they take to guarantee the confidentiality of all your information.

Regardless of whether your translator signs a confidentiality agreement or not, by default, every document should be treated as confidential.

Who participates in the translation process?  Is somebody else doing the translation/edition/proofreading/delivery of the document?  Do they use the cloud?  USB drives? Do they work through someone else’s LAN?  All these elements should be taken into consideration.

Although most translators will want to see the document before accepting it, you want to make sure that there is accountability for the confidentiality of your documents.  In the case of some agencies, have seen careless project managers send mass emails to translators labelled “highly confidential”, to see who would like to take the job –if there were any leaks, how could they be tracked?

5. And finally, ethics.  This involves every aspect of the process but, how can you assess this element?  Check the references.  How long has your translator been working with the same clients?  If there had been any issues in this regard, clients would have probably left.

In the next blog entry, I will be giving you a few tips on how to make your translator’s life easier –and more productive for you.