How to choose a translation company? What you need to pay attention to? What not to do under any circumstances? How to avoid critical mistakes?
Mikhal Heffer, CEO of Lichi Translations, presents a series of video tips that will help you easily enter the world of translation.
It’s a fact. The world speaks many languages – but most of us can only speak two or three languages, at best. And what about all the rest? What about the enormous content out there that’s simply inaccessible to us?
The bottom line is this: translation is a profession and it’s much more complex than it seems! As is true with any profession, it’s best if you let professionals do it. When it comes to doing translation work, it’s important to choose a translator who not only speaks the target language at the native language level but is also skilled and practiced in the work of translation.
Zhang Chun is in China, Yoshiko Yamamoto in Japan, Marcel Marseille in France and Roberto Patrici in Italy. They’re just four translators for a multilingual project. And what if there are 10 different languages? Or 20? Finding a suitable translator, providing guidelines, answering questions and making sure that he or she submits the materials on time – then multiply all of this by several languages. You’ve got yourself a full-time job.
A translation company manages the translation project for you, preserves quality and saves you at lot of time and worry.
Translation is not just about translating text from one language to another. It’s a dynamic field that requires specialization and professionalism in a multitude of subjects.
Every project is a world of its own – and it is important that the translator comes from that world. The ABC of a translation job is to match the appropriate translator to the project.
A professional translation company has more than one translator for each language: teams of technical translators, medical translators, legal translators, marketing translators, and so on – each translator with his or her own specialization.
Time is of the essence and our word is our bond (even if it’s in another language). A translation company sets deadlines with you in advance and commits to meeting them. But the responsibility is yours too. If time is important, be sure to stress this in advance. No translation company can read your thoughts. And it’s not a good idea to come at the last minute and say, “Oh, and we need it tomorrow.”
You may be surprised to learn that translation is also a matter of style. Some translators are good at literal and direct translation, which is more suitable for technical or legal translation. Others are virtuoso marketers. Who’s right for you? Some projects are suitable to one type of translation, while other projects require a different type of translation. Before embarking on a lengthy translation process, you should choose a translator. One way is by asking the translation company for samples from several translators so you can choose the style that best suits your needs. Lichi is excellent in offering advice in this area.
“Come play ping-pong with the translation company!” By this I mean an open dialogue between you and the translation company: give feedback, provide comments and clarifications, share, challenge. This process will produce a higher-quality and accurate translation. Why is this such an important step? It delivers a translation that’s uniform and professionally correct – giving you high quality while saving you time.
How many times have you worked with a vendor who disappointed you, one who made promises but didn’t keep them? A reputable translation company guarantees its translation work. What does that mean? If you have comments, if you need a different style or wording – we correct what’s needed until you’re satisfied with the translation that you get from us.
In a large project, the first thing to do is to build a glossary. The intention is not to reinvent the dictionary, but to prepare an Excel document with three columns: the professional term in the source language, an explanation of the term, and the profession term in the target language. Once the glossary and translations are approved, these are the sources that will accompany the project.
Now that you know everything about the world of translation, all you need to do is ask for Lichi.
