Judging the quality of the work of translation agencies is not an easy task, first of all because, at first glance, it is impossible to establish the quality of the translation of a language you don’t know.
A bad translation can jeopardize entire months of work, deny you access to a new market or, in the worst cases, tarnish your company’s reputation. To avoid unpleasant and lasting consequences, it therefore becomes essential to understand whether your language service provider is working in the right way. In this article we try to understand how.
Translation agencies: alarm bells
There are a number of signs that indicate quality issues with a translation provider, and each of them has a unique impact. Here are some of the most obvious signs
There are several types of signs that should make you prick up your ears and suspect that a translation agency is not working as it should. Here are some of the most obvious ones.
Lack of transparency
The first thing to pay attention to is the transparency of your language service provider. A reliable agency usually opens a direct communication channel between the client and the translator – or the team of translators – to whom the work is assigned. Communicating directly with translators allows you to involve them in your project and make them understand your needs. Furthermore, it allows you to see first-hand their level of professionalism and commitment. If, however, you continue to interface only with the agency and you don’t know who is actually working on your project, perhaps there is something wrong.
Tight time for planning and strategy
Completing a large translation requires a series of steps that cannot be rushed. The first step always starts from planning a strategy, which cannot be improvised, but requires careful evaluation and therefore time to put together.
If a translation agency seems to offer something too good to be true, quickly, be careful. The risk that the supplier has assigned your project to 20 or more translators, that they do not have specific skills specific to your sector and that they do not have enough time to coordinate with each other is very high.
If a language service provider doesn’t take the time to personalize their proposal, it means they aren’t planning, and are therefore putting themselves in the position of translating in an approximate and unsatisfactory manner.
Improper use of machine translation
It’s always worth asking your provider how they use machine translation. Using the support of automatic translation software is not a problem in itself, but it depends on how.
When used well, machine translation can help translators achieve efficiency and accuracy. However, for this to happen, the translation must be planned and adapted to the target market; in other words, we must put the quality of human work first. It is certainly not enough to insert text into a program and touch it up a little here and there to best represent your products or your brand. If you are curious about some of the things that can happen when a translation agency misuses these software, we invite you to discover the most common machine translation errors.
“We can beat any price”
When a translation agency focuses heavily on messages focused on the competitiveness of its prices, you can be sure that a scam is just around the corner. Offering a low price is synonymous with a poor quality service. Price is certainly an important factor, it’s understandable, but it should only be the last item on the priority list if you want to do things right.
LingoYou, the transparent translation agency
Enter a new market with LingoYou. For us every project is unique. We select and assign talented translators to your projects to enhance your brand.
Marketing Team LingoYou
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