A company that prides itself with offering high-quality products usually chooses its advertising and marketing partners with great care. If that same company picks the lowest bidder for its translation needs, there’s a good chance they are making a costly mistake.
The biggest translation agencies often offer the lowest prices. But like any other agency, they routinely send projects to freelance translators. The quality of the people they enlist has everything to do with the rates they pay their freelance translators and, consequently, the fees they charge their customers. What does that mean? A low-ball translation provider usually delivers low-quality translations that can end up costing you money, quality, management time, image, and reputation. In most cases, the damage will be found out after it is too late.
Good translation providers (agencies and individual freelance translators) always budget for a second person with similar skills and expertise in a subject matter to perform a careful edit of the translation, and often go beyond this “four-eyes” principle to six eyes—a third person may have a final look-through to make sure all is in order. If you are working directly with an independent translator, expect that person to price in a review by a respected colleague.
Hastily produced translations often result in clunky writing that detracts from your message. Good translators are always honing their writing skills on and off the job. They read widely, with attention to good writing, and focus on their skills through continuing education. Even good writers who embark on a translation career find it takes time to learn to make a text flow.
When this skill is lacking, your translation may have the inescapable sound of—well, a translation. Subtleties crucial to your message may disappear. In a marketing text or in any high-level communication, this can have costly consequences.
The saving of a few hundred or a few thousand dollars on translation may translate into a sacrifice of millions in potential revenue. That is why you need a team of intelligent, highly trained professionals for your translation needs. They have experience in your industry in addition to their foreign-language expertise. They are experienced, polished writers, translating only into their native languages despite their near-native fluency in the source language. Keep all this in mind when you go shopping for language services. The result will be well worth the price.