You have invested time and effort in creating content for your company with high quality and strong resonance. When you send this content to professional translators, your goal is to ensure that the final product is a quality translation that retains the impact of the original text.
The partnership you establish with your language service provider is essential to achieving this goal. After all, no matter how good the translator is, you won’t be able to master your brand’s voice and style without their help. The information you provide regarding these topics, in addition to your knowledge on the subject, can make the difference between a mediocre translation and content that reaches the minds and hearts of potential clients in a new market traduzione giurata online.
Whether you are a first-time translation client or translation is part of your regular workflow, there is always room for improvement in your process. With a 25-year track record of building strong partnerships between companies and translation teams, we share with you our tips to get the most out of your experience with your language service provider.
10 tips for hiring quality translation services
- Include examples of previous translations.
Show your lender different translation jobs that have previously impressed you. If you don’t have any previous translation work, look for foreign language content from other companies and share examples of what you consider a good and bad translation. The more examples you provide the translator, the better they will understand what final product you want to obtain. Sharing translation samples will also help you agree and implement a translation quality control process that suits your project. - Establish a link between translators and the QA team.
Work to actively foster collaboration and communication between linguists and project reviewers. Large language service providers offer this service automatically; However, if in doubt, you should always ask who will review the work and what type of communication they will have with the translator. If both parties have the freedom to communicate with each other, a more accurate and coherent final translation can be obtained. - Develop project guidelines with local market partners. Without a doubt, you want to work with the best translation professionals in your target language.
However, it is also possible to partner with local language service providers to create approved glossaries for use in your translation process. A glossary should include a comprehensive summary of approved terminology, as well as an introduction to your brand standards and corporate style guide. Local reviewers can add great value to this process by identifying common pain points regarding translation into your target language. This helps simplify the translation process and reduce friction in both this and future translation projects. - Provide guides and examples about the brand.
This helps provide your team with branded documents in the original and target language of your project. This helps translators and proofreaders know your company’s brand voice and the style and tone you would like them to capture. Consider sharing some details about your company’s mission and vision so they can fully understand your organization’s identity. This is also a good place for you to explicitly describe the types of inclusive language your brand uses and point out any areas where there might be some biases overshadowing the content. The more detailed information you provide, the more likely the translation will correctly represent your brand’s voice in the target language. - Update the source text before sending it for translation to ensure it meets your quality standards.
Make sure the original content correctly represents the standards before you start translating it, as the text will not magically improve once it is translated into another language. In particular, determine whether the content is out of date, when it was last updated, and whether the information contained in the text is correct. This is particularly important if it is technical content, since the translator may not be specialized in the topics they are talking about. You will need to ensure that both the information and the tone of the document are appropriate so that the translator can interpret them correctly. - Let translators know the context of the text.
It can be difficult to get the nuance of a text exactly right without context. If your translation team has access to your website’s authoring environment, they will be able to see what the content looks like and review it in context. This is particularly useful when developing new pages for a global market, or when you plan to launch a campaign in multiple regions at the same time. Alternatively, you could provide access to your web applications so your team can review and test the UI elements in their work. - Allocate a reasonable turnaround time for your translation project.
Work with your contractors to determine how much time is needed for local translators and proofreaders to complete the work, including reviewing the final version. When setting deadlines, you need to balance the need to move forward with the amount of time it takes to do a good translation job. Of course, the shorter the turnaround time, the more the translator will have to rush, and the less likely they will be to provide you with a high-quality translation. - Designate a point of contact for the project.
Designate a resource in your company for your language service provider or translation management leader so they can communicate with any questions. By establishing clear lines of communication, problems will be easier to resolve and you will save time and money. - Share feedback and extensive validation with your translators.
Just as communication is important when starting a translation project, it is also important to stay connected throughout the process. Share detailed feedback with your translators, highlighting specific sections that are faithful to the original text and adding suggestions for improvements if possible. You can do this on an ongoing basis, or when you receive a draft of the final text. This will ensure that the final copy is true to your brand’s voice and style. - Work to build long-term relationships.
If you follow all of these tips, you will have spent a lot of time and effort establishing translation quality control processes with your language service provider. You will also have established a solid foundation that you can use to improve the quality of your translation projects in the future. Don’t spend all that energy repeating a process with a new supplier on every new project! Continue to invest in that relationship and seek the services of competent providers who know your company’s voice, mission and quality requirements. You will see a huge impact on the quality of translation projects in the future.