Translation Agency: Behind the Scenes

© Copyright.

In this article we will tell you what happens at a translation agency after your order has been received. It would seem that there’s really not much to tell: the text is received, sent to a translator, received from the translator, and sent back to the customer. But not only is the process more complex than that, but many translation jobs involve micro-dramas that, for your peace of mind, nobody will tell you about.

Let’s look behind the scenes and see what takes place.

What happens to your files when they are out of your sight

Sometimes a customer will send a file and ask to have it translated, while paying no heed to such a “little” thing as document format. But for the translation agency, how easily the text can be processed in various software applications is critically important. For instance, if the customer sends a scanned copy of a document, the translation agency will have to OCR and then correct the text before it can be translated.

Customers often send translation agencies PDF files and expect the translated file to look the same as the original. However, the PDF format is extremely inconvenient for translation. It was developed by Adobe in order to eliminate the dependence of the displayed text and images on the platform, and it achieves that end. But it is not so easy to convert PDF files to an editable format. Then, once the translation is complete, it is still more difficult to convert the translation back to PDF while retaining the format and layout of the original. The layout process is a separate and rather time-consuming operation that requires an additional person, the layout designer. Even if the translator himself can perform the layout and conversion, he will have to spend additional time.

These additional services – OCR, editing, layout, etc. – thus naturally add to the cost of a translation job. The customer usually knows nothing of these operations in the background and assumes that the translation agency has merely provided a “simple translation.” Often, translation agencies prefer not to overload the customer with unnecessary details, and thus include all of the various stages in the translation price and collectively call them “translation.”

Therefore, to make a translation job less expensive, if possible send the files in an editable format: either text (for example, Microsoft Word format), or the original format from which PDF files were created (PDF is always a secondary format that was created from a different format). Otherwise, the translation agency will either have to decline the project because it is unprofitable and time-consuming, or raise its fee to accommodate the additional work.

Even for files that are in a straightforward editable format, any serious translation agency will perform a series of steps in order to translate it:

  1. Analyze the text using special software applications that search for repetitions. Many repetitions mean less work, so the translation agency may offer you a discount.
  2. Convert the files into special formats.
  3. Translate and edit the converted text.
  4. Use additional software tools to detect and correct various errors.
  5. Convert the file containing the translated and edited text back into the format originally sent by the customer.
  6. Perform a final check on the file to ensure that it converted correctly.
  7. Send it to the customer, who in most cases does not have the slightest idea how complex the process was or is just reluctant to get into the technical details.

The above steps are required to assure quality. Many translation agencies have internal proprietary know-how for these various steps, often designed for a specific language or program. The steps are not difficult if the file is in an editable text format. If the customer sends a scanned image or PDF file with a complicated layout, these operations get dramatically more difficult and the translation agency has to use “antiquated methods”: OCR the text or type it manually in order to translate it in the usual way afterwards (or just sight-translate it without any professional tools). This increases the project cost for the customer and reduces its attractiveness for the translation agency. Thus, both parties win if the files are easy to process.

Urgent call to arms: how it happens

Translation is a very time-consuming job. Translators work at different paces. The norm is considered to be one page (250 words) per hour or eight pages (2000 words) per day. Even a translator working overtime and as fast as possible is not likely to be able to translate more than 20 pages (5000 words) per day without sacrificing quality. Furthermore, such a pace is not sustainable.

Translation agencies are often contacted by customers who need their text to be translated “yesterday.” For instance, a customer requests that 1000 pages (250,000 words) be translated in a week because “it’s very urgent!” Simple math shows that the pace of such a translation job is many times the norm. A single translator would need at least five months to complete such a huge amount of work. But the customer cannot wait this long; at best, the customer agrees to extend the deadline by two more weeks. The manager explains to the customer that he is taking a risk, because at least ten translators and three editors will work on the project. The resultant text cannot be consistent in principle. If the customer agrees to such terms, the translation agency starts experiencing a scarcity of resources, because about 15 people are required to properly execute the project with the required quality. Moreover, the translation agency cannot ignore projects from its other customers, lest its relationship with them be jeopardized.

In such cases, the agency usually mobilizes “reserve translators”, i.e., freelancers who receive work from time to time. The final quality of the completed job depends on the competence of this outsourced staff and the effectiveness of the manager, whose team has grown by 15 people (and if there are several managers, they must also work cooperatively). Such a task can be managed only by companies that have foreseen such a development and had time to prepare a cushion, i.e., prepare reserve “production capacities.” If the project comes as a surprise and the translation agency risks taking it, no one will envy the either the translation agency or the customer.

Thus, if you give a large order to a translation agency, make sure that its production capacity is sufficient to manage large volumes without sacrificing quality.

Why do translators keep asking questions? Can’t they just translate?

Here is a funny real-life story.

A representative from a world-famous company contacted a translation agency and offered a prospective project. When requesting translations, companies that operate at this level usually provide reference materials such as glossaries with approved terminology (the same terminology in various companies is often translated differently), a style guide, requirements to follow, previously translated materials, etc. So as the company and the translation agency’s project manager were working out the project terms, the manager said that he was ready to follow the customer’s requirements and asked for the relevant reference materials. He thought that this approach would show his agency to be competent and responsive. But the customer’s reaction was quite unexpected: “I gave you the purchase order, what else do you need? Can’t you find the dictionaries yourself? You are the professionals, it’s your job!” The customer’s impression of the translation agency was spoiled, and ultimately the agency did not receive the purchase order.

That company was obviously unaware that professionals ask their customers questions – sometimes many questions. This is evidence of their professionalism: a professional tries to determine the customer’s needs and satisfy them as much as possible. Imagine that you are renovating your home. You have hired a designer and construction workers and told them to do the renovations. They will have many questions for you, but this does not signify that they would be unable to do these renovations on their own. Would you be happy with the result if nobody asked your opinion while the work was in progress?

The same applies to translation agencies. Amateurs will take on and execute a large project while turning a deaf ear to the customer’s needs. Professionals, on the other hand, will make inquiries as to whether the customer has standard style guides and terminology. They will ask the customer to look over a draft of their work in order to make corrections promptly. They will consult the customer regularly on debatable matters and seek clarification when needed. The customer may see this as a nuisance, but this communication is to prevent significant dissatisfaction in the future. Otherwise, after the project has been delivered, it may turn out that the customer and the contractor did not understand each other. Such mutual misunderstandings can entail enormous costs.

How customers can be their own worst enemies

There are many small misunderstandings between customers and translation agencies. However, sometimes customer requirements are quite amusing. Below are some extraordinary, but real-life, situations.

  • The customer provides a glossary with approved translations of terminology. However, he insists that this terminology be used only in the form indicated in the glossary, i.e., in the nominative case. But in many languages (e.g., Russian), the same word can have dozens of grammatical endings which are non-existent in English. 
  • The customer provides a glossary with obvious errors such as spelling mistakes. However, he forbids correcting such mistakes in the translation. It turns out that the glossary has a higher priority than the rules of grammar or spelling.
  • The customer provides a poorly segmented text, where each sentence is broken into several parts randomly. However, he also requires that the translation for each sentence part be provided separately. It is unclear what to do if the word order of the sentence needs to be significantly different in the translation.
  • After receiving a  translation, the customer “translates” it back to the source language using Google Translate (i.e., uses machine translation to create a back translation). Then he makes a list of what he thinks are “translation errors” and sends it back to the agency with a request to correct this “back translation” to match the source text.
  • The customer requests that interface lines for a software application be translated. The material to be translated has simply been exported into text format but without context. For example, the simple English word “Select” might be the text on a button, checkbox, instruction etc., and each should be translated differently in Russian. English has only three forms of this verb (select/selects/selected), while a Russian translation would have dozens of variations depending on the verb mood, tense, gender, etc.
  • After receiving a translation, the customer entrusts its QA to an incompetent person. Then he sends the list of “corrections” back to the translation agency requesting that they be incorporated.
  • The customer requires that the number of words in the translation be exactly the same as in the original (yes, such things really happen).

In all of these cases, the translation agency faces a difficult dilemma: should it follow: the customer’s requirements, or adhere to literary and grammar conventions? In other words, the translation agency should decide whether to take the customer’s side or that of its future clients, who are the end-users of this translation. If an agency insists on literary and grammatical conventions, the customer may be offended and refuse to cooperate. If you fulfill its requirements blindly, the customer will suffer from it afterwards. In any case the translation agency risks losing its reputation: either the customer will tell other customers that his requirements are not followed, or somebody will read a “compromise” translation and will conclude that this translation agency is incompetent.

What should be done in this situation? Rejecting the job is unacceptable in most cases, as it results in financial losses or deterioration of longstanding relations with the customer. That’s why a professional “deal with your conscience” usually looks like this:

  • The translation agency warns the customer of the possible negative consequences of following his requirements.
  • The customer clearly acknowledges that he understands the probability of such negative consequences and assumes responsibility for them.
  • The translation agency follows the instructions, gives a second warning, and thus finally washes its hands of the matter.

Such a half-juridical “rite” is used by the translation agency to defend itself from claims regarding quality, as it always can produce old “agreements” and justify itself by saying that “it was your instruction.”

Therefore, if a translation agency protests your instructions, do not jump to conclusions: most likely it sincerely wishes to protect you from problems. The best thing to do is to trust the professionals.

Role conflict: what your secretary is afraid of while working with a translation agency

Translation is highly skilled work requiring special knowledge, skills, and personal qualities. To become a good translator, one needs many years of studying and practice as well as a diversity of interests and polymathy that can’t be gained in a month. In sum, to work as a translator, it is not enough just to speak a foreign language.

Let’s consider some other occupation, for instance, a tiler. From an outsider’s viewpoint it looks as if there is nothing to it: mix the mud and set the tiles evenly on the floor or on the wall. But just try to do such seemingly elementary work yourself and you will see that it is not such an easy job: sometimes the tiles are set unevenly or not firmly, sometimes the seams are of different lengths. As a result, when you look at a floor set this way, it is quite clear that it is amateur’s work. The same applies to translation: if it is done by an amateur, it will have a lot of blunders: accuracy mistakes, omitted or extra commas, spelling mistakes, and stylistically ugly sentences.

There are many companies where translation is entrusted to a secretary or just to somebody “who knows the foreign language”. Most often it is an unskilled employee. But the task was assigned by the manager, and therefore it should be completed. So the employee completes it using the skills that he has, either understanding his own incompetence or making an erroneous assumption that he is producing a real translation. It is noteworthy that most often the secretary’s manager is satisfied with the result, as he himself cannot evaluate the quality of the translation.

But the volume of text to be translated has increased, and the secretary cannot keep up. So the manager decides to turn to the professionals, a translation agency, and delegates the interactions with the agency to the secretary, who has an unclear idea of what a high-quality translation looks like. The secretary is cornered: his boss entrusted him with an impossible task, but he cannot refuse it. Plus he needs to show the results of his efforts and appear to be useful. The secretary’s situation gets more complicated if the translation agency representative reviews the text that had previously been translated by the poor secretary and makes uncomplimentary remarks about its quality. The secretary has to defend himself and prove that he can cut the mustard. Sometimes his incompetence, combined with his authority to make decisions, results in his editing the professionally translated texts unnecessarily just to show that he knows something. In so doing, he actually introduces mistakes into the text. While doing so, he peremptorily questions the quality of the translation agency’s work without due cause (since he does not know industry standards). As a result, everybody loses:

  • the customer, who will receive a poor-quality translation or will incur additional costs;
  • the translation agency, which will spend a lot of time unproductively;
  • the secretary, who has to do a job he was not trained for and is in continuous anticipation that his incompetence will be found out.

Worst of all, such a lose-lose situation can become stable and may last for years. The translation agency does not want to lose the customer and adapts to its “peculiarities.” It follows the customer’s instructions, adhering to the principle that “the customer is always right.” The incompetent employee suppresses any attempts by the translation agency to change the situation for the better (as that would mean admitting that mistakes were made previously under his guidance). The manager has no idea at all about all this behind-the-scenes activity. All of the trash is hidden under the carpet, and it is getting scarier and scarier to lift the rug. And the customer’s company, generally unbeknownst to it, suffers losses (reputational, financial and others) because the translation on its website or in its documents is far from ideal.

To avoid such problems, the customer must entrust translation QA to competent employees or engage a competitor translation agency for audit review. Evaluations of quality should be guided not by somebody’s personal opinion but by strict translation quality standards.

Summing up...

We have considered only a few aspects of relations between customers and translation agencies. As you can see, the work of a translation agency cannot be reduced to just “received, translated, and sent back.” In addition to difficulties with internal production processes, a translation agency may sometimes have non-standard situations in its relations with customers. We hope that, by being aware of these nuances, the customer will be able to make more informed and mutually beneficial decisions.

-->

Other articles

The benefits of being an in-house translator

08.10.2019 Is it worth getting a job in a translation agency? Yes it is! And we will explain why.

How to avoid mistakes when working with a translation agency: advice for clients

16.04.2018 When purchasing goods or ordering a service, we expect them to meet our expectations. But you don’t always get what you pay for, and that is especially the case if you can’t check what you’re buying in advance.

How freelancers should work with translation companies and ways to ruin your relationships for sure

10.07.2018 Not only do you, some of your friends and your brother Alex consider yourselves to be translators, but so does just about anyone else who has ever studied a language. But getting a degree is really just theory. When that theory comes into contact with how language is really used, this can result in countless mistakes, misunderstandings and conflicts. This article is about how to avoid such situations.

EN--Спасибо!

Мы получили ваше резюме.

Как только мы его изучим, мы свяжемся с вами.

Thank you!

We have received your message.

We will contact you once we read it.


Normally we reply within an hour
if the message is received between
7:00 and 15:00 GMT.

Thank you!


You have subscribed successfully.

Message

+ Attach file
EN-

Мы внимательно изучим ваше резюме
и свяжемся с вами в ближайшее время