First Translations, Inc. - Industry Standard Translation Services

Last week, in the first part of this article, we examined a few easy ways that a client can examine a company’s external, visible processes to be able to determine what sort of translation services they might receive from that company. In this article we will have a brief look at how we at First-Translations feel that the translator selection process should work, how “translation” differs from “localization” and how this starts the document life-cycle.

Translator Selection and why it is important

When a document is received, a careful consultation should take place with the client to determine not only target and source languages, but also to determine the exact vernaculars involved in the project. Is the target audience British English or American English? Is the source language Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese? Some regions of the world have hundreds of various dialects within a relatively small area.

Therefore, it is important to make contact with and select a translator who has been culturally immersed in the particular local culture and is certified to translate the source language into that dialect. But the question remains, how does a company do this?

Over the past 17 years we have built a database of translators worldwide. Our success in providing accurate and precise localization technique relies not on the breadth of our database (which is also impressive), but the criteria by which we file and query the database when searching for a translator. By including background information on translators such as where they were born, where they were raised, how long they have lived in a certain region or culture, their education, how long they have been certified, and other bits of information give us leverage and power when we go to look into the translator selection process.

So, another question you might have is: how does this help me? How will I know if my translation company’s database is comprehensive? Our answer is to simply ask questions. Ask the representative who you are working with questions like: “How are you going to select a translator to execute the work?”, “Is the translator certified to translate to/from this particular dialect?”, and “How does your company go about selecting the right translator for my project?”
If the person who you are working with cannot answer these questions, and cannot route you directly to someone who can, simply do not use the company.

There is a good reason for this. Numerous times we have observed practices in the industry of translation companies using the inability of the client to determine the true quality of the translation to take blatant advantage of the client.