We usually hear clients complain that the translation company’s work fails to meet their requirements. In fact, some failures have taken place even before the translation project is to be assigned officially. The lack of communication of their cooperation leads to the client’s discontent on the translation result. What’s the cause of such discontent? The answer lies in some way of communication and cooperation between translation companies and the clients. This article shows some tips clients should pay attention to before contracting with the company.
First, before the client makes a decision to choose a proper translation company as his service provider, he’d better do a survey to investigate credit standing of translation companies, the number and qualifications of staff in the company, and what the most important is to make sure whether the company has the translators with the specialty that can meet his requirements. Take engineering translation for example, the translator who has professional engineering knowledge and the fittest expression ability for target language is an ideal candidate.
Second, once having chosen the company, the client had better provide some background information and references to the company as ample as possible, including the previous translation texts, technical terminology, communication purpose, target audience and so on. Because every profession has its particularity, the translation company isn’t able to be accomplished in every field. A well-defined original document will give the opportunity to guarantee a satisfying translation and make translators go directly on the right way such as context style, format, and typesetting. This can be trouble-saving if the client explains his requests of needs clearly to the translation company.
Third, the client should set up quality criteria together with the translation company for the client’s final review and approval of the translation work. The layout request should also be made clear to the vender according to its publishing situation. If the client has specific requests, he should clarify them and put forward to his vender at first. The quality criteria should include technical terminology, consistency, veracity of expressions and readability.
Forth, as to the pricing, there is general average pricing in the translation industry with varieties from one company to another. Some clients hold the view that the company charges high may produce translation with better quality. In some situations the client just compare different quotations makes them neglect the quality result that should be got by the client’s specific demands.
Fifth, the deadline is supposed to be fixed according to the agreement by both sides. If it is not in emergency, the client should give as much time as possible to the vender. Translation is a complicated and laborious work. Even for the most experienced translator, the workload of 2500 words per day is a limit for a good quality work. The client’s consideration can help the vender devote enough time and energy to the working process.
Sixth, the client is suggested to make clarification of the service responsibility on the translation vender. If the translation company cannot accomplish the work on time, or if the final work doesn’t meet client’s demand, what responsibility should it take? If upfront deposit has been paid, Should the client be refunded? All these need to be discussed by both parties.
All in one, a good communication at the very beginning is a guarantee to a qualified translation. It is highly suggested an agreement signed for the benefit of client. A detailed contract consists of the requirements of client for the translation work such as the layout, format, pricing, payment method, compensation for failure and the deadline.
Expanding your MLM recruiting efforts into international markets with books and products will mean that language and translation will be one of many challenges. As well you will need to do market research, finding ways to distribute and perhaps even dealing with legal and banking problems. Regardless of all these things, don’t make translation unimportant or you won’t get very far.
Reports out of the U. S. State Department say that in general U. S. businesses may lose $50 billion in possible sales due to poor translations. This number could include your MLM business. If you are trying to market with a translation that is inaccurate or culturally unsuitable, you will be dead in the water. By using accurate translations you will communicate a high quality representation of your products or services and leverage your marketing message.
So just how do you get accurate translations? Not with computer-generated translations. It’s not smart to use computer-generated translations for your marketing messages as they just don’t do a good enough job and your information looks unprofessional to native speakers.
Finding a competent translation service can be difficult because there are literally thousands of them and the industry is unregulated. As well, unless you speak the language yourself you won’t be able to judge the quality of the translation.
Expanding you MLM marketplace through translation does need not to be limited to your local area. Translations can be sent by e-mail, and usually you can contact the translator by phone. You might find it easier to work with a company based in your own country however. Most translation services will give you a free price quote for your situation.
Check list for finding competent translation:
1. Will your project be handled by a native speaker? Someone fluent in the language may do fine but only those native to the language have the exact feel for it. Translations done by native speakers make your translations sound natural to your market.
2. Will your project be handled by someone who knows your industry? If the translator does not understand terms the outcome could be incorrect.
3. Will your project be handled by someone who works from their native country? If you work with a translation company that has people located in your country of choice, your translations will be up to date and linguistically and culturally correct.
4. In what file Format will your project be delivered? Make sure you use a translation service that works with the same file formats you use to avoid a problem. As well be sure that the company’s technology is up to date in wr78$(16case there are revisions at a later time.
5. Ask what the Quality Assurance procedures are and if your project is checked before it’s sent out.
6. Ask for references to others that the company has done work for. Contact references and ask if they were satisfied with the translation company’s services.
After you have chosen a translation service, work closely with them to ensure the quality of your project. However, don’t get into a ‘rush’ situation as this risks project quality. Be sure that your source material is well written and offer as much background material as needed to help the translator understand your product and learn your business terms. As well, it’s good to be available for questions during your MLM translation project. That way there’s no guessing to meet deadlines.
Expanding your marketplace through translation can open new avenues of revenue, but it must be done accurately.
Translation companies are now facing a lot of problems which will hold back their future development. This paper puts forward six suggestions about enhancing the translation’s essential competitiveness and ensuring its sustainable development.
With vigorous development of globalization, increasingly economic, technological and cultural exchanges between nations have spawned a huge translation service market since the end of last century. Translation service providers and practitioners are facing unprecedented opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, translation service is becoming an essential drive for modern social development; At meantime, it faces many complex problems that hold back the further sustainable development. To enhance this industry’s essential competitiveness and to ensure its development in a sustainable manner, the following strategies should be adopted:
1. Attaching greater importance to self-discipline as well as the regulation of the industry. Unlike other industries or in-house translators, a translation company usually has a large number of freelancers working for it, which causes troubles in the management of a company. Therefore, it’s the duty of freelancers, in-house translators and companies to defend the dignity of this industry for its sustainable and benign development.
2.Pushing for the formulation and perfection of national standards on translation and interpretation. The particularity and difficulty of the quality in translation industry is that there is something negotiated between client and the translator, as suggested by Schaffner. So quality assessment procedures in a translation company are no longer an individual responsibility, but have become a corporate issue.
3. Facilitating professionalization of translation and translation training. It should be recognized that it is useful for translators to be able to benefit from continuing education courses. Moreover, it is growing recognized that translation is interdisciplinary. Training program for translator or interpreter must not only stress on bilingual competence, but also attach equal importance to hands-on practice, knowledge and skills of other disciplines, such as terminology management, desktop publishing, computer skills and knowledge of specialized fields.
4. Tapping into available resources and significantly expanding the industry. Each translation company has its unique advantage and specialty. It’s highly recommended that companies cooperate and coexist with each other on a resource sharing and mutually beneficial basis.
5. Enhancing the profile of the translation industry, promoting translators’ and interpreters’ rights and interests. Translation companies can take part in more public welfares in order that society gets a better understanding of the value of theirwork. Meanwhile, translation is a knowledge business. Consequently, human resources remain the most important factor. Protection or their rights and reward to the diligent are keys to arouse their enthusiasm and creativities.
6. Gaining a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of translation as an industry. Knowing what position the company in is always good for it to make a long-term development program.
As one of the translation companies, Transhorsa Translation Company, we put forward six suggestions abovefrom our years’ devotion to this industry and experiences accumulated, in the hope of contributing to maintain a canonical, regular and healthy-developing translation market.
Under the circumstances of globalization, doing businesses on a global scale, recruiting translation talents from all over the world and integrating computer-aided translation technology into the businesses are three important strategic decisions that can bring success to translation companies.
Nowadays, many businesses get onto the track of globalization, so do translation services. In the process of globalization of translation services, if translation companies want to run their businesses successfully, they have to do three things on a strategic level to meet the challenges brought about by globalization.
First, they have to expand the company on global scale; second, they have to recruit translation talents coming from all over the world; third, they have to integrate computer-aided translation technology into management.
In the past, many translation companies delivered services only to some local customers. Since the local translation market was not very big, translation companies were always forced to attract some other businesses like printing, card making, advertising, etc. By doing so, they could make small money, but they could never expect to run their business in a more professional manner and on a large scale. However, with the development of globalization, translation has become one of the most popular industries across the world, which may include projects from small ones like translation of driving licenses, score lists of the students to big ones like providing interpreters to international conferences, preparing various negotiations, translating scientific materials in many fields, and so on. As the market is growing，running the business locally can not meet the requirements of globalization any more. In order to expand the translation company on a global scale, the company has to narrow its business scope, enlarge its business platform, build offices in cities across the world and manage its business in the direction of specialization.
In addition to running translation business professionally on a global scale, translation companies also need to recruit employees from all over the world. In the past, since translation companies only receive clients at home, the language types they engage in are limited to only several most popular languages in the world, such as English, French, Russian, Japanese, etc. Under the circumstances of globalization, whereas, the language translation may involves many native language conversions in the world, so translation companies have to recruit proficient translators from all over the world.
Last but not the least, when the market is globalized, it is also very important for integration of computer-aided translation technology into translation management and control process of the company. Decades ago, most translators did translation sentence by sentence only with the help of their brain. Although they often met with very similar expressions in one project running hundreds of pages, they had to translate those expressions again and again since they didn’t have any computer-aided translation software. In recent years, the usage of software such as TRADOS, CAT, transit, etc. has improved the working efficiency of the translation greatly. Usually, these kinds of translation assistant software have memory function, electronic glossary bank and search engine. With the help of them, the translators can search and make a comparison of the translated sentences in a fast manner so that they never need to translate those identical expressions which appear on different pages of the same article repeatedly, they can save the time which was used to repeatedly consult dictionaries thus improve their translating speed by a large margin.
Of course, in the globalization process, if translation companies want to run its business successfully, doing the above-mentioned things is not enough and many new problems may also come forth, but these three things mentioned above do play a very important role for development strategy of a translation company and ensure the business success.
Under the circumstances of globalization, doing businesses on a global scale, recruiting translation talents from all over the world and integrating computer-aided translation technology into the businesses are three important strategic decisions that can bring success to translation companies.
Nowadays, many businesses get onto the track of globalization, so do translation services. In the process of globalization of translation services, if translation companies want to run their businesses successfully, they have to do three things on a strategic level to meet the challenges brought about by globalization.
Abstract：This article illustrates the necessities of the professional translation services in several aspects, such as the advantage of professional translation services，the huge market needs in translation field, the dissatisfactory situation of current translation services, etc
Language is an important inter-medium of information exchanging, experience sharing, cultural bearing, etc. As the bridge of different languages, professional translation services have become more and more subservient to the society, particularly in the business field.
As we all know, the world now has entered into an age of globalization, which means that communication among different countries in this decade is more frequent than any other decades in the world history. Today, speakers of different languages may sit together to talk about their families, their dreams, and most importantly the business related things. Statistics show that more than 480 multinational companies has invested in China or set up administrative offices in China among all the top 500 multinational companies in recent years. Meanwhile, China’s foreign trade continued to maintain a steady and rapid development in 2007, and the total import and export volume, which for the first time reached a new high of 20 thousand billion U. S. dollars, still kept a growth rate of about 20% during the past six years. In this case, translation plays an important role in business communication. In order to transform information accurately, professional translation services is of essential importance.
To meet the needs of the market, it is found that a great amount of translation companies has sprung up overnight and are on a high increase. However, feedbacks show that many translation works performed are not so satisfactory to meet clients’ expectations. In fact, at the present time, there still exist lots of small companies that usually organize the free-translators to do the work temporarily, leading to the problems such as low quality of translation works, delay of the clients’ business, or even cooperation disruption. Actually, this problem has been pointed out by many experts who indicated that service quality and talent management in translation field need to be further enhanced. Currently, the output value in translation field has surpassed 20 billion Yuan (RMB); although a large amount of translation companies has established, compared with the European and American market, China’s translation market is in a chaos, such as lack of guarantee for the translation quality, specific division of labor shortage as well as requisite of standard market price. In this circumstance, professional translation services are in an urgent need.
Why professional translation services can solve all the problems above? As we all know, professional translation services provide the market not only with translation talents but also convenience for searching those services concerned. On one hand, professional translation services run on the basis of a group of excellent and professional translation talents, who are masters of various kinds of languages in different fields, which fundamentally ensures the quality of translation works; on the other hand, professional translation services consist of a complete service system, which not only serves the clients with translation works, but also provide the clients with support services such as interaction platform, price inquiry service, customers’ evaluation system and so on. All of these make it convenient for the customers to gain the information about the professional translation services easily, accurately and duly, find the appropriate translation company or make a judgment of their qualification in translation services.
Aristotle once said “excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly, because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit”. As for translation, professional translation services that can guarantee quality of translation works and provide supportive services are really a necessity to the market today and it will surely benefit the translation field in the long run.
Summary: What’s the relationship between a pack of assorted beans and multilingual translation? We are supply well-meaning services in the public and creating private companies, constructing thickets of bamboozling artifice and stifling offers to serve the people.
I speak three different languages with various degrees of proficiency —- Chinese, my mother tongue, pretty English, and enough French to get into a discussion with the French teacher in my college about our cultural differences. I have also dabbled a little in Japanese. As a part-time translator, I have never done any work on multilingual translation, but I am clearly acknowledging the absurdity that the modern translation industry takes multilingual translation as a derivative of bilingual translation.
Any kind of translation is a process to paraphrase one language into another, while multilingual translation is the same process done by a translator whose native language is neither the source language nor the target one. The fact that the clients or translation companies prefer the multilingual translation relies on not only the mutual trust, but also the operational cost and risk.
Due to lack of international communication and cooperation in translation industry, customers’ fossilization results in. The customers will prefer the same translation company in whatever conditions after they have fulfilled the company’s work for several times. As a duckling will imprint the first thing that feeds it, and thereafter follow around, so do the loyal customers who imprint their long-term cooperator. When the clients want amultilingual translation, they may prefer an old translation company in China, instead of a new one in Europe whose native language is either the source language or the target one.
Some Chinese translation companies do not possess multilingual ability, but still take multilingual translation as their special service. They use Chinese as a medium, i.e. to translate the source language into Chinese, and then translate the Chinese into the target language. Due to the language and culture diversity, the accuracy of this kind of multilingual translation is much lower.
The other reason for the existence of multilingual translation maybe is the cost. The exchange rate of Yuan against foreign currencies is so high that clients abroad prefer domestic translation services, which is breeding the soil of multilingual translation. Due to the globalization, the language skills of domestic and international translators are becoming compatible with internationally accepted practices. Therefore, in China, it is economically available. I wonder whether it is an element of the socialism with Chinese characteristics or not.
Despite the optimistic predictions, the development of the translation industry will not be an easy flight. Great challenges loom ahead, including fiercer competition from within and outside the country, cost control, technology bottlenecks and further deregulation of the market. Then, fierce competition contributes to multilingual translation in China, which is spread as a publicity and stunts to help expend business or to attract clients.
Last week, in a local Carrefour, I did encounter one tiny object that seemed to epitomize the absurdity of the domestic modern translation industry. It was a pack of assorted beans, which contains soybean, mung bean, pea, etc. On the brilliantly sparkling plastic package, there was a price tag with an impressive printing — 20 Yuan. The current price of any kind of beans in it is only one tenth of that price. Several beans can be revalued after being mingled together, but in my eyes, beans are still beans. Such items are no more than naked commercial promotion aimed at attracting eyeballs. And so does multilingual transition.
There are two main types of translation blogs,and there are also four essential concepts in them:reliability, profession, updating and confidentiality. In this paper, I separately introduce the reasons for those four concepts.There is one thing puzzling me for a long time that when we were young, diary is our one of the most private things; but due to the blog, more and more people tend to public their personal thinking. Nowadays, blog is developed into forms of diversity, commercialization and publication. Just type “translation blog” on search engines, you can find thousands of different types that are related to the word of translation. There are two main types of translation blogs: one is for commercial, and this translation blog always belongs to one company, the main function of which is to advertise the services of that company. The other is for personal affairs, this translation blog is related to the translation-lovers or people engaged in translation business, most of which is for personal hobby with unprofitable purposes. The common ground of these twotranslation blogsis sharing and connecting. They share their information with millions of people and provide a platform for contacting. In fact, I have built up my own translation blog for only a few months, and it indeed brings me a lot of fun. I acquainted many people with the same-interest and exchanged lots of novel points. Although I am not a veteran in the area of blog, I here provide only my personal point of view to thetranslation blog.
One, it should be reliable. Because blog is an open platform which faces numberless people in different regions and many of them maybe depend on the message of yourtranslation blogto deal with their problems, the message of your blog must be real. If you are ambiguous in the expression of a translation, you must figure it out clearly and ensure its correctness. Or else, you would not write it in your blog.
Two, it should be professional. Differing from the usual personal blog, the translation blog refers to the specialized field of translation. In this condition, every word you wrote should be precise. Of course, you can design the style in your own way and write things in which you skilled. For my own example, I built an independent unit of conventional new words in my blog, and I introduce some words which shall be known by new freshers. For instance, in the phrase “built 100 million”, here the word “built” does not mean “construct”, but means “increase”. In the same way, the word “dive” in phrase “dive 100 million” means to decrease 100 million. In fact, the words that are used in the foreign news are always very vivid.
Three, it should be frequently updated. We know that the translation field needs to renew unceasingly, which is caused by the changeability of our languages. Therefore, the contents in our translation blog also need to refresh timely. This is not only good for readers to know the new information, but also beneficial to the writers for maintaining the proper position, instead of falling behind. Usually you may find that updating your blog becomes a part of your life, and this must be grateful for the writers.
Four, it should be confidential. As many translation blogs areestablished by professional translators, these people may be connected with some confidential documents, like business contracts, legal files, company’s internal conference records or personal privacy. The contents of these documents may be nothing with the blog writers, but must be valuable and crucial to those corporations and related individuals. Therefore, the writings could never be such kind information in their blogs.
As the development of internet, blog will have to become a new stage to show the individuals. For thosetranslation blogs which want to attract more readers, it is necessary to grasp the concepts of the reliability, profession, updating and confidentiality. There are many other ways to make your blog more charming and interesting. In fact, I am also on the explored path of bettering my translation blog, and it is hoped that one day my blog will become your regularly visiting place.
As China deepens its reform and opens wider to the outside world, its foreign trade with different countries has been growing rapidly. As a byproduct, translation involving many fields is inevitable in business transactions, information exchanges, and other areas in need of communication between different languages. However for any single translation company, its translation resources are relatively limited. If they are to provide quality language services in a variety of areas, they need to cooperate with other translation companies so that all of them can benefit from a shared large pool of translation resources.
Statistics show that currently 60% information worldwide is written in English while 35% is in German, French, Russian, Japanese and other languages. Obviously translation resources for less popular languages are even more difficult to procure.
Although most of translation companies claim that they are able to provide multilingual services, actually, majority of their translators use English as their working language and their non-English translators are in desperate shortage. As a consequence, English translations are of better quality than other languages. And more often than not, translation involves many fields, especially some professional ones. But lots of translators are pure language majors without professional knowledge of particular field.
To overcome those disadvantages, it is important for translation companies to share their translation resources so that they can achieve common development.
Several measures should be taken into consideration with regard to sharing of translation resources among different translation companies:
To expand translation resources by cooperation with other companies. Due to the small size of many translation companies, it is difficult for them to handle large project, especially with translation of languages other than English. For them to survive in the market, they need to come into alliance with other translation providers. Strategic partnership will enable them to strike a win-win deal. They can make up for one another’s weaknesses while taking advantage of each other’s strength.
To share translation resources with higher institutions of learning. Universities and colleges are cradle of knowledge and resources. Translation companies need to be in close contact with them in order to be informed of the latest trends in the development of translation resources. They can make good use of translation resources provided by the universities and colleges and have their staff recharged in specific field.
To find translation resources on the Internet. Internet has developed into such a vast sea of information that there you can almost find anything you need, particularly with the help of search engines, such as Google. By typing in the right sky words, you can link to the websites which can offer you the information that you are looking for. Also there are many websites that provide free translation resources available to translators. With the help of Internet, non-English translation can also be much easier and more correct.
To build translation resources database for future sharing. It is a good idea to store the already-done translation into a database, so that you can draw from it in the future in case of the need for the same translation. In this way, it can save translators time and energy meanwhile quality isn’t affected. The application of some softwares in this regard can achieve the same result.
The prosperity of a translation company depends on its translation team and its e-relationship. Setting up a translation company, we are eager to recruit more talented translators and build solid cooperative relationships with big corporations. Comparing the two elements, how to supervise a genius is more difficult and challenging for a manager of a translation company.
As we all know, there is a genius boy named Fang Zhongyong in ancient China. When he was young, he showed brilliant talent in studying. But when he grew up, he was just a common person. The key reason is that he didn?t receive proper education. His parents always showed him off instead of training him. The same examples happened, happen and will happen in the translation world. Outstanding translation genius emerges and dims out all of a sudden. The genius is to blame, so is the manager. How to avoid a genius becoming mediocre is a tough and unavoidable problem that tests our manager of the translation company. It is no doubt that excellent managers have their own unique way. The following are our suggestions.
First, treat the genius as equally as other workers. This doesn?t mean ignoring him. Of cause, genius deserves important tasks and better pays. However, we should pay attention to the way we talk to him and avoid praising him before other staff too often. Too many praises and favors spoil a genius. He will think high of himself and do not work hard any more.
Second, give him more chances to upgrade himself. As Einstein said, ?Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.? ?No one is born a genius, although much of their skills can be inherited from their parents. Genius only means hard-working all one?s life. With quick mind and great learning ability, he has an endless interest in his field. But on the contrary, his extraordinary restricts his self-development. Over time, his focus may narrow. So an excellent manager should help him enlarge his scope. It is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. There is just one step between genius and common. What a manager can do is stop the genius from stepping backward.
Third, give him more room on their work. Genius cannot live up to the title if he just does what the manager tells him to. The ability of the genius is awakened by their environment, and sustained by their aptitude for hard work. Internal conflict, the challenge of hard-fought intellectual inquiry, and even glory are some of the many factors that provoke the genius to act. Intentionally or not, geniuses become leaders, lighting the way to a brighter future for the rest of staff and company. They serve as an inspiration, a reminder of our innate potential. You may sometimes feel that his idea is different with you and sometimes can not understand him. At that time, trust him, and trust his decision. He will bring some unthinkable experience for the company.
What is a genius? Ralph Waldo Emerson has a classical answer; ?to believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men–that is genius”. As a manager of a translation company, you are fortunate to have talented translators working for you. But remember, it?s always easier to find a genius than to manage him. Doing well, your company will succeed, and the genius will bring his abilities into play.
