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Finding the Translation Service Provider
by Terralíngua      Posted in  July 12, 2013
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Finding the Translation Service ProviderAll language providers promise linguistic quality assurance. Ideally, even if they do not, they must. However, when you are looking for a quality provider, you need to know how one QA process from the provider is better or worse than the other. Secondly, you also need to know how the process suits your project.

The Overall Process

If you know the overall process in a translation project, it will save you from a lot of worries. You need to know if the quality of translation is free from errors and accurate. If you know the language of translation well enough, you will get some idea about the quality of work. The first question every client asks is: how they would know that the translation is up to the mark? The provider cannot offer linguistic quality assurance unless they are reputable and well established in their field of work. So, the client needs to know their credentials, the past record of their work, and the complaints against them in the past and how amicably the disputes with clients were resolved in the past.

If the provider is trustworthy, it is easy to rely on providers promise. You may interview the provider to learn about their overall process. If you have the slightest of doubts, it is best to hunt for the other providers. The process should take care of linguistic collaboration, editing, proof reading and final revisions. In other words bulk translation work requires collaboration and multi-tasking. It is a team work rather than an individual effort. When clients get an insight into their process, they can be reassured if the quality of their work will meet the expectations the clients have.

The key to good translation is objective revisions to ensure linguistic quality assurance. On the other hand subjective changes are best refrained from. In other words, process can give an insight into the quality.

The Tools Used

At the time of interview, you may like to learn about the tools the provider use. The tools used by the provider offers an insight into linguistic quality assurance. Some of the tools to look for are style guide, translation memories, and glossaries specific to the client. Ask them if they are willing to work with reviewers in your country. Additionally, you may like to learn from the clients the evaluation of linguists they have in place and how do they conduct reevaluation of their work.

The purpose of tools in the translation industry is to bring about standardization in the work they perform. In other words, no matter who performs the translation job, the final result should be comparable. While this can be easily achieved in translation of scientific and technical documents, it may not be so easy in the translation of literary and cultural works. Yet, the hall mark of linguistic quality assurance is a certain level of standardization in the work process, tools used and the final outcome to meet the linguistic quality assurance.

These are some of the tips that will assist you in understanding the quality assurance and the translation process of the provider you have chosen to work with. All industries have quality assurance in place and the translation industry is no exception. If your quality assurance provider doesn’t answer your queries, you may look for the other providers. A good quality assurance has a well defined process in combination with right tools to take care of your translation needs.

Finding the right translation provider is not going to be difficult if you can put some pertinent questions on the process and quality assurance to them. The good providers have a process in place to meet the linguistic quality assurance. In addition, they should have the right set of tools to work with.

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