Guide to Translation Services – How to find vendors and get a quality quote

By Bob Michaelson
President, LinguaMetrics, Seattle, WA US

Let’s say you come to work in the morning and find a request to “get this contract translated into Chinese asap!” What are your next steps?

Before we get into your response, let’s define some terms (skip this part if you have been through a project before): translation refers to the process of transforming one language rendition into another on paper or a computer (as opposed to interpreting, which is oral). It’s not a literal rendition, because language is full of cultural references, idioms, etc. Great translators understand that equivalent terms and phrases are often used to convey the meaning intended by the writer. Don’t use machine translation, i.e. automated translation web sites that do it for free; those are only useful for getting the gist of a block of text. If you translate you web site with MT you will be laughed out of the market! A quick example of a good translation, from a hypothetical online exam – “Your client’s business is based in Chicago…” Chicago can be translated into other languages phonetically, but let’s say in this case Chicago is a reference to “second city” or an industrial city; in many cases it would make more sense to use a city name from the country that represents your target market. For China, Wuhan and Harbin are industrial cities that might work for the example. For Japan, Osaka is considered the “second city.”

This example leads us to a definition of localization (we cover localization project management and How to send out a Request for Proposal in another guide on this site). The term is derived from computer terminology, since locale is the country or region where software/hardware is intended to be used. We at LinguaMetrics define localization as “translation +” or the art and science of transforming software to work in other countries as well as in the country where the software was developed. It includes culturally-aware translation of all text, captions, help tips, menus, database entries that show up in the web site or other application, plus graphic customization (at least translating the text within the graphics, which can be time-consuming and challenging), other illustrations and even video (sometimes dubbing is necessary, like in spaghetti westerns – but done better, so the audio matches the mouths of the actors!), plus possible engineering aspects.

Find a Vendor In the first example cited above, getting a contract translated into one language, your task is relatively easy: find a translator (or company) with expertise in legal translations and Chinese. But you do need to know that written Chinese has two main versions, “simplified” and “traditional” the former for the PRC and the latter for Taiwan. Plus, the contract may require other expertise depending on the companies/industry involved in the contract. Maybe it’s oil field drilling or medical or something else entirely.

Do web searches, ranging from general to very specific So, if you’re doing a web search to find possible vendors on Google or Bing.com be as specific as possible about the industry, “target” languages (that you’re translating into) and decide if you want a local vendor or it can all be done via email. So, for example, you could search for “contract translation Chinese Japanese Korean “oilfield drilling”” – which is a little too specific – so I substituted “legal” for “contract: on Google and Bing.com and got better results!

Conversely, you could start with a wide search, e.g. “legal translation” and you’ll get hundreds of thousands of results and lots of companies to consider. Many search engines allow advertisers to target local prospects, so the “sponsored” results should include some from your local area.

Talk to colleagues Getting recommendations from coworkers, colleagues at other companies or online review sites is a good way to evaluate prospective vendors. Better companies rely on “word of mouth” for marketing, along with advertising and sales reps. Some key questions include: did they deliver on time, according the agreed upon schedule, was there positive feedback from overseas subs about the quality and positive feedback from clients?

Ask for a list of completed projects and references Review the projects the prospective vendor has done to see if they are similar to your planned project; call the references and ask (like the questions asked of colleagues): did the vendor deliver on time? Was there positive feedback from overseas subs about the quality and positive feedback from clients?

When sending out an RFQ or RFP for an upcoming project, you’ll want to compare “apples to apples.” If one company bases most of their quote on “hours” or “pages” for translation, while another company bases their quote on “word count,” it could be difficult to compare them. So one could provide a template to prospective vendors where “Units” are already filled in for each category. For example, instead of leaving it to vendors to charge by the hour or by the graphic, one would fill in “per graphic” under units for that line item on a spreadsheet template.

Keep in mind different languages have beautiful scripts and characters, even for a legal contract!

To request a quote or for more information on this article email info@linguametrics.com Author Bob Michaelson is president of LinguaMetrics and has over twelve years experience in translation & localization in a wide range of roles.