Foreign language translation and localization support have become such a critical function in many businesses, organizations, and government agencies in today’s digital and globalized economy. Whether you sell products or services internationally, work with overseas partners for your manufacturing needs, or are targeting the rapidly growing Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in the United States, you most likely need language services.
By looking at your organization’s language needs from a higher, more strategic level, you can easily see the importance of optimizing your translation needs through a centralized approach. For example, if you have multiple departments or divisions within your organization, or have offices located across the United States and/or internationally, there is a strong likelihood that you are already working with multiple language service providers (LSPs). However, this may not be the best approach for ensuring that you are receiving the services you need, consistently, efficiently, and at the most reasonable price point.
Why is Centralization Important?
When you are running a business or organization, you need a consistent branding message. Consistent branding is one of the basics of Business Marketing 101! Therefore, it is only natural that you should also expect your foreign language translations to be consistent. If your HR Department is working with one translation company, and your legal department is working with another, you are not going to have consistency in the translations between business units. Not to mention, if your sales & marketing team is using multiple language service providers, then that is an even bigger problem.
Just like every business and organization has its industry-specific terminology and jargon, all translators have their own specializations and styles as well. While the two different flyers you are sending out – translated by two different translation companies (or even individual translators) into Spanish — may both be technically accurate, they will likely not be consistent in terms of style, word choice, etc.
Besides the linguistic advantages of consistency in following a centralized approach to your translation needs, there are many other advantages, such as simplification in billing/invoicing, communications, and the management of expectations.
What Other Advantages Are There to Centralization?
In addition to the above, one of the critical advantages of centralizing your translation operations is in building that ever-important client-vendor relationship. Your language service provider will, over time, come to learn your corporate culture, jargon, stylistic preferences, and more. Rather than just one more service provider to complete a single project and pay, you should be building a symbiotic relationship and a true partnership. Moreover, you are also gaining a service provider that not only gives you that all-important consistency and high level of quality control mentioned above, but also a higher level of accountability and service standards.
Of course, for most clients, cost is always a key concern. Working with a single vendor, even if their base pricing structure (i.e., per word rates) may appear to be more expensive than another company at first glance, you must consider the costs over time. Many language service providers offer discounts for large volumes as well as language technology solutions, such as Computer-Assisted Translation (CAT) and Translation Memory (TM) tools that provide significant savings for repetitious and similar content translated over time. If you work with multiple translation companies, you will not reap those benefits.
How Should You Go About Centralizing Your Translation Operations?
The first and most important item on your checklist should be finding the right language services provider. Besides asking for their pricing structure, check first to see if they specialize in your industry or field. If your business or organization is in the medical/healthcare or legal firms, you want to make sure your translators are also going to be subject matter experts in those fields.
It would be best if you also were prepared to discuss anticipated volumes of work, the languages you need to be translated (or localized), and any other expectations so that the language service provider thoroughly understands your needs and can negotiate the best pricing possible.
Another point to consider is choosing a translation provider that is adept with the latest language technology solutions. Whether it’s CAT/TM technology (referenced above), the latest Content Management Systems (CMS), if they can work with your website development tools, and the ability to integrate with your systems, these technologies should all be considered. This is especially so if your organization is translating large volumes of content. Language technology has taken some huge steps forward in recent years. Those technologies can be used to your advantage when it comes to improving consistency, quality, turnaround times, and costs. So, it would be best if you made sure the provider you choose is up-to-speed.
Once you have chosen your language services partner, you can begin to look at how you want to manage your language needs internally to be as efficient as possible. That could mean designating one person in your business or organization to serve as your “point person” for translation and localization needs. You also may want to look at how you are currently managing your multilingual content, ensuring version control, and make sure that your content that has already been translated and localized is going to be sufficient going forward. Your language partner can help you with all these things, even down to helping you to refine your marketing messages and branding in your target markets.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many advantages to optimizing your translation needs through a centralized approach. At Translation Source, we work with many types of businesses, law firms, and other types of organizations, in a variety of different industries, to develop and enhance their translation management approaches. And, we can take all that experience to provide you with a customized solution that will meet all your translation, interpretation, localization, and other language-related needs.
If you want to learn more about how Translation Source can help you take your translation and localization projects to the next level, please call us at (800) 413-7838 or email info@translation-source.com to speak with one of our experts!
