Sample Translations Break The Rules
In my opinion, most of the requests come from customers that are new to translation
. They no doubt feel this is an obvious way to test the quality of our work.
Sample translations are not the best way to evaluate quality; typically, they dont follow standard translation processes and they break all best practices. Its time we work together to educate our customers.
There are best practices that we all follow to give our customers the highest quality translations. Most sample translations dont allow us to follow best practices. The reason is as follows:
Best practice is to obtain a current glossary or develop one from scratch and submit it for the customers review and approval before beginning the actual translation. For sample translations, a glossary is not normally provided, nor is there time to create and receive feedback and approval.
Our customers typically provide us with style guides as part of best practice. Even if they only have the English style guide, its a place to start and we can help develop the style guides for each additional
language. A style guide is rarely provided for a sample translation.
Product training is very important to translators, especially if its software, hardware, or a medical device thats being translated. The companies that receive the highest quality translations from their language service providers invest in training. Sample translations never have associated training.
Over the course of a normal translation process, translators ask questions about content. Customers provide answers by clarifying terms, meaning, intent, etc., and translators then implement the answers. They dont guess about intended meaning, but they take the feedback and implement it.
To provide the highest quality translations, we all work to find translators who are SMEs in certain areas, whether its medical, financial, or IT. These expert resources are in high demand and booked well in advance of projects to insure the right resources are working with the right customers. Sample translations assume that the best resources are available on-demand.
A 1000-word sample gives absolutely no indication of an LSPs ability to perform under real-life conditions. Most projects are orders of magnitude greater than 1000 words and require far more than one translator to complete the project.
Under sample
translation conditions there is no way to extrapolate how the LSP would perform if the volume increased by an order of 100, if three more languages were added to the mix, if two projects had to be executed in parallel, etc. And, of course, there is no measure of the value that professional project management brings to a project, especially to the large multilingual projects.
By using materials already translated in our customers domain that comply with our companys best practices, we can meet the customers goal in reviewing a sample of our work. The customer can then decide if our translation quality is up to par. By educating our customers on sample translations, we can still meet their needs by providing true representations of our work.
Aunes Oversettelser AS has been in the business for 26 years, and we are specialized in technical translations. We are specializing in the Nordic languages, and can offer services into Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Icelandic. The premier translation agency for Norway and the Nordic region! Technical translation services for businesses in the Nordic countries and translation agencies world-wide.
by: carmen
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