Translation is a professional service that remains an enigma for many business people. At the same time, translation is something that we all encounter just about every day in one form or another. Furthermore, effective translation is a business imperative for optimizing success in international markets. So how do all the translations get done and how does the industry generally work?
Types of Translation
There are two basic forms of translation – human and machine.
The vast majority of translations are still performed by human translators. While one might think that anyone able to speak another language is capable of performing translations, this is absolutely false. Translators are professionals whose training goes far beyond language fluency. First and foremost, professional translators are great writers. This is due to the fact that translation requires a rewriting of the original text in order to capture its meaning and intent in another language.
Machine translation, in contrast, is translation software that performs the work that human translators would otherwise do. There are various producers of these translation tools and they have been around for decades. These translation tools represent an alternative to human translation when speed and cost trump the need for translation accuracy. While speed and cost are important for every translation project, most translations are still performed by humans because translation quality is the most critical issue.
Basic Industry Structure
Stakeholders
The Buyer
First and most importantly, you have the client. Because translation is so ubiquitous in today’s business world, translation buyers are found in countless industry verticals (i.e. law firms, marketing agencies, manufacturers, government, medical devices, retail etc.) wearing numerous hats (project managers, paralegals, researchers, procurement professionals, etc.). Similar to legal and accounting services, professional translation services are now among those services essential to doing business in today’s global economy.
The Professional Translation Company
The professional translation company is the entity that most often interfaces with the client. These firms have staff such as Managing Directors, Account Managers, and Project Managers that are trained and capable of handling the countless tasks, administrative issues, and the inevitable challenges involved in delivering high quality translations on time and on budget.
These firms will also house all the technology necessary for the secure and efficient management of translation projects. This is more important than many realize because each time a translation is performed intellectual property is created. Professionally managing this IP is among the more important roles played by a professional translation company. And if done so well, the added value will appear in shorter turn around times, reduced costs, and more consistent/accurate translations.
Professional translation companies will also tend to offer many services so that most buyers can source all of their translation needs in one place. These additional services would include but are not limited to multiple languages, translation/editing/proofreading, quality assurance, and interpretation.
Finally, professional translation companies offer buyers a source of accountability. Because many have local offices the buyer has someone to turn to when challenges inevitably arise. Receiving quality translations delivered on time and on budget is important to many businesses, thus dealing with a professional translation company will be a strong fit in those cases. This is opposed to dealing with an on-line, off shore, or less sophistication organization, none off whom will likely have the infrastructure to deliver the type of partnership offered by a professional translation company.
The Translators
The profession of translator is obviously not new. Despite this fact, most business people either do not know or understand much about this global population of language professionals. Intuitively, most understand the importance of translation throughout history. However, in a professional business context, the profession has evolved extensively and the role of the modern translator is relatively unknown.
Translators are obviously the “humans” in human translation. Specifically, they are the ones translating text, content, documents, etc. from one language into another. How they go about this varies greatly depending on whom you are dealing with.
At the most basic level, freelance translators are individuals working from home, either full or part time, performing translations on their computers. Next, there are groups of freelancers that work together. This is more sophisticated insofar as there are multiple translators working on the same project thus adding editing and/or proofreading which leads to a higher quality output. Still more refined is when a larger group of translators join forces and start a company. These organizations will not only offer in-house quality control, but will tend to specialize in one or more industry verticals such as legal, technical, or medical texts.
Finally, the translator’s skill set has also evolved. It is no longer sufficient for a translator to only possess language translation skills. The ability to manipulate the technologies that facilitate the translation process is now essential as well. Successful translators also tend to focus on one or two specialties. For example, Spanish Translator is an incomplete professional description. Spanish Legal Translator or Spanish Technical Translator is what professional translation companies will be looking for when recruiting new talent.
Dynamics
From an industry structure perspective it is important to understand the distinction between the professional translation company and the translators. Furthermore, it is key to be aware of how the two work together and do/do not work with the buyer.
As stated above, it is the professional translation company that works directly with the buyer because they have the infrastructure and personnel to do so. In addition, professional translation companies offer a breadth of services that make the process of procuring language services simpler and more convenient for the client.
Next, professional translation companies work with translators on a contract basis. This is a very important point as many sometimes think that professional translation companies employ the translators. This does not work for several reasons. First, translation projects are just that, projects. It is not a defensible strategy for professional translation companies to work with translators on a full time basis because projects require expertise that only multiple teams can provide. Thus, a contract relationship makes the most sense. In addition, even the most sophisticated group of translators is not set up to deal with client issues. They prefer to focus on translation, their core competence, and the leave the client issues (e.g. project management, administrative tasks, relationship management, case resolution, work flow management, marketing, etc.) to the professional translation companies.
Conclusion
Translation is something that most professionals encounter frequently whether they realize it or not. Whether the impact is direct or indirect, translation is a rapidly growing component of modern business. A better understanding of the basics described above will at worst be interesting, hopefully, and at best help professionals find a translation partner should the need for one materialize.
Frederick Marx is the CEO of Keylingo Translations™, a multi-language translation company with offices across the US and Canada. Keylingo Translations™ provides exceptional local service combined with global technology and infrastructure.