From beginning to end, a translation project involves many steps. But when each step is placed with a different vendor, it can become very difficult to keep things on track in terms of turnaround time, cost, and quality.
Opting instead for a single vendor you can trust to centralize your language management can lead to a much more efficient translation process. Applying a centralized translation process saves on your translation costs and turnaround time, without having to sacrifice on quality.
We’ve all heard the same thing time and time again:
- You can get a fast, high-quality translation, but it’ll cost you
- You can get an affordable, high-quality translation, but it’s going to take time
- You can get a fast, affordable translation, but that’s going to impact the overall quality
Managing to find a vendor who can offer all three – speed, high quality, and affordable pricing – is next to impossible.
However, when you use a single vendor that applies a centralized translation process, it significantly improves cost-efficiency and saves on turnaround time, all without having to sacrifice on quality.
5 ways a centralized translation program adds value to your multilingual content strategy
Tools
It may seem obvious, but when everyone in the chain is working in the same platform with the same tools, it makes for a much more efficient translation process. There’s no worrying about trying to find someone with the right tools to receive your requests, open your reference materials, and translate your file types.
Your files move through a unified translation process without any time-consuming hiccups along the way. Files move from you to your vendor to the linguists and back again, without any need for additional manual input to keep things on track. This means improved translation turnaround time, which in turn leads to cost-savings in the long term.
Translation Memory (TM)
Translation memory is a repository for all previously translated content for a given language. A well-maintained translation memory means the more content you get translated, the more you can reuse past translations to speed up future productivity and reduce translation costs. Surprisingly, the more you translate, the more you tend to save!
Storing your TM and keeping it up-to-date can be a headache at times, especially if you are translating into multiple languages. Using a single vendor to manage your TM considerably reduces the risk of misplacing any of these essential language assets or forgetting to update them with your latest translations.
Terminology management
To maintain a coherent voice across your entire brand, it’s essential you ensure consistency when it comes to terminology. It may not always be possible to use the same translator for an entire project, especially if the volume is significant and the turnaround time is tight. With a glossary of terms, you can ensure all linguists are on the same page and everyone translates key terms in exactly the same way.
And, with a term base – a glossary specially linked to your translation tools – additional checks can be run during the quality assurance (QA) process to catch any instances where terms may not have been adhered to. Updating this language asset helps to speed up productivity because linguists have less terminology research to carry out. Centralized terminology management ensures better translation quality and a consistent brand identity for your audiences.
Transparency
Using several different vendors for the various steps involved in a translation project – just because they quoted the lowest price per service – isn’t always your best option. It can end up costing you more money and adding to the turnaround time.
A fully centralized translation management program from a single vendor lets you see what’s included in the service offering right from the get-go with no hidden costs.
When quoting, some agencies may not include indirect costs such as post-translation rework or project management in the initial pricing. This can lead to issues down the line, especially if the quality of the translation requires the file to be reworked. If you end up with a sub-par translation, it’s going to cost extra to fix, whether you choose to send it back to the same agency for rework or to send to a different editor to bring it up to par. Now your budget is affected and your project timeline thrown out the window! A single vendor could manage all of this for you from start to finish.
Trust
"Too many cooks spoil the broth", and this can certainly be true for translation management. If there are too many vendors or even too many steps involved, things can become very messy. Using one vendor you can really trust to centralize all your translation processes will ensure a more tightly run operation that provides long-term savings, improved turnaround times, and consistent high quality.
With Acolad language services, we take the tools as our base, add translation memory, sprinkle in some terminology management, and top it all off with expertise you can rely on to streamline your localization processes – and save!
The sooner you centralize your language assets and processes, the sooner you’ll reap the rewards.
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