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By Andres Heuberger

How to minimize costs and maximize quality

While translators have been around since the Babylonians, the translation industry is still relatively young. Characterized mostly by "mom-and-pop" shops-approximately 400 in the U.S. alone-the industry is currently undergoing dramatic change, fueled by a number of fundamental forces:

• The rapid globalization of business has caused a surge in demand for professional translation services.
• In an effort to cut overhead, companies are outsourcing more activities, including foreign-language services.
• As companies rely more on the Internet for commerce and information dissemination, they will need to translate a greater percentage of information to gain a competitive edge and better serve consumers.

In response to these forces, the industry is consolidating and companies are specializing in specific industries. While this is a positive trend in terms of offering clients exactly what they need, it also leads to a myriad of questions.

When Problems Occur
In theory, the "global marketplace" sounds like an inviting source of untapped markets and unlimited sales. But for those companies that mismanage translation projects, the global marketplace can be a very unwelcome environment.

Horror stories are commonplace, running the gamut from huge budget overruns, to global product recalls due to production or translation errors, to lost market share for products that did not make it to market in time, and to products translated so poorly they embarrassed in-country sales staff.

Lack of Preparation...

Many client organizations suffer from a lack of experience and know-how regarding translation and web globalization. The managers that are put in charge often have non-linguistic backgrounds and do not speak a foreign language. The task of translating documents is often handed to them on top of their regular responsibilities, leaving them to struggle to develop an approach to multilingual documentation.

Frequently, companies place all of their emphasis on saving short-term dollars by selecting the seemingly cheapest approach to translation (award to lowest-bid vendor, use of in-country affiliates) while ignoring qualifications and conflicting demands on internal resources.

Add to this a fast-changing business environment (especially on the web), accelerated time-to-market pressures, ever-changing priorities, and a lack of communication within client organizations, and you are left with a never-ending loop of translation changes and reprioritizations.

The translation industry doesn't help the situation. The industry is fragmented and customers often find it difficult to obtain information on vendors, quality control processes, and case studies. As a result, managers tasked with translating their products have little opportunity to learn the "right" approach to translation and they often end up reinventing the wheel as they go along.

...and Miscommunication...

Few translation clients have instituted cross-departmental task forces to deal with translation or localization or multilingual labeling. To many departments translation is a "black hole" and individuals do not understand what goes into a quality translation.

The person in charge of translations is sometimes not in the loop when it comes to product development schedules or engineering change orders. Requirements are thrown "over the wall" causing everybody downstream to switch into reactive mode. This then extends to the translation vendor who also does not receive any advance notice and is left to reprioritize schedules and resources at a moment's notice.

Roles are often unclear. In-country reviewers are usually not dedicated to proofreading translations. Which function takes precedence? Folks in charge of managing their company's translation efforts do so on top of an already-full work schedule.

To make matters worse, clients and vendors often do not see eye to eye. While the customer wants faster turnaround time ("people are breathing down my neck"), most vendors aggressively push for more time to handle work ("we need additional time to ensure a quality job"). Rarely do the partners sit down to agree on priorities, requirements, and ground rules.

...Lead to High Translation Costs

This lack of planning and communication causes delays and cost overruns, especially in environments that demand rapid product deployment and are faced with fast-changing technology requirements.

Customers are often astounded by how widely cost estimates will vary from vendor to vendor:

• Rates can differ dramatically.
• Services provided are often sketchy, leading to expensive and time-consuming change orders.
• There is no standard format for quoting translation projects. Some quotes will be expressed per word-source or target- while others will be quoted as a flat rate, per document, per page, or in one of a dozen other units.

There is no one easy way to solving all translation problems. Nevertheless, proper planning, communication, and vendor selection will drastically reduce stress, improve turnaround time, and keep translation costs manageable.

Three Steps to Successful Translation Management

The solutions presented here are not intended to be all-inclusive. They will not be appropriate to every company in every situation. But in our experience, there are three main contributors to successful translation management:

1. Increase Communication within Company and with Vendor

As with any project, it is important to involve key departments and individuals in the translation process. If possible, translations should be managed by one person within the company. This person's primary role is keeping translation projects on track and maintaining open lines of communications.

• Regular meetings. Insist on conducting regular status updates, both within the company and with the vendor. Depending on your requirements and volume of work, these meetings can consist of structured 15-minute telephone conference calls or all-day events. Use them to share information in all directions (schedules, changed priorities), raise questions, discuss problems/solutions, and to reaffirm requirements and deliverables.
• Involve vendors. The more your vendor knows about you, your company, and your products, the better they will be able to service your account. You might consider including them in product development planning sessions, sharing annual reports, introducing them to other vendors that you use.
• Use vendor resources. Your translation or localization vendor has a lot to offer-ask them to transfer knowledge to you and your team. Ask them for referrals to industry associations, web sites, and publications. Invite your account manager to make presentations to your team and to other departments. Meet the people working on your projects and ask them questions.
• Streamline the in-country review process. In-country distributors or affiliates are greatly impacted by translation. Obtain their buy-in-not just to the actual translations but also to the process and the vendors handling the translation. Clearly establish the role of the review (i.e., sign-off, edit pass, FYI) as well as the time allocated. Establish an auto-approve mechanism: if review comments are not received within x days, the affiliate is deemed to have accepted the translation without change.

2. Select Appropriate Vendors

There is no single "right" translation vendor. Depending on a company's industry, language needs, product cycle, budget, and organization, different vendors will be appropriate. The trick is to know what kind of vendor is appropriate for you.

When selecting a translation vendor, consider the following:

• Primary vendor. Centralize the bulk of your translation work with one primary vendor and maintain one backup vendor. That way, you can benefit from a centralized process, a smaller number of people involved, one set of procedures, and a reduced number of interactions.
• The affiliate trap. Beware of the temptation to have in-country affiliates or distributors do your translation. While some companies use this approach effectively, there are many more companies who are looking to minimize in-country reviews, let alone translation. Be aware of issues such as lack of control, long turnaround times, linguistic inconsistencies, and prolonged absences and vacations before attempting this.
• Specialization. Regardless of what vendors tell you, they cannot handle every subject matter in every language. Demand specialization. You need a partner who knows your business, understands your jargon, and is up-to-date on the technology you work with.
• Translation process. If your organization has a translation process, be sure that your vendor understands this process and fits into the process (i.e., technology, localization engineering, language specialization, DTP expertise, turnaround time). If no translation process exists, a vendor who has experience developing such processes will prove helpful.
• Quotations. Kick the tires on vendors' rates and proposals. Look beyond the quoted prices to understand the pricing methodology-you can learn a lot about a vendor's sophistication from their quote. Sample questions include: How will they help you keep costs in line? How are rates determined? What discounts are offered? What services are included?
• Communication. We already established how important communication is to the success of your translation effort. When selecting a vendor, learn who will manage your account. How comfortable are you with your contact, with other team members, and with company management? Who do you call if things go wrong? Is it easy to reach a person or are you caught in endless games of phone tag?

And, if things don't work out, don't be afraid to change vendors.

3. Continuously Improve Translation Process

Language is an art, not a science. Likewise, translation is not exact and will never be perfect-you would have a difficult time specifying what a "perfect" translation is.

You can, however, put in place a process to document, measure, and audit translation activities. In many companies, this falls within the realm of ISO 900x or similar standards. Even if an organization is not ISO-certified, a continuous improvement process for translation is essential to long-term success.

A prerequisite for this is that both the vendor and the customer have auditable, documented systems in place. These systems should detail responsibilities, work flow, required documentation and approvals, as well as quality measurements (several organizations, including the American Translators Association, publish standards for measuring translation quality).

Once the vendor and customer agree on appropriate quality and performance measures, hold the vendor responsible for measuring and reporting this data. Working together, the partners can now review historical data and set future performance goals. This will remove ambiguity from the process and allow the vendor and customer to know what translation really costs, how long it takes, and what improvements have been made.

Additional Tips and Suggestions

Grouped by subject, the following is a list of specific tips and suggestions to help you reduce translation costs and headaches. These points are intended as a checklist during the vendor-selection process.

Project Management

• Insist on a dedicated contact person who will be familiar with the day-to-day status of your projects.
• Determine whether the project manager works alone or with assistants.
• What project management tools does the company use?
• Are regular status reports available?

Linguistic Quality

• Before committing to a vendor do a small, paid sample project-without announcing that it is a test.
• Ask your in-country reviewers to evaluate each vendor's test and to rate each translation on a number of criteria.
• Insist on documentation for linguistic qualifications and processes: How many people will work on your projects? How are they selected and tested? Will they change in the course of the project?
• If appropriate, ask your vendor to use translation-memory and/or terminology-management software.
• Assist your vendor by providing them with existing, approved translations and terminology.

Engineering/Technical Quality

• Develop your products and web sites with the international market in mind.
• Qualify the vendor's engineering capabilities up-front: ask difficult questions, visit on-site, provide them with a small, paid sample engineering project.
• Clearly communicate your engineering expectations (bronze, silver, gold release).
• Assist your vendor by providing them with a localization kit and sufficient engineering support.

Desktop Publishing

• Determine who will handle desktop publishing: your internal organization, the translation vendor, or a third party. Qualify the persons' capabilities, equipment, and experience, especially if your work involves Asian languages.
• Be aware of text expansion (up to 30% over English) and Americanisms (800 numbers, colloquialisms) in your source documents before work begins-change orders are expensive.
• Determine layout specifications up-front, i.e., one document per language vs. multilingual documents, A4 vs. Letter vs. custom sizes, output of final deliverables.
• Evaluate SGML and related technologies for applicability to your documents. The benefits of these "format once, publish many" technologies are tremendous.

Cost Control

• Establish a translation budget.
• Develop a process of issuing Requests for Proposals.
• If at all possible, bundle work to take advantage of volume discounts and economies of scale.
• Clearly document your expectations and vendor deliverables before any work begins.
• If the vendor uses translation-memory tools, ask for a corresponding discount. If the vendor does not use translation-memory tools, consider selecting a vendor that does.
• Insist on separate pricing for each service; lump-sum quotes make it difficult to compare prices.
• Ask for volume discounts.
• Reduce Turnaround Time
• The key word is "process"-develop a process, measure its effectiveness, improve upon it.
• Centralize translation among as few people and departments as possible.
• Continually educate yourself, the vendor, and other departments within your company.
• Provide your vendor with a regular, rolling forecast of translation work so that they may plan and schedule resources.
• Bundle translation work given to the vendor.

Further Information

The following associations and publications are good sources for additional information on translation management, vendors, education, and case studies.

• Society for Technical Communication
• Localisation Industry Standards Association
• American Translators Association
• Multilingual Computing & Technology
• Localization Institute
• Project Management Institute
• International Webmaster Association

Andres Heuberger is an editor at multilingualwebmaster.com. He frequently writes on issues related to technology, translation, and regulations. Rants and raves can be sent to aheuberger@multilingualwebmaster.com.

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