Five Reasons to Buy Quality Translation

This whitepaper offers tips on why to buy high-quality translation. It includes five reasons, providing you with a starting point to establish your quality requirements.

Introduction

The translation quality standards vary depending on the translation buyer. From this point of view, any potential or existing customers can be divided into three groups:

• Customers, who do not pay attention to quality. These include customers buying translation in a pro-forma manner, or just to look through the translation briefly, as well as those who did not establish their internal quality standards for translation
• Quality-aware customers, who do not have time/resources to ensure this quality. Typically, these are companies that do adhere to high standards in other business areas, but do not have enough experience to manage translation effectively
• Customers, who choose high quality as the only way to go. Typically, these are larger companies, who come to depend on translation as a component critical to success.

Why would the customers from the first and second group wish to move to the third one? Next, we will discuss five reasons that justify such move. Although not exhaustive, this list includes the most actual reasons for customers looking to find a translation vendor.

First Reason

The translation is mainly purchased to penetrate foreign markets, such as to make available a user manual for a device that you produced, or marketing collateral explaining the features of this device. In this scenario, your sales are proportional to translation quality. The more convenient and straightforward the user manual is, the more likely the satisfied end user is to recommend this device to a friend or buy another product from you. The more precisely and better the marketing collateral is translated, the larger impact it will have on the potential buyers. The translation mistakes and inappropriate style, on the contrary, will lead to underestimation across both existing and potential buyers. This will imminently reduce sales. Therefore, remember that quality translates into market success.

Second Reason

Another typical translation scenario is the cooperation with potential foreign partners/customers. For example, you can be negotiating about selling a large batch of own products or work to arrange an investment. This scenario involves various translations, from correspondence to high-profile corporate documents, such as agreements. Here, the quality of translation directly impacts the success of cooperation. The mistakes in correspondence may lead to misunderstanding already at the outset, while inaccurately translated agreement may result in disrupting the deal, therefore rendering any preparation efforts useless. Besides misunderstanding, you need to consider overall evaluation of your translation by the potential partner. Any grammar mistakes or poor English can make them think that you are not really interested in closing this piece of business, or use similarly low standards in other business areas. Therefore, achieving the desired result in cooperation with foreign partners largely depends on quality translation.

Third Reason

As with many other company activities, translation has on impact on the corporate image. Just a few bad translations from the outset may lead to long-lasting negative attitude across the industry and consumers. Changing this attitude will be a challenging task, requiring much more efforts and resources than initially saved by choosing the low-cost path. Additionally, translation can influence how employees think of their leadership policies. Where the leadership uses low quality translation too often, their reputation may decrease, resulting in lower staff engagement. Therefore, by purchasing higher quality translation, you can significantly contribute to your corporate image.

Fourth Reason

The quality of translations that you receive today will likely impact your further translations. By delivering low quality, your current vendor creates terminology and style that will be re-used in future, resulting in error replication. Even after changing your vendor, you can still be receiving similar style and terminology, as your new vendor would use the previous translations for reference. Sometimes, the inability to use the existing low-quality translations can result in abandoning them and starting from scratch with a new vendor. This leads to significant loss, as you cannot benefit by re-using the previous translations. For example, you will have to pay the full price for translating only a slightly updated user manual, although most text in this manual was already translated previously. Choosing the right vendor from the start is the best way to avoid errors and higher costs.

Fifth Reason

Having to correct the errors made by your translation vendor increases your costs exponentially. Imagine that an error is discovered already at the end of the production cycle such as after printing with a 10 thousand run. Recalling the product and rework may translate into huge costs. Additionally, the correction itself can be a costly process. Taking much time, the correction and review will lead to downtime and product launch schedule incompliance. On the other hand, your initially chosen vendor may simply not have sufficient skill to correct the mistakes, and you will end looking for another vendor and paying for translation from scratch. In other words, you can receive a poor translation, simply because your vendor is not skilled enough to do a better job. To avoid the above risk, costs, downtime, and rework, be sure to address the process of choosing a vendor with appropriate attention.

Translation at Velior

Working with Velior is an ideal solution to receive high-quality translation. High quality is one of our main differentiators, confirmed by a pool of long-term customers and most positive testimonials. Because Velior's commitment to quality is never-ending, you can rest assured that your translations will always be excellent. As your long-term supplier, Velior will contribute to your business by building on the best talent and motivation to deliver the top product.

© 2008 Velior. This document is for informational purposes only. Velior makes no warranties, express or implied, in this document. Velior is a trademark of Velior Company. Names of other companies and products are trademarks of their respective owners. This content can be reproduced only upon Velior's express written permission. If reproduced by any means, the copy shall include a link to Velior and Velior's website.