Translation services
Over the coming weeks I am delivering facilitated workshops to non-English speaking teams in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Korea. As such I have recently spent a lot of time working with translation services getting my documents rewritten in the local language. I find this work quite boring and very time-consuming. It also presents some quite specific challenges.
Timelines
Translation forces me to focus on supporting documentation ahead of actual delivery requirements (ie my facilitated workshop). This disrupts my 'project rhythm'; that internalised sequence of tasks that experience has taught me must each be completed a certain number of days ahead of the delivery date.
Furthermore, as a small-shop consultant I pride myself on flexibility, being able to nimbly adjust to last minute changes from the client more easily than my larger competitors. Translation timelines threaten this flexibility and therefore my competitive edge feels reduced.
Who To Use
There is massive variability in the quality of translation services both between countries and within a given market. Cost is only a rough indicator of quality at best. Being depressingly monolingual means I can't assess the quality of the work ahead of the workshop itself and so this is one area where I don't necessarily advocate the use of other small-shop suppliers. We've all laughed at those books of signs that have been badly translated into English and I don't want to be the butt of a joke going in the other direction when I flash up a particularly vital PowerPoint slide.
One answer to this would be find a proofreader to check for clangers but that adds to both cost and timeline and now I'm sourcing two new suppliers instead of one. Instead I prefer to go with a single, larger organisation that is more likely to stand behind its reputation.
When I'm working in a brand new country there is the additional challenge of finding anyone at all so there is always the temptation to use some one recommended by the client. The upside of this approach is that the risk of poor quality work is somehow spread ("Hey, it was your suggestion...").
One downside is that the recommendation may be personal not institutional. Unwittingly I may have been put in touch with someone's underemployed brother-in-law, resulting in poor quality work and even less leverage over my supplier than usual. An even bigger threat is that the translator is loyal to the client not me thus creating a nasty triangular relationship with the risk that my IP is shared without my knowledge or permission. Of course every translator signs a confidentiality agreement but I still feel exposed, especially when working in Asia.
There are two solutions: -
- I can deliver documentation in English and hand over all further responsibility to the client. This absolves me of any responsibility whatsoever for quality, however, I have lost additional control over my product and there may be a sense that the client somehow 'owns' more of my IP than the license indicates. That said, I am okay with this approach in Europe
- I find a 3rd-party supplier via my own network (other suppliers and even old clients) and establish an entirely separate relationship with the translation service. I also insist in physical delivery of documents with no PDF files released to the actual client. From bitter experience I have learned to go this way in Asia and in developing markets
I have worked hard to create a global presence in my business niche and I genuinely enjoy working with new teams in new parts of the world. Resolving translation issues ahead of time means that I can spend my time in-country concentrating on similarities not differences.