To Get What You Want…
It is of utmost importance to ask as many questions to the client before passing a quote for a translation. The reason for this is for the Account Manager to know exactly what the client needs and expects, in order to make sure the quote matches his needs and expectations. In other words, the scope of the project needs to be figured out by the Account Manager. The driver will always be: Time, Cost and/or Quality. Here are a few examples with different situations:
Client calls and wants to know the cost of translating handwritten letters addressed to his grandfather in Norwegian. As this is for personal need, the cost can be reduced by leaving out the last process of proofreading, as the client wants to know what the letters say. It is not necessary for the Account Manager to quote a 3-step translation process; translation, editing and proofreading, as the client is not looking to receive the highest translation quality, but rather wants to know what the letters say. The driver will be Cost.
A client calls and wants to know what the cost is to translate the employee handbook into Spanish for their Hispanic employees. It is very important the Account Manager requests the source files, so the formatting and layout costs can be kept at a minimum. The source file is always the format in which the document was originally written in. A source file could be a Word document, InDesign file, an Excel document or even Illustrator or Quark file. A Pdf document or scanned document is not a source file, and will result in a very high DTP (Desktop Publishing Services) cost. In this scenario, the driver will be Quality.
A client needs to understand a contract he received in Spanish and he requests to receive the translation back as fast as possible. In this scenario, more translators will be involved, inconsistency within the translation will take place, but the client will have the translated document back very fast, as requested. The driver here is Time.
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