As times are getting harder and as the world economy is running on the brink of going through another word wide recession, it is only normal for companies to go through their goals and objectives to see what realistically can be reached and what adjustements might need to be implemented in order to meet these goals. This is not very different for  Translation Agencies. Below, please find 7 points of how more sales can be generated:

1)    Analyze the biggest Accounts – In our industry, the total number of projects and the total amount of revenue should be detected for each business year (2011 in this case) and these numbers should be analyzed. Account Managers can adjust their offered per Word Rates according to the total Revenue, to see if the client will purchase more projects in 2012. Additional language pairs can be offered to clients in order to have higher potential of closing translation projects. TMs  (Translation Memories)  can be offered to give the client a monetary benefit, as this will over the long run reduce the translation cost for the client.

2)    E-mail Campaigns – Sending e-mail campaigns by e-mail and offering 10% discounts helps generate more sales and might even persuade long-lost clients to come back and take the offer to his/her advantage. This incorporates an added value to your client and can increase trust and confidence levels.

3)    Increase Database of translators/editors that have TRADOS as this will enable you  to offer Repetitions, Fuzzy Matches, 100% Matches etc. and will make you more competitive on the market. This can be a huge benefit for your client.

4)    Sales Incentives should be established for all Account Managers, as this will keep them motivated and can result in higher Sales.

5)    Performance feedback – twice a year, the Sales Mgr. should sit down with the AM to give feedback over the AM´s performance. This will enable the AM to improve on bad habits and can result in generating higher Sales if these bad habits will be stopped.

6)    Every Quarter, the per word rates of all language pairs need to be compared to various markets, to see if if the company is still competitive. This can result in higher sales if appropriate actions are taken.

7)  Adwords and SEO: whenever the Revenue forecast shows that a “slow” month is coming, additional investment into Adwords and SEO should be invested, in order to overbridge the “low” time period. This means the company can proactively act to overcome slow sales and not react to slow sales.

I hope I was able to give you a few ideas of how higher Sales can be generated, as these points helped our Company a lot to generate more Sales.  Do not forget that all of this goes along with being focused and following your goals.

Welcome to the year 2012 and guess what, time is still of the essence. Because there is a lot of talk around the world regarding this year being our last year on Earth as we know it, I have the growing sense that more people are in even more of a hurry to get things done than never before.

And I mean NOW.

Below are the 3 principal drivers to continually take into account preceding this year’s translation projects.

TIME – As I had mentioned in my previous blog post Gambling Quality http://spanish-translation-blog.spanishtranslation.us/gambling-quality-2011-07-19.html, quick turnaround times often means timesaving methods are being carried out during the work flow to meet client deadlines. When there is not sufficient time to administer a correct translation or Desktop Publishing quality assessment (DTP QA), there is a danger of mistranslation and loss of future business. This occurs mainly when translated files are to be printed or financial amounts within contracts are incorrect.

QUALITY – Like I had written in October 2011 http://spanish-translation-blog.spanishtranslation.us/top-4-tips-for-rush-translations-2011-10-19.html, starting a project without arranging in advance the guidelines is not recommended particularly when you are working under a tight deadline. The most important factors to firmly establish are the target market, dialect, tone, register and measurement conversion/localization.  Remember, if you do not follow this crucial step, you will not have the time to alter the translation after the final delivery is completed.

PRICE – Do not forget the common expression of “You get what you pay for”. This idea can be applied in the translation industry as well. Be aware of companies which may offer under market value price quotes and unrealistic turnaround times because these companies are most likely processing your translations using “under value techniques”.

Whether or not you believe the hype about our planet suddenly lighting up like a match stick or Big Foot to finally appear to eat our beautiful home like a delicious wild Malus sieversii apple, you should still stop and take a deep breath before you start your important ventures in 2012.

Truth is, I never even liked cats. They’re slick and independent, which I do admire, but that doesn’t always favor humans, if you ask me. I mean, isn’t a pet supposed to be there for you, join you, defend you, cheer you up and give you all the unconditional love? Isn’t a pet supposed to just welcome you when you get home with a whole joy fest in your honor? Cats don’t give a damn and if you make them angry they jump and scratch you too.

Yeah, well, not hard to guess: I’m definitely a dog person. And my dog is the best in the whole world, and I swear that’s the truth and nothing but the truth. He drools a lot, I know, but what a continuous love gift he is! It’s all about me, if you ask him. He gives me attention, affection and safety in exchange for food, short walks and some petting. He asks for so little and gives so much! Yup, no secret at all: dogs rule and cats… meow.

Speaking of which, there’s only a slight catch to it. Apparently, cats speak more of an international dialect, since they “meow” in English, they “miau” in Spanish, they “miao” in Italian and they pretty much do the same in many different languages. As for dogs, let’s face it: they “woof” in English, they “guau” in Spanish, and they “ouaf” in French! Who understands them?

The other day I translated this very short story that involved a dog and a little boy and while doing so, I didn’t realize that “woof” was not OK when passing from English to Spanish. My coworker, native Spanish speaker and with practically zero knowledge of English, read it and asked me what that word that repeated itself was. He couldn’t stop laughing when I naturally said it meant “guau” and I thought that was obvious.

So, whenever y’all try to translate an onomatopoeia, such as the sound of an animal, a baby, a door or a shot… make sure you get the right word in the target language. There are no obvious sounds.

In the meantime, no worries: you don’t need an interpreter to communicate with your dog. They understand us, no matter in what language we talk to them. Cats… I’m not so sure!

The translation business is much more than translating a document or being an interpreter for an important business meeting. Just like in show business, it takes a lot of people to make things happen. Some of those who make the wheel turn or should I say, make the wheel start to turn, are the people in the sales department. So how do I handle about 50 to 100 new specific and detailed request every day? Well, besides having to take deep breaths and beg my co-workers to rub my shoulders various times during the day, I find that organization is the best way to keep it together in a professional manner. All this is easy to say but difficult to do unless I follow my 3 step organization plan.
The first step is called Time Management. I use my calendar as my daily planner. There are some things like checking in on clients or following up on clients who haven’t paid that have to be done at a certain time of the week. I jot those things in my calendar and a friendly reminder pops up that tells me to take care of it. I stick to that calendar like my life depended on it, otherwise I know that it will catch up with me and bite me in the bum very soon.
The second step is called email management. I know you’re probably saying, “Huh?” but really, when you are trying to send an email and the thing doesn’t let you send anything because you have a gazillion emails in your inbox, you want to kick yourself for not having deleted them before! That takes precious time out of my day. So, referring back to step one, I go ahead and set my calendar once a month to delete the emails in my junk folder or those emails that live comfortably in my trash bin.
The third step to having a fabulous day as a sales person is knowing how to be persistent and choosing who and when to do so. Persistence should be part of the definition of what a Sales person is; it kind of comes with the territory. Luckily, there is a way to do this without being a pest since nobody likes a persistent pest. It’s important to know when you reached out to your client last, to remember what their feedback was and to feel out how far you can push them to sell your project. There is no way I can remember what I told my 50 to 100 clients last week or even yesterday. It’s impossible. So I make sure that I write small notes of what we talked about or what I quoted the client in our Sales Computer System . Those tiny notes are essential in clicking my memory on as to what my last conversation was with Mr. Jones or Mrs. Smith. It’s crucial.
I’m sure that as my career grows in the sales business I’ll end up implementing a few more steps to ease my work life, especially if my co workers get tired of rubbing my shoulders!

I would like to break away from my normal blog routine this week to pay homage to one of the greatest men that has ever walked the face of the earth. On January 15th, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia a young boy was born. One day this young boy would grow up to change the world.

Martin Luther King Jr. would grow to be the most important civil rights leader ever. I am not writing this blog to give you a history class on Mr. King’s life, but rather to remind you of the message he taught us. He taught the world how to love. He taught us not to judge people by the color of their skin, or how much money they have, or what their job is. He taught us to rather look at “the content of that person’s character”. He challenged the world to look beneath the surface of human flesh, and to judge people on what they hold in their hearts, and what they have on the inside…not the outside.

Can you imagine a world where people have to use a different bathroom than you because of the color of their skin? Can you imagine a world that denied a human being the right to an education because their back ground was not European? Can you imagine a world that denied an Afro-American man the right to vote, the right to ride a bus, The right to go to the movies, or The right to live amongst society ? I cannot imagine this, or would even want to imagine what this world was like. Can you believe that the world was like this some 50 odd years ago? People in my generation, who did not grow up and see “this world” first hand, sometimes forget how recent these times were.

To show you what kind of impact Martin Luther King Jr. has had on this world, you can find his speeches and books translated into almost every spoken language. His videos on YouTube have been subtitled, something that allows you to sense the emotional tone of his voice and to fully understand the meaning of his thrilling speeches. His face can be recognized across the world, and his message knows no language.

I would like to thank Mr. King for changing this world. I would like to thank him for living in a world that we can be proud of. I would like to thank him for showing the world that we are all equal. That we all can love,that we can all live together as one. Are we perfect? No, not even close…but I would say we are doing better. Thank you Martin Luther King!

As the world economy has been hit very hard and is still recovering very slowly, it is important to not only look into the future, but to also analyze the current situation: How new clients can be found and retained; in other words, Prospecting.

Global recession has become reality and so it has become very important for each business to have a very-well thought out strategy with different plans for finding new clients.

A good way of increasing your market share is to offer your website into several languages. This will automatically lead to an increase in visits to your website as it becomes more appealing to more people from different market segments. The higher your market mix, the better off you are, as your business will not only depend on one market but on several ones. This means that, if there is a stubborn crisis in Europe, your sales from European clients might be quite affected by this; however, your sales numbers might still be strong, as you have gained a new client segment from China, just by offering your website in Chinese.

Another interesting method is to invest in AdWords in order to increase your website traffic. However, please keep in mind that this method is only a short-term solution and the impact is only very slim. AdWords can get quite expensive, as you have to pay by the amount of clicks, and no lead information is guaranteed unless you pair it with a good tracking and marketing system.

Another method for prospecting would be to obtein Company Information Lists for E-mail Campaigns or Cold-Calls. The idea here is to obtain a list by narrowing down a huge database based on different criteria of your own choice. These criteria range from: Sectors (such as Manufacturing Goods and Manuals, Pharmaceutical, Medical/Health Sciences, Chemical and Nuclear, Utilities, Printing and Edition, Banking/Insurance, etc.).  Turnover (such as “from 2 million to 1 billion dollars”), Share of Export  Sales (such as minimum 500K dollars in revenue outside their home country) and Number of Employees. Each business can assess their own criteria to obtain their desired information about their prospect clients. This enables you to filter out the prospects you think do not suit your business profile from the ones you think can be “Stars”.

All the best of luck to increase your business!

Since I find myself in this situation quite often, I believe it deserves a brief explanation from my part. When asking a client with a translation request from English to Chinese if the dialect is simplified or traditional, I usually get the same answer: “I’m not sure.” This article is basically a comparison between Simplified Chinese and the Traditional Chinese in the context of English to Chinese translations. For those in need of a Chinese translation, but do not know much about the differences of the two flavors, this article is for you.

Simplified Chinese:

Chinese simplified is the written text that is used in mainland China and among people of Chinese origin  in Singapore nowadays. This written form mainly evolved and was adopted after the end of civil war and the establishment of today’s P.R. China in 1949, may also be called the “modern form” of Chinese text. The reason and purpose for the Chinese government to develop this simplified writing system is believed to be simplifying the writing method, easing the effort in writing, and encouraging more people to become literate.

Traditional Chinese:

The written text of Chinese that is used in Hong Kong and Taiwan nowadays. This traditional version had been written by Chinese people for thousands of years. Although people in Mainland China and Singapore began to adopt the Simplified text after 1949, people in Hong Kong and Taiwan continued to use the “old” traditional text due to the political separation.

Differences:

At the beginning, they had no difference except for the writing method of the Chinese characters. While Traditional Chinese has some 4,500 characters, simplicity was the main benefit of the new flavor, with just some 1,500 characters to use.

Simplified Chinese characters also have fewer strokes and are easier to write than Traditional Chinese ones. However, the rapidly changing world have brought out more and more new words (such as the “Internet”, “Software”) into daily life, and naturally, these new words may have different local versions in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. To use proper terms is the main concern when a specific version is specified as the target translation language.  Secondly, the political isolation between P.R. China and HK/Taiwan for several decades also created some slight variation in the style and wording of the language, which is naturally reflected in their written forms.

In this final episode, I would like talk about the most important tool that all companies nowadays utilize, CRM tools. CRM tools are utilized extensively for managing a company’s interactions with prospects & clients. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes, sales activities, but also those for marketing, client services and tech support. Analyzing, measuring and valuing customer relationships are critical to implementing this strategy. Let’s have a look some the most widely used CRM tools and their benefits.

1. Salesforce: One of the best known online CRM tools, Salesforce was built with sales in mind.It provides features useful for a sales staff, like the ability to easily access contact information through an iPhone while you’re out of the office.
2. Sugar CRM: Sugar actually offers several different CRM tools, which happen to be open source. While Sugar CRM is not free, it’s extremely adaptable, allowing you to easily create custom modules as well as add external data.
3. Zoho CRM: CRM grew out of managing sales and marketing efforts and you’ll find the CRM tools necessary for large-scale efforts in Zoho CRM (e.g., integrated inventory management) so that you can quickly complete sales.

CRM systems are chosen based on these key features, versatility, quality, efficiency, enterprise agility, customer attention and cost.

CRM systems come with a set of challenges as well and may require extensive training of the sales staff. Interfaces that are difficult to navigate, hence, implementation can be fragmented and not entirely complete. It is also very important to understand how the CRM system being put into operation blends with the various software that are currently in use.

All being said, CRM systems are the key to success in today’s work environment. This is one investment that any professional organization cannot afford to neglect.

Being a translator let’s you delve into all sorts of territories. You learn a little bit about almost everything you translate. It could be anything from how to build a kite, to what ingredients it takes to make the best chocolate covered strawberries from scratch.

What you also learn a lot about is SLANG. So how does a translator go on about translating something that is written in slang without it getting lost in translation?  How do you translate a word for which there is simply no known equivalent in the language you are translating to?

Slang translation is one of the trickiest jobs a translator can face and it’s now more common than it has ever been before.  In some cases, the translator, usually someone who is a native of the target language, may not know the meaning of the word herself and will have to do some cultural research just to figure out what it means in the original source language. Urban Dictionary might be a helpful source for the English language, but I doubt every language has a similar resource. Many times words that are “invented” in one language like for example “recycle” will help form the word in another language like “reciclar” in Spanish. Don’t even get me started with the “techy” words like “Twitter,” “Google” or “texting,” for example, all words that have been born in the last decade and have been adopted by other languages. Most of these words started out as slang and have now become household names worldwide, many times spelled the same, only pronounced differently.

The Internet is the place for new language, thanks to blogs, websites and chat forums which let anyone participate, thus ensuring that any hip new words can spread among the masses faster than ever before.

In part one of my “How to Sell More” blog series, I had touched on two important factors about how concentrating on oneself through continued education and improved efficiency can directly increase sales revenue.

For this segment, I want to focus on the value of two basic sales fundamentals.

Pitching Your Product/Service: 

We often find ourselves forgetting what it takes to sell.  Well, I will tell you now, the first thing you have to realize is that you do have an influence whether the customer is going to commit to your product or service and buy from YOU.  Let’s not forget that your role is to persuade clients to trust you and spend their hard working cash on what you have to offer.  You may think the most profitable food chain in the world, McDonalds, has an easy sale today but, remember at the beginning, their sales people taking orders at the cash register had to aggressively promote and explain the BIG MAC and HAPPY MEAL products.

Building Rapport: 

I do not know exactly why this happens but, it happens.  People apply, then interview for a job and win due to most likely a winning personality and or what appears to be a great résumé.  Then, on our first day on the job, we start “ACTING” like what we think people should act like while working the job.   Keep in mind, your interpersonal skills which you have developed throughout the years with your family and friends will benefit your professional sales career.  It is vital that you create an intimate bond from the start with your clients and set yourself apart from the rest of your competitors.

In conclusion, by spending the time to develop both of these very important skills, I have no doubt you will boost your future sales numbers.

It is extremely difficult these days to get recurrent or additional clients to buy more translations. In this blog I will mention a few methods that either the Account Manager or the Marketing/Sales Department can perform in order to receive more translation requests from recurrent clients or new prospects.

Obviously it is the responsibility of the Account Manager to fuel the relationship by keeping a fluid communication with a client either by e-mails or phone. In this regard, it is important to find out what your client actually prefers, whether it be phone call or e-mail, as some do not want to be called.

Besides following up on a regular basis (i.e. a planned Customer Service), it is also important to have your recurrent clients included in several e-mail campaigns that offer a certain discount. Make sure only to include recurrent clients that haven´t bought a translation project within at least the last quarter, as you do not want to offer a discount to a client that recently purchased one. These e-mail campaigns are typically executed by the Sales/Marketing and/or IT department. If the discount does not work as a trigger to buy, at least the campaign will help you feed your share-of-mind.

Another way of trying to recover customers, is to call them up directly and ask them if they have any translation needs in the near future. This method is a lot more personalized, however you might end up calling them several times, before actually getting in touch with them.

Online visibility nowadays has become a necessity and not only in one language, but your website should be available into several languages, in order to expand your market share. Obviously the website needs to have informative and competitive contents in order to get your leads to leave their information. However, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Adwords are a must when it comes to positioning your website correctly within the internet jungle. This are all tactics that need cooperation between the Marketing and IT Departments.

At the end of the day, it is important to stay positive and to never lose focus. Listen to your clients and make sure their needs are satisfied.

The phrase “lost in translation” may remind the average folk of a famous movie title from back in 2003. In that movie two Americans, played by the voluptuous Scarlett Johansson and the comical Bill Murray, meet and share a few melodramatic romantic nights in Tokyo.

Translators know that for them “lost in translation” means much more than a movie or a saying. It is something that they must keep in mind at all times when working on a translation, especially when it comes to translating a book or an advertisement.

Keeping in mind what the original document is trying to say, the translator not only has the job of translating, but many times that person has to do the job of a creative writer.  In cases like these, there may be a lot of back and forth with the client to make sure that what the translator has written gives off a similar message as to what the original document is trying to express.

Conveying the meaning of the original document is very important when translating in different languages. Some languages and cultures are more conservative in their advertising and wording in general.  This is another reason as to why the translator must be a native speaker of the target language because they have a better understanding of the culture and how far they can push the boundaries as to what  is acceptable and what is not.

Despite it being in the heat of summer, Christmas in Argentina isn’t as different as you would think. With a strong European influence, Christmas in Argentina is much more similar to Europe and North America than other countries in South America. However, with over 90% of the population identifying themselves as Roman Catholics, some local traditions have remained strong which makes this holiday a special time down there.

From my experience when living in Buenos Aires, I sensed that over the years Christmas changed and moved away from a strictly religious event. Some criticize the evolution of Christmas in Argentina for becoming too commercial and losing sight of religion, more so than neighboring countries, all of them with strong Iberian Catholic roots. It can be debated but what remains important is the connection to family and friends during this popular holiday. Christmas is very important to devout Catholics, but for everyone it is a family affair. The most important day is Christmas Eve when Argentine families get together for dinner and start these celebrations.

Like most other South American countries, fireworks are a central focus of this celebration. Children gather to light them, although they entertain all ages and can be heard until the dawn of Christmas Day. One of the more unique traditions of Christmas in Argentina is the globos. Similar to those found in Asian cultures, these paper balloons are lit from within and then float upwards creating a beautiful night sky.

Dinner on Christmas Day is a bit different and you can see a few dishes that may not be on your Christmas dinner table. With such warm weather, parrillas or barbecues are an institution in Argentine culture and it is very common to see barbecues as part of the festivities. The traditional Argentine Christmas dinner is served in the garden area and the delicacies may also include roasted pork, stuffed tomatoes, mince pies, Christmas’s bread and pudding.

All in all, celebrating Christmas is a grand occasion in Argentina.

In this episode, I would like to focus on a very powerful and versatile tool: the phone.

The phone is arguably the most powerful tool on your desk. Good salespeople are in demand, and management wants to give them the best possible tools to make them productive. We all understand that selling is a numbers game. As long as you do reasonably sensible things, the time invested tends to correlate to revenue earned. Therefore, productivity really does matter.  Consider this, how many words can the average person type a minute, 60, maybe 70.  Now, how many words can you speak in a minute, probably around 300? That means you can get almost double the work done if you are calling your clients, instead of emailing and waiting for their responses. SO LET’S BE PROACTIVE NOT REACTIVE.  A phone call is personal, and shows that you care. A friendly voice on the phone bonds you with your client. You can hear, understand, and feel the tone of the voice. A lot can be understood just by listening to the other person talk. Consider this, how many emails do you get in a day, 50, 75, maybe 100! Now, ask yourself, how many calls you get in a day.   Not a whole lot…why is that? Cause people do not have time to call, but they surely do have time to email.

Well, I will call you because my time is important. Once we conduct business over the phone, this task is off my table and not part of a chain email in my Inbox. Today, technology has given salespeople dozens of invaluable tools that make their job easier and more efficient. The future will bring even more. Currently, there are phone systems with a variety of features, teleconferencing tools, voice mail, speed-dial keys, caller IDs, etc. A benefit to people who talk on the phone all day are the numerous hands-free microphones available for various phone systems. Some are wired to the phone, but many are wireless and allow the person to move around without being tethered to a desk phone. I personally have worked for companies that invest heavily in headsets and audio gadgets so the salespeople are able to communicate better.

As a professional salesperson, make sure that you have a legitimate reason to call first. Chances are that the person you call is busy, too, and may not appreciate a how-ya-doin’ call in the middle of a deadline project. In fact, you may lose some trust points for the call. Instead, determine the call’s objective and what you plan to achieve before you pick up the telephone. And have a short and relevant script nearby in case you get switched to voice mail. Like a DJ that alternates the beats of the music to keep you on the dance floor. Let us use the phone to make our clients dance to our tunes…

After graduating from college, I decided that I was going to explore the world. The day after graduation I was on an airplane to Amsterdam and have not looked back since. I have lived in over ten different countries over the past twelve years, and in every country I have tried to learn the native language. I failed miserably. I took class after class, went to private tutors, read books on grammar and vocabulary, but for some reason I simply could not seem to even get the basics down. I consider myself to be a fairly intellectual guy. I am a well educated, I am a fast learner, and I am even a certified teacher. So if I am as smart as I think I am, why haven’t I been able to pick up a new language to save my life?

About five years ago I moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was the first Spanish speaking country I had ever lived in, and I decided to take a completely different approach to learning. I decided to learn like a baby. Take a second to remember how you learned your native language. You listened to your parents, you watched cartoons, and you were surrounded by people who spoke the language that you would one day grow to master. After pondering on this for a few days, I decided that I would throw my grammar books and private lessons out of the window and start from scratch .
I like to think learning a new language as a pyramid. The base of this pyramid is speaking and listening. Obviously this is the most important part of any language, and the first thing you learn as a child. The middle of this pyramid would be writing and spelling and the last part of the pyramid would be grammar, style and rules. Now, after taking numerous classes and reading countless books, I have noticed that for some strange reason when learning a second language the approach seems to be the exact opposite. Foreign language teachers want to cram your mind with rules, grammar, and spelling before even getting into pronunciation and understanding. This approach makes no sense to me what so ever .

In summary, I became fluent in Spanish in less than two years. No books, no grammar rules, no classes. I just surrounded myself with Spanish speakers, watched movies in Spanish, and spoke in Spanish as much as possible. My advice to anyone learning a new language: Think like a baby!

There are just a few questions in life to which, even attempting to confirm, a definitive answer is virtually impossible.  The first question could involve finding the meaning of life and the second probably would include locating the key to an afterlife.  The third question though, seemingly to be not as profound, often comes in the monetary form.  Recently, a colleague of mine asked me if I had any ideas about how to sell more.  I then looked at him and kind of chuckled a bit.  My initial sarcastic response was about why he wasn’t asking a more difficult question.  Then I thought about his question for awhile and within the next couple of days I came with my response.  The answer could only be found from within oneself.  Meaning, after working in sales for almost a decade, the process to increase sales had to start with me.

Here are a couple of tips to help you generate more revenue.

1.       Ongoing Education – When you begin to work with a company, you often participate in a short training program in order to learn the basic company procedures, products and services you are to follow and provide.  However, after the training period finishes, it is absolutely essential that you do NOT stop educating yourself.  Then, your ability to educate clients about how your product or service can meet their needs will in turn help gain their confidence and greatly improve your chances of closing the sale, establish a recurrent business relationship and gain referred clientele.

2.       Maximum Efficiency – Remember, we are living and working in the virtual age and it is time to put down the piece of paper and pen.  All too often do I hear my co-workers complain about working 10-12 hour days or how they missed an important email from a client.  Simply ask yourself “why” these things happen and adjust accordingly.  We all create bad habits but the most crucial part is that we indentify the problem and continue to work to correct it.  The more efficient your organizational skills are, the smoother the project workflow and happier the customer will be. 

In conclusion, do not wait for somebody else to keep you from moving forward and improving your sales.  Even though it is important to take advantage of the knowledge of your managers and proven colleagues but, you have to reach out and start to ask the questions first.

When requesting a quote, you can simply call, email or fill out an online form, so that a sales rep can contact you. What the prospect is not expecting are the many questions that they will be asked by this sales rep. From what format the files are in, to how you’re expecting the files back and so forth. When requesting a quote, there is certain information that you will be required to provide to the translation agency. If this information is available, you will save a great deal of time in back in forth emailing or even phone calls. The more information you provide regarding your files, the more accurate your quote will be and will allow you to see exactly where the costs are coming from.

What to know before requesting a quote? Outlined below are some basic questions that you can expect to be asked by a sales rep.

What is the source and target language?

What language is your document in, and what language do you need it translated into?  You might also be asked if the document will be used in a particular country. This is important because some languages vary depending on the target country.

A good example is Portuguese. The cost per word will vary depending on whether your translation will be used in Portugal or Brazil.

What about word count?

You do not need to know the exact word count of your documents. As long as you send over your files, the agency will analyze the files and figure this out for you.

What file format are your documents in?

We will need to know what format your documents are in, and what format will you be sending them to us for quoting purposes. Are the documents in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Quark, InDesign, etc.?

You will also be asked how you would like the documents back or if these files will be printed. If you need the translated files to mirror the source files, they will need to be formatted by our Desktop Publishing team. If such services are needed, you will have to provide all editable source files with finalized designs and all image files.

Knowing the answers to these questions before you contact a translation agency will help you get an accurate quote in no time.

Have you ever asked a translation agency to provide you with a client reference or a test translation before you use their services? I am very sure you have, as in today´s translation industry there are millions of translation agencies offering you their services. How does one differentiate one agency from the other? Price is the most common driver; however, are you comparing apples to apples when comparing per word rates? Is the highest per word rate matching the best translation quality and the lowest per word cost the worst one? Obviously the scope of the translation project will play the most important role: do you need a small letter from your grandfather who lives overseas translated, or are you in need of a translation for a manual into Simplified Chinese as your company is trying to enter the Chinese Market?

It is always important to know exactly what translation process a translation agency is going through in order to provide you with a translation of your requested document. Many companies offer only translation and proofreading, and prospects believe that the translation quality will turn out great. There are many instances in which that is not the case. It is very important to have a second translator compare the translated text with the original text to see if any mistranslation took place, before the proofreading step can be executed.

How can you be sure that  you will receive a high quality translated document? Request a test or sample translation before you decide to use a certain provider.

I have a client who needs his company´s entire website translated and his selection process is quote tough. Which agency can he trust knowing that all the requested highly technical medical articles will be translated correctly?  Besides the detailed quote that we sent him, we offered him a sample translation of two different articles with over 6,000 words to translate – for free. Six thousand words sounds like a reasonable investment for a future potential 3,000,000 words scope. Why? It´s part of the confidence-building process between the prospect and us. Once he receives our test translations, he will be able to compare the quality with the offered cost per word and turnaround time and service that had been provided to him during the entire quotation and selection process.

  How many times have you ever heard someone say “Love is the International Language” or “The Language of Love” or “Love knows no Language”? We have all heard these phrases used throughout our lives, and although I cannot disagree with these phrases, a music event that I attended this last weekend made me realize that music can also break the language barrier.
I was lucky enough to attend the Electronic Music Festival, Creamfields, last weekend in the beautiful city of Buenos Aires. I met people from all over the world who had traveled to Buenos Aires to listen and dance to some of the best known DJ’s in the world. I must say that this was a life changing event. I have never seen so many people in unity and harmony, all brought together by music. It is almost as the music had taken over people’s souls. I saw strangers hugging other complete strangers. I saw people offering water to those who looked thirsty, people offering food to those who looked tired or hungry. It was one of the most beautiful displays of humanity I have ever witnessed, and it all happened with little or no words exchanged. There were many times when people from other countries would ask me a question in a language that I was not familiar with, but somehow we would just end up dancing and sharing great vibes.
We all know that music has broken language barriers by looking at artists like Bob Marley or Pink Floyd. You can go to any country in the world and see people wearing T-Shirts from these artists who do not sing one lyric in anything except English, but yet somehow everyone can relate to their music. How is this? How can music turn a bad day into a great day? In closing, I will say that, regardless of the problems that are going on in the world today, it is great to know that music can bring us all together, no matter what language we speak.

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source email and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It was released on December 7, 2004, it received a shocking of over 500,000 download hits in its first three days of release, and 1,000,000 in 10 days.

Thunderbird has a whole host of features and add-ons which together provide an all in one interface for reading and organizing email, RSS, web pages, and newsgroups.

Here are some of the main features that I feel are beneficial for our day to day activities:

Subject or Sender Quick Search: While browsing through folders you may have the need to quickly find an email by subject or sender. Thunderbird provides a quick search bar where you can find the message you’re looking for with one click and a few keystrokes.

Sort By: Make finding messages in your folders much easier by choosing from a wide variety of sorting options (e.g. date, star, order received, priority, sender, size, status, subject, read, tags, junk status, attachments, ascending, descending, threaded, unthreaded).

Junk Mail Filtering: By flagging spam in Thunderbird you can use adaptive junk mail filtering to train Thunderbird to recognize spam. Through this “learning process”, and over time, Thunderbird will have the ability to tell apart what you consider spam and filter accordingly.

Unread Folders: Not enough time  to browse your whole folder list looking for the ones with unread messages? If you have tons of email, newsgroup, and RSS folders, Thunderbird includes an unread folders view which makes it much easier to focus on the folders that need attention.

Open Source Add-ons and Plug-ins: No more waiting for Microsoft to update Outlook with that killer feature you think would rock. A whole community of developers out there are collaborating to do just that with Thunderbird plug-ins and add-ons. If worst comes to worst and there has been no one there developing your ideal feature, you can always do it yourself: It is open-source!!!

Cross-platform compatibility: A wide variety of platforms accept Thunderbird as an email application. The primary distribution site displays releases available for operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Mac OS, OS2, Open Solaris and much more.

Besides, one more benefit is that the source code is freely available. Hence, it can be compiled and run on a variety of other architectures and operating systems.

STAY TUNED FOR FUTURE EPISODES ON “TOOLS OF THE TRADE”.