How to quote a document for translation Part 1.
Whenever an Account Manager receives a document for quotation purposes for a potential translation project, it is absolutely necessary for the Account Manager to understand and know the driver of the translation project, in order to quote accordingly. There are 3 possible drivers: Quality, Time and Price.
The highest translation quality that we provide includes our 3-step translation process: Translation, Editing and Proofreading. It consists of a Project Manager reviewing all contents of the documents and assigning them to a native target language-speaking translator, familiar with the subject of the text. Once translated, the files are edited by a second translator. The editor then references the source text, paragraph by paragraph, to make sure no text was skipped or meaning was lost during the initial step of the translation process. Finally, the translated and edited documents go through a final proofreading, performed by a third professional translator. Both editor and proofreader are also native speakers of the target language.
The translation quality drops if the client chooses the translation process of translation and editing only, translation and proofreading or translation only, of which translation only will have the lowest translation quality.
When Time becomes a driver for the client, additional translators and sometimes even more than one editor have to be allocated so that a specific time frame can be kept. However, when this takes place, the consistency of a translation suffers substantially as each translator and editor has their own linguistic skills. In this case, a glossary can be very useful, as certain consistency issues can be prevented.
The driver Price is connected with quality, meaning the higher the translation quality, the higher the price. In addition, there is also a volume discount, which means that the higher the volume in word count, the lower the price per word (provided there is a comfortable turn around time -TAT-).
It is therefore very important for the Account Manager to get as much information on the translation project from the potential client as possible, in order to provide the most suitable quote for the client. Asking the right questions and listening to what your client has to say play a very important role during a phone conversation, before a detailed quote can be processed.
In the second part, I will discuss the Desktop Services part of the quotation process together with the Follow-up process.
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