Including translation in a project workflow Part 2: choosing a translation agency and assigning tasks

Selection criteria and quotes

Picking up from where we left a few weeks ago, you should by now have a good idea of what content needs to be translated. So, once you’ve gathered all that material, you need to choose if you want to work with a freelance translator or a translation agency.

The difference is very simple: for a sizeable project, if you decide to go with an independent translator, you are likely to have to do all the admin work yourself. This means keeping track of the files and essentially being a project manager for the translator, or translators if you are having the text translated into several languages. This option is definitely cheaper, but then again you will have much more work to do.

In case that’s a bit much for you and you don’t have enough time or are not interested in dealing with this aspect of the project, I suggest you choose a translation agency. This means, of course, that you will have to find a translation agency that works for you, makes you feel comfortable and is reputable. There are several ways to do this, but there is nothing that a good old Google search can’t help you with (probably there is, but it sounded cool to me!).

For this step, I would suggest you select the language service provider that best works for you based on:

• Expertise – you can check this aspect on their website, with client’s testimonials, online reviews, opinions from colleagues who’ve used the company before, etc.
• ISO standards – the most reputable translation agencies follow certain international standards, called ISO, which ensure a company follows certain procedures both in the way they operate and in the way they select their freelance linguists.
• Rates – some companies offer super cheap rates and you should ask yourself why: do they use experienced translators? Do they underpay their translators or is it maybe just the case that the linguists are based in countries where the cost of living is cheaper? Are they using machine translation without disclosing it?
• Size of the project – this is a very important element if, for example, you are having a whole e-learning course translated. A small agency with two translation project managers will probably give you that personal touch, but there is a chance they will also be overwhelmed by a huge project. Maybe they also don’t even have enough resources that can dedicate their time to it.​

Test your candidates

After you’ve identified some potential candidates you would like to work with, it’s time to ask for quotes. Based on the criteria mentioned above, you should have two or three agencies that you would like to work with and therefore you will need to understand which one is the best one for you.

A test is definitely something you could consider and from my experience you could have it done in 2 ways:

1. You choose a sample from your content: this text needs to be representative of the project and it will allow you to understand if the translator chosen by the agency or by you can produce a quality piece that is also in line with your requirements. It doesn’t need to be very long: 500 words should be enough.
2. You start having some content translated that you will actually use afterwards. This will of course be less representative of the project, but it will save you money and will anyway be revised afterwards by one or maximum two revisers in order to maintain consistency. For this option, a 500 words text is also good enough.

Once you receive the tests back, you need to choose the best one and in order to do it, you need to ask an independent translator or translation agency to assess them. This ‘third’ party should be knowledgeable about translation processes and procedures, otherwise they could signal preferential changes as grammar mistakes, introduce typos and other superfluous changes. I would also suggest that you put together a form they can use to evaluate the different translations according to certain criteria that you established: spelling, grammar, punctuation, terminology, register, and so on. On top of this, I believe you could also set up a score system, so that you’ll clearly know which agency or translator got the best score and why.

Assigning the project and finalising the translated content

After all these lengthy preparation steps, you will assign the project to a translation agency (here again depending on the size of the project and if your budget does not allow it, you’ll have to go with a freelancer) and they should be able to care of you from here on.

When you receive the material back, you’ll put it online just as you did when you deployed the original online course or project, however you’ll need to make sure you have it all checked by a native speaker in-situ. This will allow you to get a perfectly working product that does not include typos or silly errors that may have been introduced when putting the files back together.