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Naturally, most of businesses want to hire a translation service with good price – good quality. In fact, however, a high quality translation costs a professional translation company a lot for both operation of quality standards and qualified staff members. So what should we do to have a high quality translation available as soon as possible with an incredibly low price? Hopefully this article will help you better understand how to balance between cost and quality of translation to make your own best choice.
Always ensure consistency throughout the translation.
It is obviously unacceptable for a term to be translated into two or more ways. This becomes more complicated when multiple translators get involved in one same document. Real translation practices at AMVN suggests that this problem may easily occur even when the document translation is carried out by an experienced translator; and to tackle it, developing a term sheet for reference is just not enough because it also requires us to apply technology and our own control procedures to ensure consistency throughout the document. As more human and more technology are needed, the cost will increase accordingly.
Always follow independent quality control procedures
Many of our customers still presume that upon receipt of a translation request, we simply carry out the translation and then return it to the customer, which is a very fast and convenient process. The reality, however, is totally different. We follow a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) including 4 activities and 9 independent operations, each of which requires personnel with different skills and qualifications.
Figure 1. AMVN Standard Operating Procedure
According to the above diagram, even after handing over translations to customers, we still have the responsibility to assist with quality improvement as required by the customers, for example, when they wish to revise the terms and style as per their own preferences. Therefore, our process may take more time than your expectation. (Note: Contact us for detailed service process and to experience our translation quality)
Human involvement
Translation is mostly a pure brain activity. A perfect translation should meet the following criteria:
- Linguistic techniques (Style, expression, accuracy)
- Document expertise (Medical, legal, technical, financial)
- Customer-specific requirements
As a matter of fact, a doctor tends to not have good linguistic techniques (such as English) while most translators do not possess much expertise (such as in medical) no matter how experienced they are. And to meet all of the above criteria, human potential will surely be the decisive factor to the success of a translation. Are you willing to pay a professional doctor with good foreign language skills for his/her consultancy to make your medical translation perfect?
Consultancy from AMVN’s expert translators
First and foremost, businesses should understand the role of the documents to be translated so they can choose appropriate translation service providers. In fact, the quality – cost – progress of a translation project are in an inverse correlation. Moreover, assessing service quality before signing a contract is one of the key factors to obtain a good service. Last but not least, it is essential to maintain quality control throughout projects, especially long-term ones, which require translation companies to have strong potential and stability to deliver successfully.
By Hoang Nam
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