As observant visitors to our website will have noticed, we have an in-house team of translators of which we are very proud.

Why?

So why do we keep adding to our team of human translators while the rest of the industry is shedding them and moving towards greater automation and increased use of subcontractors? Simple: we’re convinced that it is the best way to provide our customers with the quality translations they want and deserve.

We believe close collaboration among a team of translators is the best way to do our job. A single translator can be experienced and knowledgeable, but how about ten translators?

For a customer, it’s great to have a translator who really knows their product and the style they want. But what if that translator is sick or takes a holiday right when they’re needed? With an in-house team, knowledge is pooled and resources shared, so there is no downtime. And when you have a really urgent translation, or a very large one, it’s comforting to know that there’s a dedicated team ready to pitch in.

Two pairs of eyes

At STAR we work to the Vier-Augen-Prinzip – the four-eye principle – which basically means our translations are reviewed by a second translator. This is so much easier to do when the reviewer is sitting right next to the translator, and they both know the customer equally well. It leads to some lively, not to say heated, discussions, but also to excellent translations.

By increasing the number of people in our team, we can also increase the number of languages we can handle in-house. German and French are the languages we get most call for, but these days we’re as comfortable working with Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish.

Using freelance translators

Naturally, we can’t cover everything in-house. Sometimes there’s too much work to do in-house, the text is of a specialist nature or it’s a language we don’t cover. We train our translators well and trust them, but we also know their limits. If your translation requires specialist knowledge that we don’t have, then we’ll place it with one of our carefully selected freelance translators.

Finally, we love having an in-house team because it makes for a vibrant, energetic workplace. Our translators are passionate about what they do and highly qualified, and it shows in their attitude to work. Professional pride makes them dedicated to getting translations right and back on time, and working in a team means there’s always someone there to help in a crisis.