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Eagle-eyed readers, and dedicated STAR UK blog fans (I mean, there must be at least one of you out there, right?!) will have noticed that, recently, there’s been a whole lot more content appearing on this humble page.

We’re aiming to provide translation buyers with useful content that clarifies the potentially confusing world of translation. I’ll admit though, we don’t just want to be useful.

We want translation purchasers to contact us with potential projects. We want to talk to them about how STAR UK can help with their global strategy.

Except that it’s not really about what we can do. It’s about what they need.

In recent years, much of the translation purchasing process has become what you might call “transactional”. Clients want to buy translations in the same way as they buy their office supplies. Basically, with a pre-agreed price and with a minimum of interaction.

It sometimes feels like we sell our highly skilled professional service as a product, and not a particularly valuable one at that. Or perhaps “not sufficiently valued” would be a better way to put it.

However, that’s not really the client’s fault. If we present our service as a commodity to be bought by the unit (the word), then we can’t blame the customer for buying it in that way.

Is there another way?

There are clear and obvious reasons how we’ve ended up where are:

Clients want transparency
Per-word pricing allows for easy comparison between quotations
Per-word pricing makes translation an out-of-the-box solution

Transparent pricing

It would be lovely to charge by the hour like a solicitor, but that’s not where our industry is right now. Different translators will translate at different speeds, but does the quality of their output warrant the vast difference in pricing that this could lead to? Of course not.

In addition, there are considerations related to software tools. Translation technology, whether Translation Memory or Machine Translation, needs countable units to be effective. The value these tools add to the translation process, both in terms of accuracy and speed, especially for technical material, is too great for that genie to ever go back in the bottle.

Translators and translation agencies need to be able to agree a transparent price before translation work begins.

Have translations become a commodity?

Although I think that the commoditisation of the translation industry is a topic worthy of its own blog post, it is relevant to this discussion too.

Commoditisation occurs when consumers can buy the same product or service from multiple businesses and price is the only distinguishing factor. Translation quality is subjective and is not always distinguishable at a glance, so it makes sense that price is a far easier differentiator when looking to purchase translations.

Not very satisfying though, is it, selling translated words as though they were so many nuts and bolts?

What’s behind that quote request?

It’s so easy to perpetuate the narrative when presented with a quote request.

Select customer. Check. Select languages. Check. Enter the statistics. Check. Create Quotation. Boom. Job’s a good’un.

But is it?

While we accept that we’re not going to change the basic pricing model, and nor should we want to. We are increasingly asking ourselves and our clients what lies behind their request for 500 words in German and Spanish.

It shouldn’t be ground-breaking, but it is a mindset change. For all parties.

More than just words?

Translations are more than just words in another language. Translations are a way of communicating with people across the world.

We’ve been asking our clients what they hope to achieve with their translated documents. More leads and conversions? Increasing customer or staff engagement? Perhaps it is a new product launch, or you need to ensure compliance with regulations in your new markets?

For each of these intentions, there are subtle changes in how language is used. We might not notice it when we are working in our native tongue. We flit between marketing brochures and technical manuals and easily switch between using persuasive sales arguments and accurate technical terminology.

For a language service provider, these considerations affect the choice of supplier for your project, and on rare occasions, the price of translation itself.

However, this goes beyond just the choice of supplier.

You are the experts in your business

It seems to be a bit of an obvious one, but as the customer, you have the best knowledge of your products and your industry, but also the challenges you face.

While we can’t claim to know the minutiae of the technology in a combustion engine (though that might be a poor example, as our technical translators work on these kinds of texts all the time), we know a fair bit about our business, translation.

We’re the experts in translation

By this, I don’t just mean that we have qualified staff and we can understand at least two languages. I mean that we can add value to translation projects with points that a customer might not have considered.

We understand about optimising files for translation so that customers can keep their costs down and improve TM leverage.

We can help with advice on when a translation is required, and in which languages it might be needed.

We can even help you with the technical side of your multilingual website, potentially simplifying your processes.

Sometimes these are issues that the clients themselves hadn’t recognised. Sometimes, the client has just accepted the status quo without realising that there are better options out there. Perhaps they know the issue is there but are too busy to be able to remedy it themselves, or don’t have the requisite knowledge or skills.

We enjoy creating lightbulb moments when a client realises we can significantly reduce their costs, or dramatically speed up the turnaround times.

This is where we add value. Not just as translators, but as experts in multilingual communication with knowledge and training to be valued and shared.

Author: Bethanie Melly, Senior Project Manager

Home > understanding translation

If you’ve ever purchased translation services from a translation agency or a freelancer, the chances are you were charged by the word. There are other charging models out there – hourly, by the page, by the hour – but word rates are by far the most common. It’s easy to see why – words are easily countable, so both purchaser and supplier can be certain what the cost of a project will be with no nasty surprises.

However, the word rate method of charging often leads to complaint on the supplier side of the “commodification” of the translation services industry, turning a highly-skilled profession which adds significant value into McJob where price is the only consideration. That might be slightly overstating the case but it’s certainly very easy for a purchaser to ask for a penny or a cent off a word price, and in a very competitive market, it’s often difficult for the translation supplier to refuse. Hey, what’s a penny? And if you’ve come down from 12p per word to 11p, surely there’s not much more pain in going down to 10p…

But let’s consider what you are buying for that 12p. Is it really just a word in a foreign language?

NB In all these, we’ll assume you’ve purchased from either a reputable translation agency or qualified freelance translator.

Highly qualified professionals

Most professional translators will have a post-graduate qualification in translation and possibly experience in working in their chosen industry sector – legal, medical, engineering etc. A good translation is not necessarily something that can be achieved by someone who “speaks a bit of French” or even someone who is genuinely bilingual. Translation is a skill that needs to be learned and practised.

Your word price may also include proofreading by a second professional translator – so that’s two highly-trained language experts working on your document.

Local market expertise

Ideally the translator will be a native speaker of the language they translate into and working in the relevant country. They’ll have a good understanding of their industry sector as it operates in their country and will adapt their translation accordingly. Wording that works well in the UK, the US or Europe may be completely inappropriate for the Middle East or Asia. Think of the value this adds to your content, and the trouble it could save you – you’ve not only gone to the trouble of communicating in your customer’s language but you’ve gone the extra mile to ensure you’ve done it as well as possible.

Project management

It’s easy to imagine a project manager at a translation agency is simply there to send and receive emails, answer a few phone calls. The reality, of course, is very different. A good project manager adds considerable value to every project they work on – preparing source files so they’re in the best condition for translation, working with multiple file types, sourcing the best translator for the job (or translators on a multilingual job), answering queries from both translator and client, ensuring delivery is timely and fault-free. The list could be endless but perhaps the most value is added through the relationship a project manager builds with a client. Over a period of time, she will suggest improvements to your processes that will help you get the most out of your translated content, saving you time and money, bringing expertise to your business that you’re unlikely to have.

And all for the price of a word!

Home > understanding translation

I’ve worked in Translation Project Management for just over five years now, and I have learnt a lot in that time. Some of it is random; just trivia knowledge about languages. Some of it is the kind of specialist terminology that you’ll need if you have to perform emergency maintenance on a concrete pump while in Germany, but most of it relates to the main part of my job – managing and scheduling translation projects.

As I write this, it’s a beautiful May day when it’s just warm enough, but not too hot, and I can see late-afternoon sunshine through my office window. It feels like the perfect time to share with you my top tip for ensuring that your translation requests can be carried out with a minimum of delay. You see, if you’ve ever had dealings with western European countries in May, you know that it can be harder than you’d think to arrange a translation. Every few years, the planets align in their favour (or to your disadvantage, depending on your viewpoint) and our European counterparts have at least 4 national holidays in the same month. For our Project Management team in the UK, this results in a rollercoaster workload – peaks that coincide with deliveries needed before the next national holiday, followed by a lull while everyone eases gradually back into work after a long weekend. This can be frustrating when trying to organise translations for our customers, so my top tip would be to always plan ahead when it comes to translation. There are multiple factors that affect our ability to deliver a translation, but they can often be countered with some forward-planning.

National holidays

I touched on this one already. In May, the UK has two bank holidays, both on a Monday. This year, my colleagues in Germany had a holiday on the 1^st, 10^th, 21^st, and 31^st May. Where these fall on a Tuesday or Thursday, many staff take advantage of the potential for a four-day weekend. And who can blame them?! It does have a negative effect on translation deadlines however, as it reduces the amount of working days available in which we can work on the texts.

Busy periods

Busy periods and holidays seem to go hand in hand in the translation industry – partly for supply and demand reasons. Christmas, Easter and the summer months are all busy periods when there are more requests and fewer available translators. When we hear that customers are planning a large website or catalogue translation project, we try to advise that this is carried out away from these times to avoid this lack of availability having an impact on quality.

Shorter turnaround times

I’ll admit it, this is not a factor that affects our ability to deliver, but it is always a consideration for us and it does relate to planning ahead. When a translation is planned in advance, we can offer far shorter turnaround times. It will never be possible for 10,000 words to be translated in a day, but we can avoid the additional days that need to be factored in while we wait for resources to be available to start work on the text.

Availability of key resources

Wherever possible, we build a team of translators who always work on requests for a certain customer. For urgent translation projects, it is not always possible to arrange for this team to work on the text, and our customers must choose between their urgent deadline and the risk of using resources who are less familiar with their texts.

In summary, with a bit of advance warning, the STAR UK PM team can pull off some incredible feats. We’re used to factoring this in to our schedules and are also able to keep you updated as to any upcoming dates that may affect timings.

understanding translation