Success is dependent upon simplicity, the simpler we can make things the more successful we will be.
In this post, we share our opinions on why a localization process should be kept simple.
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius
It's been over 10 years since we first published our first professional website. At that time, we still had many doubts about what were the most important aspects to achieving a smooth development of a localization project.
Experience and expertise, eventually, help us dispelling doubts concerning all matters related to how a localization process should be handled in this new digital era.
Experience and expertise, eventually, made us realize where we were best at and why we should focus on our mother tongue, Spanish from Spain, as a core value of what we had to offer to our clients worldwide.
In short, experience and expertise made us become:
The small localization agency for the great localization projects.
We hope our insights help to promote constructive debate on how some increasingly common practices may be detrimental to both translation agencies and end customers.
- High-performance Teams
It is the team that makes a project successful. Teams are the basic structure of how projects, activities and tasks are being organized and managed within companies worldwide. A characteristic commonly seen in high-performance teams is cohesiveness. Lack of cohesion within a team working environment is certain to affect team performance.
An increasing number of localization and translation agencies do suffer in so many occasions from lack of cohesion within a team because they work with thousands of freelance providers who are picked up from a system. The problem on the long-term is clear: lack of cohesion which is detrimental to quality. In the worst-case scenario, your project can be assigned to scammers who lack necessary skills (True Story).
In Tobetranslated, we have managed to build a solid team, we know the people who work for us very well and we know what they do best. We can always choose the right resources for each project and for each client. Building long-lasting relationships based on trust has helped up creating high-performance teams. The benefits are also clear for our clients. They can rest assured knowing that they are receiving the best quality translations at the most reasonable prices.
- Language Specialization is the key to 100% accuracy
In view of the many translators and language service providers that fulfill the formal criteria, it can be quite difficult to find a suitable partner.
As a Single-Language Vendor (SLV), Tobetranslated is specialized in a particular language (Spanish from Spain), the language of the country in which we are domiciled. Our teams are then divided by Subject Matters Experts (SMEs).
It took us some time to understand this was the best option for us. The answer was pretty simple, after all: we wanted to avoid complex and long supply chains. Why?
Generally speaking, you are more likely to receive personal attention with a small language service provider and a smaller company may be more flexible and will more easily plug into your existing workflow as an extension of your team.
We are proud to be a solid a realiable partner for smaller or local direct clients and act as subcontractors to multi-language vendors (MLV). We have excellent long-standing relationships with our customers.
- The importance of Quality Assurance (QA) for Translation Projects
Quality assurance (QA) for translation is preventing mistakes or defects and avoiding problems when delivering localized and translated content to customers. There are two primary types of QA for localization: LQA and FQA. LQA is linguistic quality assurance and FQA is format quality assurance.
Instructions, terminology glossaries, and style guides are not red tape hinders, but rather are helpers in the translation process.
"It takes less time to do things right than to explain why you did it wrong." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In-country review (ICR) is commonly missed or skipped for translation projects, but ICR is an essential part of the QA process and shouldn’t be omitted. Clients should have in-country reviewers on-hand who are experts in the product, brand, target language and target locale.
This is one of the main points we had in mind when we decided to become a Single-Language Vendor (SLV). Only working in projects between Spanish and the main European languages and/or the main European languages and Spanish meant that we could be in total control of the Quality Assurance process and guarantee that the translation fits the local standards of the target language.
- Why Customer Participation Matters
Customer feedback is a huge part of directing and improving our work. Not all the customers wants the same and some of them do not even know what they exactly want. Our job is to engage with your brand through meetings and constant feedback so that service outcomes are enhaced and customer satisfaction is guaranteed.