| What Translation Agencies Want From Translators |
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When clients choose a translation agency to translate their documents, they are placing a great deal of trust in the agency concerned. Almost certainly, a huge amount of time, hard work and perhaps even monetary investment, will have gone into producing the source text and a client will be looking for their agency to turn this around in the fastest possible time. This is to produce an accurate and localized translation at a competitive price.A good agency, recognizing these facts, will treat every commission as 'mission critical' for their clients. Each commission, will be passed on to an expert translator, but in order for an agency to succeed in their aspirations for their client's work, they will also have in mind some criteria as to what they require of their translators in order to be able to deliver. Looking at these criteria in more detail, let us examine what a translation company might require of its translators.Firstly and perhaps intuitively, a translator must have sufficient ability to handle the allotted task. Now undoubtedly, a translator will already have proved by qualification that technically, they have knowledge of a language, but more is required. Translation is more of an art than a science and a thorough understanding of a country's culture (preferably gained by some amount of residence), is required in order to render a text culturally understandable. Over and above this, if specialist translation is needed (legal, medical or technical), then a qualification or extensive employment (or preferably both), in the relevant field will be required before a commission can be entrusted into their hands.Perhaps equally important to agencies is the issue of promptness -producing good accurate work might come to naught if it is not produced on time. An agency's clients expect and plan around, specific deadlines and a whole chain of events might hinge upon these deadlines being met. Likewise, an agency, once given a date for completion by a translator and having communicated this to its client, will expect it to be sacrosanct.Every complex system is kept in operation by good communication and likewise, agencies expect to be kept 'in the loop' on a work's progress, on any potential problems or issues arising from a translation and especially on any potential slippage on the completion deadline; similarly, agencies will expect a translator to be contactable and if possible, to have some kind of 'calendar of availability'.The outline of expectations discussed above will probably be common to all agencies, but looking at them closely, most of us will realize that they are, in fact, common to all employment everywhere and most professionals will very likely, practice these as part of their work ethos anyway. The main thing to bear in mind is that an agency / translator relationship is more like a partnership, with both parties having a common goal; if both parties can deal professionally, flexibly, and equitably with each other, then a solid, long term and profitable relationship can be forged.
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