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5 Tips for contracting with Good Commercial Translation Services Agency

The commercial translation is the translation of a source text into a written target text, generally by a freelance professional translator, for a commercial purpose and remuneration, often with short deadlines. The translation industry operates largely using an agency model: translation agencies work with clients to determine translation needs, then contract with freelance translators who produce the translation using a “translate‐edit‐proof” model where one translator produces a translation, a second translator in the same language pair checks for accuracy and revise the translation, and a proofreader checks the target text for correctness. Translation agencies also provide other services to clients, such as desktop publishing. Some professional translators also provide the entire translation service to direct clients.

It is a very broad industry to pick up one translator or agency to work with. You need to choose according to what works for you. The different industries have different demands from the translation agencies, so it’s better to start with figuring your needs first and then choose from the existing options that work for you. In this blog, we will talk about what things to be careful of when looking for a contracting agency for your work. Let’s start with the following tips:-

1. Team of Specialists translators – No doubt most of the translation agencies have professional writers and translators with them but it’s better to look if they have experts specialised in your industry. You will be working with them for work related to a specific industry. If the agency doesn’t have good translators in that specific industry, no matter how good the agency is it’s of no benefit to you. Expecting quality content from the translator of a different niche would be a mistake. It would be better to have writers who know about the needs and trends of your industry. The terminology of every industry varies. If you don’t have an expert translator of your niche it will increase your input and work in that case. The more hassle-free process of translation is, the more it’s good and that can only be attained with a translator expert in your industry.

2. Can manage a large amount of work – While you’re trying to translate your content or services into another language it is evident that you have a good amount of work. No company or individual in commercial translation goes for translating a few pages or articles. If you feel that the agency you’re choosing has a a problem delivering quality content in bulk you need to think about that. No one can wait for months to have content ready to start showing it to the audience. Every industry needs content on the go as soon as it can be. For that purpose agency good in delivering in bulk would be better. The conditions and trends change very rapidly in the market. If you are working with a company that is slow in the translation process your company will lag behind your competitors. So it’s always best to have an agency that can manage a big amount of translation.

3. Tools for Translation – There is a good number of tools and resources available for facilitating translation. These tools not only help in the translation of the content but also with making content more readable and linguistically correct. The company you’re going to work with must have these tools to make the translation process smoother. These tools also help with optimising SEO and backlinks in your content. Most of these beneficial tools are paid or need a subscription. Many companies to avoid extra expenses don’t use these tools and rely upon tools like Google translator. We would say to avoid those companies. If an agency cannot invest in making services more professional it’s a clear sign they’re not here for providing good services. Some of these tools are lokalise, smartcat and transifex or grammarly for reference.

4. Customised Translation service – In commercial translation, there are lots of details and information that needs to be passed to the translator to get them exactly what the company expects from the translator. If the agency doesn’t have customised services you will face a lot of difficulties to get your message delivered and also when it gets delivered through a process from one individual to another, your message will not always be what you were trying to say. If you’re directly in contact with the translation team it becomes a lot easier. You can directly ask for edits and share inputs without any difficulty. Therefore, choose the agency which provides customised services according to your needs. Also, if the services are customised you will know how the process is happening and you can also modify it according to your needs and preferences.

5. Have Essential Certifications – Like every industry, there are few organisations and authorities available who supervises the working of these Translation agencies. They get certifications and awards based on their working regionally and internationally. Make sure while choosing your agency that they have a good reputation in the market and they’re recognised by the organisations in the translation industry. Translators also have different levels and specialisation in different industries, you can also check that to make sure you’re working with the best people. These Certifications are not necessary to hire anyone but they help you to compare different agencies based on a common level. Some of these Certifications are ISO and ATA.

These are some of the major things to keep in mind while contracting a new agency for your work. These will help you get a fair idea of the working of different agencies and their reputation in delivering quality commercial translation.

Bhasha Bharati Arts complies 100% with each of these requirements intending to offer its clients an optimum translation service.

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