“You need your text translated by a professional? And you need it proof-read? Right, and before going to print you need a really thorough double and triple check and, what’s that?, you need it all formatted professionally? By next Thursday? Yeah….of course we can do that. Trust me!”

Think about what you’re doing.

You’ve created some text. Obviously it’s important because (1) otherwise you wouldn’t have written it, and (2) you need it translated.

So if it’s important, what are you doing entrusting your important work to someone you don’t know and, by extension, cannot trust?

When you need translation services for the first time, look for companies that have independent quality accreditation. This must be the only thing you should trust. Don’t believe all the marketing hype. From there, talk to the agencies about workflow, services, costs, and so on. A little investment and information gathering will reap rewards.

If you already use a translation agency, you’re probably disinclined to find another one but maybe you should think again. A back-up can only be a good thing. And sharing your business keeps both translation agencies competitive: improving their services to give you more.

If you’d like a free one-pager with hints and tips on how to choose your first – or your next – translation agency, just send an email to info@intrawelt.co.uk

Budgets are tighter than ever and it’s a natural response to try to look for cheaper options. But this could be a false economy. If you buy a really cheap t-shirt, you can guarantee that after half a dozen washes it will have lost its shape and will look like a really cheap t-shirt. So do you buy another cheap t-shirt or do you buy quality and wear a good-looking t-shirt for much longer?

Many translation agencies, to reduce costs but to maintain their profit, simply choose cheaper freelance translators or squeeze their translators to accept less money. Both are bad.

Cheaper freelance translators usually produce poorer quality work: they rush their work, don’t follow the client’s terminology, or, let’s be honest, just aren’t very good.

Squeezing good translators creates resentment and only forces these people to work quicker, under stress, and thereby produce more human errors. Making the proof-readers job bigger than it was, so, in effect, you’ve saved on the translator but lost on the proof-reader.

The option that we recommend is that you and your translation agency work together to optimise the process: how can things be changed to reduce cost? Could the source text be shortened? Rather than a “word-for-word” translation, would a “summarised” translation be acceptable (rendering 5,000 English words to 1,000 French)?

In addition, we have many partnerships with companies where, upon reaching a certain threshold, either a discount is applied, or certain credits are made available. If you’re someone who regularly needs short phrases translated, we have an extremely simple workflow with fast turnaround and very, very competitive prices. In short, we believe that the translation agency should start acting like your partner and should start providing free “consultancy” (for want of a better term) to help you get more for less.

You can choose an overweight, sloppy, lazy, unfit translation agency. Or you could choose an efficient, alert, finely-tuned one.

Nowadays, there seems to be just too much information and too many choices. How many different breakfast cereals do we really need, for instance? And how many different cups of coffee does Starbucks need to invent?

And so we come to the “crisis”. Whilst almost everyone agrees that 2009 is over, there is debate on the c-word because people tend to look at whatever statistic supports their belief. With GDP, unemployment rates, interest rates, consumer spending, and so on and so forth, everyone’s able to pick their statistic and cling to it.

Whether or not the crisis is over, what counts even more at this time is the quality to cost ratio. Every translation agency will tell you that they deliver quality (well, what else are they going to say?) but how does that explain some agencies charging twice what we charge?

The large translation agencies invest lots of resources in sales, marketing and IT. Many are public companies and, to protect their share price, they have to deliver strong quarter-on-quarter results. But did you know that in these companies, the actual cost of the translator could be as little as 20% of the price you pay?

Let’s compare four ways to get your translation done.

1) Go direct to freelance resources
On the face of it, this is the cheapest route. But don’t forget that you have to find the resources, verify their competence somehow, possibly prepare documents for them, project manage everything, then possibly take their translation and format it. Do you have the skills and personnel to do this?

2) Go to Intrawelt

3) Go to a large translation agency

4) Go to one of the (very large) top-30 global translation agencies

Nearly every translation agency uses freelance translators. So let’s assume that the translation, proof-reading and quality check costs are the same.

Because Intrawelt is a private company, we don’t answer to shareholders and we grow at a healthy, sustainable pace. Our sales, marketing, IT and other costs are kept to a minimum. We still like to make a profit, though!

Large companies and public companies have greater overheads and invest heavily in sales and marketing and IT and so on. Look at SDL, for example, in their Annual Report (http://www.sdl.com/en/company/investors/financialoverview.asp), their overall administrative expenses for 2008 were £61.3 million. Lionbridge’s annual report for the same year (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=111612&p=irol-irhome) shows that just their sales and marketing spend was US $33 million.

Now we all know that businesses need to make money. But when your receive the next invoice from your translation company, ask yourself what percentage of that cost was actually used to translate. And what percentage went to pay for overheads, sales and marketing.

In this graph, we show how the translation tasks are, more or less, the same, but the overhead expenses increase drastically. When you pay for a translation project, think about how much you’re paying for your translation and how much you’re contributing to their overheads.

freelance translators have only their own cost but by going direct to a freelancer, you have the overhead of project management and finding and assessing the translator. Do you have these skills in place?
Intrawelt keeps overheads to a minimum to save you money.
large translation agencies spend much more on sales and marketing – costs that they pass onto you.
very large translation agencies spend millions on marketing and have huge overheads. But the translator’s cost is, more or less, the same as ours.

That was the winter (spring, summer and autumn) of our discontent. Thank goodness 2009 is over.

Or so say many. At Intrawelt, our growth has been organic, sustainable and eco-friendly. Our business is not dependent on a few large clients, nor on one particular sector. We have built the company on the foundations of quality, service and professionalism. We don’t create “bubbles”. Through the good years and the bad, we stick to our principles and run our company in an orderly way. We set goals for ourselves each year and we manage things accordingly.

We prefer a sustained, managed growth rather than the peaks and troughs that others go through as they see good years and bad.

Whilst 2009 was not an easy year, we are rather proud of our results. More details as we complete our year closure procedures but here are, if you like, two key points of reference.

Words translated/proof-read : 30% up on 2008

Revenue: almost 15% up on 2008