Send End Clients a Checklist/Questionnaire Asking About Project Information

Gina Wadley from the Society for Technical Communication mentioned in an online meeting yesterday that she sends a guide to language service providers (LSPs) who translate her company's documentation and other materials. In addition to basic information, such as a list of the files included that need to be translated, that guide also provides information about the documents' intended audience, what should not be translated (e.g., programming strings), and similar instructions. In addition, she provides the LSP with a glossary as an Excel spreadsheet.

During our conversation, Gina suggested I create a checklist/questionnaire for clients that asks for some of the information she provides to her LSPs, such as audience, intended use of the document, available glossaries, etc. This is an excellent idea I will try to work on after the holidays. If all of us request such specific information from our (end) clients, companies who contract for translation services will get used to providing this information up front.

So far, I think I would like to include questions asking for the following information:

• What is the intended audience (programmers, end users, general public, ...)?
• What is the intended use (online help, printed documentation, ...)?
• Is there a Q&A process after the translation has been received? If so, what is that process and who is involved?
• What is the final deadline for the translated product (compared to the deadline for the translation)?
• Are there internal glossaries, company-specific abbreviations, existing product descriptions, websites, etc. in English? If so, please provide that supporting information.

What else do you think should be included in such a questionnaire/checklist?

I will be spending next week with my family and won't post. I will be back on January 4. Happy Holidays!/p>

Deadlines, deadlines ...

Galina Kakhoun recently asked in the Translators Worldwide forum on LinkedIn whether deadlines had gotten shorter over the past 10 years. I do think that deadlines have gotten tighter.

In part that is because business (and private) life in general has accelerated, at least in the industrialized countries. Some of this is due to technology improvements, which have also enabled translators to work faster (think CAT tools). Part of the problem, however, is that clients have unrealistic expectations, coupled with disregard for quality.

I just saw a posting for an 8,800-word legal text to be translated literally overnight. Such speed is only possible if absolutely no terminology is researched, and the first draft is not edited/proofread at all. We translators need to educate clients about the time and effort it takes to produce a good translation and refuse jobs on too-tight deadlines. If the poster of this job is consistently told that the translation cannot be produced in that timeframe, he/she will change the deadline and, hopefully, learn to set a more realistic one next time.

We also need to get better at negotiating deadlines. Often the initial deadline is flexible -- the client just doesn't tell us so. Faced with a Friday 5pm deadline, for example, we can ask for Monday morning instead; the translation would likely simply sit in someone's inbox over the weekend, anyway. If a client asks for a certain deadline and I have already committed to other projects, I'll explain the situation (without specifics, of course) and ask whether the deadline can be moved by a couple of days. Often, it can.

Client Education & Translation Processes

Yesterday I went to the Barnes & Nobles text book store on 5th Ave. and 18th Street in Manhattan (New York City). The store bills itself as "the largest bookstore in the world" on some of its windows facing 18th Street. Not finding any books on translation theory or practice in likely sections (Foreign Language, Linguistics, Reference), I asked a store clerk. After looking my request up on a computer, he announced that the store didn't carry a single book on translation.

In the March 2010 ATA Chronicle (the American Translators Association's magazine), Howard Clark calls the U.S. "an immigrant-based, yet largely language-ignorant society" in his opinion piece "Clients, Freelancers & Translation Agencies: Productive Partnership or Missed Opportunities?" It seems to me his assessment is spot-on. Mr. Clark then continues that, given this fact, "client education is critical".

Right again, but how do we, as translators, educate an end client whose identity we may not even know? This should be the translation agency's responsibility, but in my experience in the real world of short deadlines and tough competition for large projects that education is frequently given short shrift. If we work directly for end clients, our chances of explaining how translation works and what is required for a sucessful, high-quality product, are much better.

One resource for doing so is the American Translators Association's Client Outreach Kit. Another is a page on our workflow, either posted on our website or sent to prospective clients along with other promotional literature. The advantage of such a page (which agencies sometimes already have) is not only client education, but also a way for translators to learn best practices from each other. Maybe another translator has already found a solution to an issue I am still struggling with. If he/she has posted his/her translation process, I can profit from his/her experience, rather than having to re-invent the solution.

While each of us works a little differently, much of the process is likely the same -- or at least very similar -- for all of us. Through sharing our own workflows, we may be able to define a relatively standard process for non-agency projects. Such a standard process would, in turn, simplify client education. End clients would have a better idea what to expect when hiring a translator and may therefore be more likely to actually provide the resources and time we need to produce a high-quality translation.

Based on Linda L. Gaus's "Top 10 Pet Peeves of a Technical Translator" (ATA Chronicle, February 2009), here are some items to be incorporated in educating clients about translation processes:

• Provide context
  
• Provide reference materials
  
• Provide specialized terminology
  
• Have time for questions
  
• Don't assume you speak the target language better than the translator
  
• Proofread/edit the source documents
  
• Finalize the text before translation begins
  
• Provide diagrams/illustrations where appropriate
  
• Empower one person to decide translation questions
  
• Schedule sufficient time for the translation
  

Look for a future post on my own workflow and ideal translation process.