The 4 main characteristics
When you are looking for translation services or a translation agency, be it for website translation, marketing translation or conference interpreting, it is important to understand how quality is assessed in our industry. There are several industry standards, and most of them are simply not clear enough for the end user/client. Nonetheless, there are 4 basic elements you should look for in a service that will guarantee you the quality your project deserves.
Commitment to Quality
The agency should have a stringent quality assurance process setup – this quality process should cover both, linguistic quality and quality of business practices and procedures. This usually includes how the translators are selected and supervised, as well as editors and proofreaders who will ultimately verify the quality of the translation being done. An additional process, is that the project managers should be trained or at least knowledgeable in translation work and preferably, have done some work as translators themselves. At CA Translation Services , we only specialize in Spanish so that we can ensure the absolute quality and integrity of our work. We stand by our work; if you are not satisfied with our translation, we are willing to reprocess it or even refund the costs and you get to keep the translation!* Suffice to say, that we have not been called on this guarantee ever because we always do the best with every single client on every single project.
Translator Experience
Many people claim to be translators, but not many have the experience or ability. Even trained translators are not necessarily a sign of quality. Training ensures that the translator understands the ethics, laws and regulations of the profession, but there is no way to guarantee the quality of the work being produced. Translation is not a precise science, merely because there is no word by word correlation in any language. There is always a big variation of intentions and concepts that are not only hard to translate, but if the translator is not experienced in the culture of the language, quite impossible. Always prefer translators who are experienced and as specialized as possible. The only situation where a translator can be selected without so much concern for experience and ability is when the translation is not that important to begin with.
In CA Translation Services we work with a very select group of translators, people who have at least 5 years of experience, a proven record, who are native speakers and have spent significant time in the culture and language that they translate into. We don’t hire translators all around the globe using the online directories as this practice hardly verifies the quality of the translator in question, we prefer local translators who cover all the requirements. There are not that many translators who qualify in Toronto, but the few who do qualify, are the only ones we work with.
Working Relationships
Most agencies try to get as many translators as possible in order to take as many projects as available. Be wary of these mega-agencies as they hardly ever really verify the quality of the work being done or the translators they work with. CA Translation Services is specialized in Spanish and English, website translation, marketing translation, legal and business translations and we only work with translators who can show expertise in these fields and language pairs. We maintain long-term working relationships with our translators, which are based on mutual trust. We know our translators very well, and in some cases, personally and work with the same translators over time. Quality over quantity.
Quality Assurance
A translation service should constantly monitor the quality and performance of the translators either by conducting random quality checks or client surveys to verify the satisfaction with the service. CA Translation Services does both. We randomly conduct quality checks or host round tables to discuss jobs and improve and also conduct surveys on a regular basis to ensure our customer satisfaction.
Contact us now to see what we can do for you. Let a professional, experienced and highly skilled team take care of your translation projects and enjoy the peace of mind that a service like ours can give you.