As the dust settles, it’s beginning to look a lot like export planning.

Growing back

Battered and bruised, yet by no means defeated, UK SMEs are once again engaging in trade after a period of unprecedented challenges.

For small businesses in Britain, the situation has been twice as challenging. The uncertainty prior to the Brexit deal and the preparations for a no-deal outcome already felt like a huge challenge for companies that don’t have large legal and compliance departments. Then the Coronavirus hit, complicating economic activity in markets across the globe.

Keys to recovery

All across Europe, businesses are waiting for the remaining pandemic restrictions to be lifted. It has been suggested that some restrictions will remain in place indefinitely, or will return on a seasonal basis.

What we already know is that the past 18 months have propelled businesses into a process of digital transformation that cannot be reversed. Increased digital capabilities have enabled SMEs to reduce their physical presence and venture further online.

Prior to 2020, 7 out of 10 people across Europe had already bought goods and services online. This increased further during the pandemic.

According to , the biggest increases in people shopping online were seen in “… Romania (+27 percentage points (pp)), Czechia and Croatia (both +25 pp) as well as Hungary (+23 pp)”. In Norway, the increase in online sales in terms of value was a staggering !

This means that your business, wherever it is geographically, can be part of the global town square.

You could hardly ask for better conditions for expanding your business and entering international markets.

Business travel is no longer expected – on the contrary. Acceptance of virtual meetings has made it easier to get through to people who were previously out of your reach. You could hardly ask for better conditions for expanding your business and entering international markets.

The UK Minister for Exports, Graham Stuart, has said that exports is one of the . The Institute of Export & International Trade reports that EU exports are continuing to bounce back with an from February to March 2021, despite the UK still being in lockdown at the time.

In the UK, the value of goods exported by SMEs rose from ?81 billion in 2015 to almost ?108 billion by 2019. An from 2019 states: “Of exporting businesses, the ‘1 to 9’ employees group made the largest value increases since 2018 (up 7%).”

Exporting means growth – for your small company as well as our national economy.

Overcoming barriers through export planning

Whilst the UK government encourages and pursues international trade deals, they don’t always address a key challenge for many business owners: How do I deal with the language barrier?

A recent report by Aston University’s Business School into 415 UK SMEs from different sectors emphasises the importance of overcoming this challenge. The research leaves little room for doubt as it “reveals that SMEs making use of language capabilities are in exporting than those who do not.”

The research discusses SMEs’ “…motivation, preparedness and attitudes towards developing language-related capabilities, as well as the actual use of available language capabilities”. It also establishes a clear correlation between doing that and driving the company’s growth and profitability of exports.

Put simply: improved language capabilities = increased export revenue and profits.

What a language service provider can do for you

The most efficient way of tapping into language capabilities is to partner with a language service provider that tailors their services to your specific needs.

Legal constraints

There may be a legal requirement for the material related to your product or service to be translated for your export markets.

For example, in the EU:

• The must be translated into the language(s) of the EU country in which your product is sold
• Certain investment information needs to be translated when distributed
• The defines what constitutes a medical device and what translations need to accompany it
• The stipulates that the labelling must be “…easily understood by the consumers of the EU Member States where a food is marketed”
  

To satisfy such legal requirements, you can’t simply rely on free online translation tools. Qualified language professionals must perform these translations. Our team would be happy to do that for you.

Customer awareness and engagement

In order to reach international clients, speak to them in their own language. Publish your marketing content in their language and optimise it for search engines (SEO) in that language. We have listed five good reasons for such SEO localisation here.

Multilingual marketing is about reshaping your company’s message to fit another culture.

Marketing in a different language is not just about translating words. It is about reshaping your company’s message so that it makes sense in another culture, as we explain on this page about multilingual marketing.

Your website is the face of your business. You want it to speak to potential customers in a way that raises their awareness and encourages engagement.

That being said, your most important channel for customer engagement is probably social media. This is where you’ll be touching people’s hearts and creating a loyal following.

Even in the Scandinavian markets where many consumers speak good English, you’ll find that people prefer to engage , especially on topics that really matter to them.

Have you ever wished you had an in-country community engagement manager? A person trained and appointed to:

• Take the social media messages written for your home market
• Translate and localise their content
• Publish them in another, market-specific social media group
• Manage the responses and replies to those posts in the target language

We can set up this solution for you.

Customer support

Once you have customers and business partners in other countries, you need to deal with their questions and support requests. They may wish to express these in their own language.

Do you need to hire new staff to handle those communications? Creating a number of Q&A templates that can be translated will allow you time to explore your options.

These templates can cover stock replies to frequently asked questions and you can even use them to build multilingual chatbot scenarios for online customer support. Read more about our tips on how to localise support documentation here.

Turn language from a barrier to a bridge

The Aston Business School research shows that businesses that invest in language capabilities are 30% more successful as exporters.

SMEs making use of language capabilities are 30% more successful in exporting.

You may already be taking professional advice on your export strategy in terms of pricing, customs compliance, payment methods, currency risks, insurance and packaging.

Turning to experts to learn about the role of language when entering international markets is no different. We are here to help you improve your language capabilities.

Contact us today to have a chat about where to start.

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For many, the pandemic has brought stress to the forefront of our minds: worries of catching the coronavirus, job security, maintaining a healthy work-life balance and home schooling are just a few possible stressors. However, it is important to note that it’s not always simple to sniff out the cause of stress – and even if you manage to do so, battling those feelings can feel like an uphill struggle with no end. Especially in the translation industry, with its tight deadlines and the pressure to perform to a very high standard, relaxing and switching off can prove challenging, if not unthinkable.

Despite the fact that stress is hard to completely eliminate, there are a few tried and tested ways to help reduce it. Unlike the abundance of other articles on this subject, I won’t extoll the virtues of yoga, exercise and taking breaks – sometimes these just aren’t feasible, especially if motivation is lacking or you don’t have the time (or both).

What I would like to do though is take the opportunity of , which runs from 10–16 May 2021, to outline a few methods that I and a couple of colleagues use to lessen our stress, on those days where it might all be a bit too much.

1. Cutting back the caffeine

In the translation industry, it’s common to find yourself overwhelmed by a heavy workload with a relatively small amount of time to get through it: a situation which can cause stress and anxiety to arise even in the calmest of people. Personally, I’m aware that if my morning starts off this way, I should in all likelihood limit myself to just the one morning coffee, as any more will cause my heart to race and make me feel jittery. My brain then interprets this as anxiety (as the two sensations are very similar) and tricks me into feeling more stressed than I actually am.

Obviously, it’s not always easy to reduce your intake of coffee, but limiting your caffeine intake is definitely worth a try if you are anything like me! Switching to a herbal tea could be another good option as well.

2. ? Breaking down your work into smaller chunks

If giving up coffee is not for you, I’ve found that gaining a sense of control over your day can prove equally useful. My favourite (if not slightly convoluted) way to do this is by making a list of all of the things I need to do within a certain time frame, i.e. by the end of the day. I then set a timer on my phone for half an hour and try to complete as much as I possibly can before the alarm rings, after which I treat myself to a cup of tea or a snack, or I go and annoy my pet cat for a minute.

What this does for me is to provide a sense of focus. Instead of panicking and trying to remember all the tasks I need to complete along with their deadlines, the list helps to provide an overview of my work while marking tasks as “complete” and incentivising myself with a treat provides a nice sense of satisfaction.

3. ? Getting away from your screen

Sometimes, it’s hard to see the bigger picture, especially on busy days when you feel like there is no room to breathe, let alone think. Deadlines, issues with technology and tricky technical texts can all contribute to this feeling of futility, making it feel like there’s little chance of escape and that the universe is out to get you.

To combat this, Mary-Anna, an Account Linguist at Sandberg, suggests that “if you’re feeling like everything is insane and you have too much on your plate, walking away from your screen for just one minute and simply breathing helps. One minute is not going to bring all of your jobs crashing down but it’ll help you breathe and focus.”

 4. ? Using music to help you focus

Charlotte, another Account Linguist, has a slightly different approach to mitigating stress, involving music: “When I have a particularly heavy workload that requires me to power through and concentrate quite a lot, I have some special playlists that are made up of tracks with no lyrics, quite repetitive stuff that won’t distract me too much; I play them as a ‘treat’. On the one hand, it gets me motivated to focus on my projects because I’m looking forward to hearing the music, and on the other hand, my brain is now trained to be in a calm and focused mood when I hear that music.”

It could be that these methods don’t work for you. Everyone’s brain processes stimuli differently, and it could take a modicum of fiddling about to find a strategy which matches your way of thinking and your lifestyle. However, it’s worth giving one or two of them a try, even if only to find out what works for you and what doesn’t.

Stress and the issues it causes can be serious if left unaddressed. This article is intended to help you think about stress you may be experiencing and offer some tips that could help reduce it.

If you’re feeling the burden of stress is too heavy to bear, I would advise speaking to your GP or a mental health professional. There are many concrete ways they can help and guide you. After all, stress is something that’s going to be ever present in our lives to a greater or lesser degree: the vital thing is that we learn to deal with it as best we can.

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Here we look at a handful of reasons why working with a professional translation provider just makes sense. There are plenty more, of course, but let’s start with the ones that matter the most.

1. Translation is a specialist skill

It’s extremely easy to fall into the trap of thinking that someone’s ability to speak more than one language means they’ll make a good translator. In many situations, like ordering a meal at a restaurant abroad or giving a friend the basic gist of a sign, being bilingual is enough. Translation, however, demands more than just being able to understand two languages.

Like any kind of writing, translation is a specialist skill, often requiring a specific degree in the source language, time spent living in the country where the language is spoken and years of on-the-job training and development. Think about content production in your company’s first language – would you trust just any employee to write your marketing copy or product manuals? In these cases, it’s best to get experts involved, and the same goes for translation.

As a rule, professional translators only ever translate into their native language. If you don’t have the right combination of languages amongst your employees, then this means people could be translating into their second or third language – bringing us neatly to our next point.

2. It’s impossible to know the quality of your translation

If you don’t personally speak the languages you need to translate into, how will you assess the quality of your employees’ work? Can you check whether the tone of voice, brand positioning or even spelling and grammar are correct? This is doubly important if you’re asking someone to translate into a language that isn’t their native one.

Let’s take English as an example. The Nordic countries all . After all, children learn the language from a young age at home and at school, and often get excellent grades in the language before going to university. Studies in Norway have shown, however, that lack the English skills required at university level, where much teaching material is in English.

When it comes to using English in the workplace, they also face challenges, such as due to a lack of awareness of cultural differences and the appropriate expressions to use in various contexts.

If you’re a Nordic company exporting to an English-speaking country, relying on your own workforce for English-language content is risky. As we’ll see below, the risks of an inaccurate translation can be severe.

3. It’s not a good use of your time and money

Often employees asked to translate have to fit that work in around their everyday responsibilities. Their core role might not have anything to do with translation or even content production. This means that the translation might not be given the time and focus needed to produce a professional result, and increases the workload and stress on employees who are asked to do the work.

You also need to consider the cost impact for your company. A non-professional translator may take much longer to produce a translation than a professional (time they could spend doing other work) and getting access to linguistic resources like dictionaries and specialist glossaries means more expense on your part. Professional translators who do this on a daily basis will have all the resources at their fingertips.

4. Translators have tools to speed up their work

A translation company has the scale and time to invest in solutions that improve translation quality and consistency and speed up overall production times. Professional translators use specialised CAT (computer-aided translation) tools that allow them to focus on the text without affecting the formatting of the document. These tools also give translators access to two powerful features that help massively with consistency: translation memories and term bases.

A translation memory (TM) stores all previous translations on a particular topic – take finance, for example. If you regularly translate the same type of document – say a quarterly report where only some numbers and a few lines of text change – then a TM will massively cut down on time spent and avoid repeating work as much as possible. Translation companies invest in the infrastructure required to host a TM so you don’t have to.

A term base (TB) serves as a highly specialised glossary. Translation companies might maintain term bases on a specific domain, e.g. finance or medicine, to save the translator time looking up words in the dictionary and maintaining accurate, consistent use of terms. Translation companies can also create a TB that’s specific to one client, which means that your internal terminology and tone of voice will always remain the same.

These resources need maintenance to remain effective – something that translation companies consider a worthwhile investment – but that might be prohibitively costly or complex for you.

5. Internal translation doesn’t scale

If you decide to expand into a new region and none of your employees speaks the language there, how will you deliver a translation? You’re effectively faced with two options: turn to an external supplier or hire an employee who speaks that language. If the work volumes are low, this is unlikely to be a shrewd investment. Translation companies have vetted, trusted internal and external linguists standing by that can provide almost any language you require, removing the headache of recruiting your own translator.

The other consideration is growth in volume of content. If you experience a sudden upswing in the volume of content requiring translation, for example manuals, support articles and marketing collateral for a new project launch, translation could turn into a full-time job for the employee you’ve delegated it to. If after the launch volumes fall, your employee will return to their daily duties which have been neglected in the meantime.

As well as being a financially unwise decision, this fluctuation in workloads and responsibilities can create work-related stress and anxiety and negatively impact other employees who have to cover for your translator when they’re away from their day-to-day.

6. Mistakes can cost you customers and damage your reputation

We’ve all experienced poor translation – the menu at the foreign restaurant promising delicacies consisting of testicles and bits of old tyre, for example. Think about how this was for you as a customer. You probably laughed at first, but were you able to actually decipher what was meant? Did you order that item in the end that the menu claimed to be made from fish slime?

In other situations, the . Inappropriate tone, for example using profanity or informal language in the wrong context, could offend your customers and drive down sales. On social media, being too formal could actually lead to disengagement amongst your audience.

By neglecting to use a professional translator, you’re giving users outside of your home market a second-class experience.

Mistranslations of terminology can confuse users (we’ve probably all tried to follow a poorly translated electronics manual at some point) and increase support requests as customers aren’t given the tools they need to help themselves.

Fuzzy or poorly worded contract clauses can lead to differing interpretations of terms and conditions, potentially increasing costs for you and straining relations with your clients or suppliers.

In the worst-case scenario, poor translations can lead to serious safety risks if dangers associated with your product aren’t clearly explained. These errors may lead to injury or damage to property and may expose you to significant legal risks.

Professional translators know the right terms to use to match your customers’ expectations and ensure legal compliance. If customer experience is a core value at your company, by neglecting to use a professional translator, you’re giving users outside of your home market a second-class experience.

Translation is a sometimes overlooked step in the process of creating a great experience no matter where your customers are based. To avoid the pitfalls mentioned above, think about localisation early and consider enlisting a trusted supplier to take care of the translation work for you. As well as protecting your brand and keeping your customers happy, you’ll end up saving time and money in the long run.

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Read on to find out more about what’s on at each conference and how you can participate.

19–20 September, London

This year’s ATC Summit kicks off with a look mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the language services industry and beyond. Automation, artificial intelligence and machine translation are all also on the agenda.

Our Executive Chairman Jesper Sandberg says on the Summit:?“I keep going back to the ATC Summit because the UK is our home market and it’s the best event in the UK for us to meet all our most important industry peers. This year I’m particularly looking forward to hearing other people’s take on mergers and acquisitions, artificial intelligence and Brexit.?This year’s venue is truly something special and quite out of the ordinary for an ATC conference!”

7–8 November, Brussels

Translating Europe is a project launched in 2014 by the European Commission to bring together different stakeholders in the language industry, such as language services companies, universities, the public sector and national language institutes.

The sixth Translating Europe Forum will be held this year in Brussels on the topic “Translation all around us – The added value of translation in business and society”. STP will have a presence in the form of our very own Anu-Carnegie Brown, who will participate in a panel discussion on the topic “Customer relations: meeting clients’ needs and creating value”.

Registration for the conference is . If you can’t attend in person, you can follow along online, as the entire conference will be livestreamed via the link above.

5–6 December, Hamburg

Now in its fourth year, Elia’s Focus on Project Management is the language industry’s only event devoted to project management. The event is spread over two days. On the first day, four expert speakers from within the language industry deliver seminars, while on the second day they moderate interactive workshops on the same topics.

This year, our Managing Director Anu-Carnegie Brown will deliver a presentation on the topic “Understanding the bigger picture: The context of service provision in the global translation market”. In it, she’ll talk about how the job of a project manager looks different at different LSPs. At one, a PM might be a cog in a streamlined machine that consists of a salesperson, account manager, language engineer, vendor manager, graphic designer and quality control colleague. At another, one PM might perform all of those tasks.

The best PMs understand how their role fits into the bigger picture. The broader your vision, the more value you can add. That bigger picture could simply be the service provided by your own organisation, or it might be the complex network of the global language industry.

The presentation and workshop is exclusive to conference attendees. and don’t miss out!

Find out more about the role played by language industry associations such as the ATC, mentioned above, in our Industry Insights video series.

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In this part, he’ll examine the various technologies used by different partners. Can technology be used to eliminate partners from the network, or might it change the roles partners play in the future??

Buyers

Many localisation buyers in the IT industry used to rely on software localisation tools like . Today, they have the choice of enterprise (TMS) or developer-focused tools. Enterprise TMS tools manage the buyer’s content and vendors and take care of their content sources.

Some of these TMS tools, like or , are on the open market, while others are offered by the largest multi-language vendors, e.g. SDL Worldserver or Translations.com GlobalLink. Some technology providers, like or , started out as technology providers for enterprises but turned into MLVs later.

Developer-orientated tools are aimed directly at developers, and this is where tools like , or become an easy sell. They speak the language of developers and are intuitive for them.

If the buyer company has an internal translator team, they prefer to use similar tools to LSPs. When I was at memoQ, we were extremely successful at selling to such companies.

Buyers have a lot of work to do on the internationalisation of their software products, and for this, little support exists. Their software needs to be properly internationalised before it can be localised – currently I am only aware of supporting such tasks – and then they need to integrate the strings into their agile sprints using their continuous integration/continuous delivery tools like or .

Buyer-side technology is often not translator-friendly or created with the translator in mind.

Some buyer companies build their own TMS – Oracle, SAP, Netflix, IBM and Mozilla are good examples – because developing is something they do anyway. Others – like Evernote or Box – create continuous localisation platforms like Mojito or Serge. This technology doesn’t have many touch points with the translation service providers.

The problem with buyer-side technology is that it is often not translator-friendly or created with the translator in mind. It’s surprising how often the concept of the translation supply chain is completely missing from the buyer-side technology. The solution is usually to export and import the translation material with an , but there are systems that don’t allow the translation to be imported back. Workaround solutions can easily lead to quality compromises.

In a recent survey, we at Belazy discovered that the majority of localisation buyers today have a TMS that they control. This used to be the job of the MLVs, but with the changes in technology requirements, there are more client companies that are not afraid to deploy a TMS – either cloud-based or on-premises – which is owned and managed by them.

MLVs

All language service providers (LSPs) need to have business reporting that is independent of their client’s systems. Large MLVs use business management systems like or , or develop such systems themselves. This is the technology they use internally and with their translation vendors. The systems often have APIs and customer portals that their clients can use to post their projects.

MLVs tend to prefer easily customisable web-based tools with reasonably strong translation support.

MLVs tend to prefer easily customisable web-based tools with reasonably strong translation support. If they don’t own the translation management technology, they like to buy or rent from MLV-independent software vendors like , or memoQ. They prefer technology that allows the synchronisation of projects between servers, so that their vendors can work on their servers.

MLVs also develop technology to connect their clients’ bespoke content management systems to their own translation management systems. This offers then a chance to control how projects from a certain client or program are received for translation, which makes their integration work easier.

SLVs

SLVs also work with business management systems. When it comes to translation environments, they have to engage with multiple systems, either hosted by their MLV clients or by the buyer companies, or hosted by the SLV themselves, or installed locally.

SLVs tend to prefer desktop tools like SDL Trados or memoQ because they are more popular among translators.

SLVs tend to prefer desktop tools like SDL Trados or memoQ because they are more popular among translators and offer the SLV a chance to further optimise the translation projects from how the MLV had set them up. They like to standardise tools because it helps them achieve optimal production efficiency.

SLVs are in a unique, complex position where they have to create and set up translation projects in their business management system after having downloaded the translation material, assignment details and contractual documents from their MLV client’s multiple vendor portals. When they select a translator for the project, they have to reassign the work to the translator in their own translation management system.

Freelance translators

To put it bluntly, freelance translators use the technology their clients tell them to use. There are specialised, well-positioned translators who can pick and choose jobs based on what technology they are offered in, but many simply accept the clients’ choice of translation environment.

To put it bluntly, freelance translators use the technology their clients tell them to use.

How translators keep track of their projects depends on their degree of tech know-how, financial status and tidiness: while some use specialised business management systems aimed at freelance translators, others keep records in Excel spreadsheets. There are freelance translators who don’t keep track of their projects at all but trust the order data from the systems of their clients when it comes to invoicing.

Even though the up-to-date information about freelancers’ capacity to take on new work would be very sought-after data for those in the market who are constantly trying to place new tasks, there is no streamlined way for freelance translators to keep their current and potential clients informed of it in real time.

In-house translators

In-house translators work most efficiently if they don’t have to switch between translation environments too often. This is probably best facilitated at buyer companies where the tools and the content to be translated are most consistent in nature. In-house translators at translation companies work best under similar conditions, and the most productive ones are those assigned to dedicated, client-specific teams.

Summary

The localisation supply chain with its four partner roles is complicated, but even with time, I don’t see it changing significantly. Technology and process will remain in the hand of the buyers and MLVs. Clever SLVs will develop their vendor management role further and, instead of just delivering quality translations, contribute a quality workforce. While the ripples may temporarily shift tasks from one player to another, there are still plenty of valid reasons for keeping all four players in the supply chain.

In the table below I attempt to summarise what is the single most important task for each player in the localisation supply chain:

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In part 2, he’ll examine the role of technology at each stage of service provision and discuss how it ties in with the tasks performed at that stage.

Same old story: buyers, MLVs, SLVs, freelancers

When I was younger and more revolutionary, I loved to question everything in localisation. I wanted to replace translation memories with bilingual documents, because it seemed so logical. I wanted to push LSPs towards reusing translations for multiple clients, because it also seemed logical.

Some practices remain unchanged because the benefits seem smaller than the effort required to bring about the change.

Neither is a reality today, and I learned to live with the path of least resistance: some practices remain unchanged because the benefits seem smaller than the effort required to bring about the change. Very few concepts in the translation industry have changed over the last two decades, whereas the technology that translation buyers use has moved on significantly.

When I joined this industry over 15 years ago, the parties in the localisation chain were translation buyers, multi-language vendors (MLVs), single-language vendors (SLVs) and freelance translators – and that remains the same today. It’s interesting to see what function each of these parties has had in the process, and how technology has changed – and continues to change – their roles.

Buyers

At the advent of localisation, large IT companies started pushing out multilingual content, which gave rise to large MLVs like , and . The majority of the content came from desktop software that was delivered on CDs, with full documentation and often a manual. Desktop software followed the waterfall model – with specification, development, testing and bug fixing, localisation and distribution being very distinct steps. The timing of a release was crucial, as large press conferences or user conferences attracted many target users.

Remember visual localisation tools like and ? There were plenty of them: Multilizer, Sisulizer, RC Wintrans… strings had to be positioned and resized, scrolling was often not an option, Asian characters and bidirectional writing for Hebrew and Arabic was a challenge. Consistency between the interface and the help was hard to achieve.

Today, internationalisation has a very distinct set of challenges. The prevalence of Unicode made the support for writing systems easy. Today’s challenge lies in mobile-ready, responsive interfaces of web pages. Cloud-based systems support remote working, and instead of large systems, many companies work with a variety of systems to store their content.

Agile development is practised by most enterprises, not only IT, but also those where IT supports the core activity. Continuous integration/continuous delivery drives the need for quick-turnaround localisation. With the explosion in the volume of content, machine translation has become part of the workflow.

Buyers continue to face the problem of isolation and silos, not so much from the technology perspective but from the ignorance perspective. By necessity, their managers continue to collaborate with people, both within and outside their company, with various levels of understanding of the bigger picture in multilingual content management.

The local power plant or food manufacturer also needs translation services, though perhaps on a smaller scale.

When people in the translation industry speak of buyers in general terms, they tend to think of IT companies. In reality, the local power plant or food manufacturer also needs translation services, though perhaps on a smaller scale.

The research on the fragmentation of the translation market indicates that not every buyer needs the sophisticated expertise of the largest translation service providers. You only need the services of auditing firms like KPMG if you start optimising tax cross-border, and the same applies to buying localisation services.

Multi-language vendors (MLVs)

MLVs emerged because they had the technical knowledge to understand and support a variety of clients. They employed engineers who were able to help the buyers in the IT sector. Most of today’s successful MLVs have grown on the back of their clients’ growth. They were the ones who started providing staffing for their clients and they built their service on two cornerstones: dedicated customer teams and a customisable technology stack.

Buyers’ content repositories have changed significantly and the rise of APIs and the concept of platforms has enabled software to play better together. MLVs always pursued the know-how and control of the technology stack, and over the years, technology became the most important driver for LSP growth. Large MLVs partnered with content technology providers to create efficient localisation solutions for their clients. Technology is a great lock-in because changing it requires investment in time and money.

[MLVs] understand the bigger business picture better than most smaller translator-led shops do.

In the footsteps of continuous integration came continuous localisation: buyers sending increasingly small chunks of text for translation. A handful of large MLVs handles the bulk of the software and website translations for large enterprise clients, and they do it under time and price pressure. The role of the MLVs has not changed much: they understand the bigger business picture better than most smaller translator-led shops do.

And then there is the ripple. Large tech companies like Facebook believe they can build better technology for their localisation needs than the MLVs can provide and they start contracting directly to SLVs.?At the same time, Spotify moves from an SLV outsourcing model to an MLV outsourcing model. Other giants, like Netflix, but do not change their outsourcing model.

More often than not, procurement at large enterprise buyers doesn’t allow for single-sourcing translation, thus the buyer’s partner MLVs have to collaborate with each other in the service provision. Many buyers have their own shared service centre for their translation needs which then engages a mix of MLVs, SLVs and freelancer translators.

In a nutshell: MLVs have always been the guardians of process and technology. They have the knowledge of internationalisation, workflows for dozens of languages and the ability to test and quantify localisation outcomes. MLVs are also able to specialise in niche workflows for regulated industries or computer gaming and can work with large procurement teams at multinationals.

Single-language vendors (SLVs)

Single-language vendors are defined by the fact that they translate into one target language or a group of regional languages. If the MLV is the tech shop, the SLV is the language quality shop. Interestingly, the same company often wears both hats: for example, in Spain, most of the local translation orders are from English, French, Italian, German or Spanish into the same EFIGS and into Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Chinese. Any other language combination is in low demand. Any LSP in the region can function as an MLV by managing the work between the aforementioned languages and outsourcing the occasional extra languages to other SLVs. At the same time, they act as an SLV by offering translation services into Spanish and Portuguese to large global MLVs.

Freelance translators turn into small SLVs, defeating the original purpose of the disintermediation.

What makes SLVs attractive partners is affordable quality: they have the staff to review and assess translations efficiently, which in turn helps them keep vendor costs relatively low. Their operational excellence – focused resources, standardised processes and streamlined configuration of translation technology – helps them build cost-effective solutions.?And then there is the ripple: MLVs like the idea of and seek ways to work with freelance translators directly. There are three major challenges in this:

1. The MLV’s inability to assess the quality of all language pairs in-house.
2. The fact that freelancers quote higher rates to foreign clients and for ad-hoc work, which means that only the largest MLVs with offices in multiple countries achieve favourable rates.
3. The admin and management overhead increases with more suppliers.

I’ve seen many MLVs making a push towards working with freelancers, and then going back to working with SLV partners. Typically, an MLV builds an outsourcing platform and creates an open marketplace for registered suppliers to grab the jobs on offer. In response, some freelancers start taking more jobs than they can possibly translate themselves and pass them on to peers or mentees. The vendor managers may notice but won’t interfere as long as the delivered quality is acceptable. Thus the freelance translators turns into small SLVs, defeating the original purpose of the disintermediation. And the MLV is back with SLV outsourcing.

In a nutshell: SLVs are the best solution for finding, maintaining and training talent in a specific target language. Their unique added value lies in their efficient vendor management for a limited set of languages.

Freelance translators

Until recently, one of the greatest concerns for freelance translators was language technology: how to install, maintain and pay for all different pieces of software. They tended to master one translation tool better than the others and wanted to perform most of their jobs in that environment for improved productivity.

Today, translators work in a smaller variety of desktop-based tools and with more online tools. Online tools are simple and very similar to each other. The freelance translators’ main concern now is the size of jobs: they receive many 5–100-word tasks every day. The best translators are the ones who can communicate efficiently with their project managers and clients.

Translators are burdened with numerous email notifications about tiny jobs and can become frustrated if clients think they are easily replaceable. Job auctions, which from the clients’ point of view facilitate the speedy placing of a job, to their uniqueness and expertise.

Turnaround times have decreased with project sizes, and no LSP really knows their freelance translators’ availability because they all work for multiple clients. Translators are asked to update their availability in a portal, but many say that if they were to do that for all their clients, they would hardly have time to work on any translations.

[Freelancers] prefer clients who see them as a valuable individual, take them seriously and listen to their feedback.

And then there is the ripple: due to the stress of having to place jobs quickly with a vendor who is contracted to never turn them down, clients choose SLV or MLV partners over a vast pool of translators – let them take care of the scheduling and translator selection problem.

In a nutshell: freelance translators have always done the bulk of the actual translation work. Today, they work with translation, revision, review, post-editing and transcreation. They prefer clients who see them as a valuable individual, take them seriously and listen to their feedback.

In-house translators

There are fewer in-house translator positions available now than in the past, but there are still reasons why all types of companies employ them: data security, restrictive translation environments, quality control, their guaranteed quantifiable availability and deep subject-matter expertise, the return on investment in terms of their training and continued professional development. In-house translators can be employed at the buyer organisation, MLV or SLV.

In part 2 of this article, István will examine the role of technology at each stage of service provision and discuss how it ties in with the tasks performed at that stage.

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In recent years, the word transcreation has become a localisation buzzword, and is often used to define the process whereby copy is customised to transfer the intent and impact of the original message for the new target market.

It has been argued, however, that linguists were customising copy in this way long before the term transcreation became recognised. As a result, there seems to be mixed interpretations as to what distinguishes marketing translation from transcreation, and confusion both in terms of workflows and budgeting expectations. Some say that transcreation only applies to the adaptation of slogans, others apply it to any marketing copy that requires translation; sometimes a CAT tool is used, other times it’s worked on outside of a tool, in Excel.

Most of us will have been exposed to transcreation at work, such as in film titles, well-known brands’ jingles or slogans. The impact of a good or poor transcreation can be powerful. There have been several transcreation blunders over the years; famous examples include a number of automotive brands failing to realise the potential negative connotations of a model name when launching their product in another market. , General Motors, who were unaware that “No Va” means “It won’t go”, when launching their Chevy Nova in South America.

Another well-known transcreation mishap is , which was mistranslated into “do nothing” when marketed in other countries. That certainly wasn’t the message they wanted to put across in terms of using their services. This mistake led to a rebrand costing around 10 million US dollars!

Although we do seem to have a clear understanding of the ultimate goal of transcreation and the magnitude of its impact, it’s clear that we have a long way to go in terms of standardising the processes and workflows to enable us to achieve the desired outcome. TAUS recognised the gap in our industry for such information and have since released a document called “”.

With this document, TAUS has highlighted the importance of producing resources that answer many relevant questions surrounding this topic, such as definitions of marketing translation, transcreation, multilingual copywriting and how to set them apart from one another, as well as examples of translation, transcreation and copywriting in action.

I’m certain that in the future we will have a clearer understanding of transcreation as a service, but until then it’s clear that we can’t take the word transcreation at face value; it’s much more than a combination of two words. Regardless of what you think this elusive term means, the next time you see it, don’t be afraid to ask questions to get to the core of its role in each specific context; only then can the creative team take the first steps towards delivering a project according to expectations.

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For us, quality is all about our culture, our people and their skills. It means meeting the expectations of every client, whose demands may vary significantly. For a mature translation buyer, achieving high volumes of quality translated material is a complex production process. For a client with a one-off translation request, a translation and revision workflow will provide the quality they are looking for.

In all cases, a high-quality translation involves the following:

1. Adherence to the standards and requirements of the target language
2. A linguistically correct rendering of the source text
3. Adherence to the linguistic conventions of the target language
4. Compliance with client-specific style guides and glossaries, and consistency with existing texts
5. An idiomatic style appropriate for the target audience

Looking behind the scenes at STP, we see other factors contributing to a quality service: from the management and company culture through to talented translator and project management teams and advanced language technology specialists.

I’ve always respected the way quality of service is engrained in STP’s ethos, from our company vision, mission and values through to our business planning and strategy.

I asked my colleagues to tell me what quality means for them. Here’s what they told me:

Jacob Hansen, Account Linguist Team Leader

“When training new translators for a specific account, one of the objectives is to encourage linguistic creativity while ensuring a certain level of uniformity with others working on the same account.

You want the linguist to use their own style of writing to ensure a naturally flowing target text, but at the same time you don’t want the external reviewer or consumer to be able to tell the individual translators apart.

From my experience, the best way to ensure consistency without tying the linguists’ hands is to get nerdy and have open discussions on how best to phrase even the most common expressions.”

Janina Kosma, Senior Swedish Translator

“I have to run thorough quality checks with specialised software before delivering my work, and of course the all-important spellcheck, but in truth I find the best quality assurance tools to be a keen eye for detail and an ability to envisage the translation in its intended environment.

In a way, starting a new job is like a brand-new morning – I have to open my eyes to whatever lies ahead and let my mind loose in the realm of Who? – Why? – How? to produce an accurate text that sounds natural – that does not read like a translation.

Then, the best way to end my day is to read through only the target text to make sure I got it right. If it’s marketing, does it make me want to buy? If it’s instructional, do I understand what to do? Would my sales rep, doctor, accountant or IT support guy speak like this? Pausing to ask myself these things is just as important as the automated glossary check that reminds me of the terms required.”

Mattia Ruaro, Language Technology Specialist

“With the way the industry is developing, it is absolutely pivotal to stay up to date with the latest tech developments.

In my team we look after production workflows, software and training to make sure everyone in the company is confident using translation tools to their full potential. A project managed by a well-trained project manager and translated by a linguist who is a proficient user of CAT tools will result in a delivery of higher quality text in the end.

That’s where we can make a difference: we take care of the technology in the background so they can focus on the details of their work.”

Jennie Bentley, Vendor Manager

“As well as ensuring the ISO compliance of all our freelance translators, we also offer on-going support to our translators both via our project management team and our online FAQs on processes and tools. We also work with our language technology team and training manager to provide training for our translators on pertinent topics within the industry, which serves as worthwhile CPD.”

Megan Hancock, Project Manager Training Specialist

“Training every PM begins with a week-long induction, orienting them both within STP and the translation industry as a whole. Formal induction is then threaded together by a modular training structure spanning their first year at STP; this covers the specifics of translation technology, selecting suitable linguists, and successfully meeting client expectations.

Each new PM also has an in-team learning plan, which outlines the work they’ll deal with in their first months, generally introducing them first to a defined set of accounts, projects or CAT tools, which they are then able to apply to a wider context.

In this way, we balance the practical advantages of learning on-the-job without compromising our high service levels and focus on a quality deliverable.”

Emma Tamlyn, Project Manager

“Ensuring quality starts as soon as we get a request email. We always ask for a source or sample file, so that we can check the text type and find the most appropriate translators for the job. This is particularly relevant for medical, legal and marketing texts. We pass on all reference material provided by the client so that the translator has as much context as possible. We offer query sheets to the linguists in case they need to check anything with the client. We also maintain project management instructions for all our clients to ensure necessary information and preferences are shared with all of our PM team.

After the job is completed, if the client comes back with any changes or feedback, we make sure that this is passed on to the linguists for any future jobs, and we will also ask them to update any translation memories or term bases to help future jobs stay consistent too.”

The quality standard we adhere to defines our quality processes, but it takes the talent of the right people to implement them.

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