Are you tasked with choosing the best translation agency? Well, the choices are abundant and it’s difficult to pick one out of the bunch. We created this guide to help you select the best translation provider for your translation project.
This article will help you hire a translation agency that manages your project efficiently, delivers accurate translations, beats deadlines, and is a breeze to work with.
But before we begin, we want you to approach this search in the right way. Thus, we have created a list of factors to consider before you start your search for a translation provider.
Things to Decide Before Hiring a Translation Agency
Being unclear could lead to wrong results. So, before considering a translation agency you should analyze your project. For clarity, ask your team the following questions:
- What materials do you want to be translated into?
- Which languages do you want your content to be translated into?
- What is the purpose of translating this content?
- Who is the target audience for this content?
- Is domain expertise required to translate this content?
- Will you need translation help on an ongoing basis?
- Should multiple translators work on your project?
- When is your project deadline?
- Does your translation project contain sensitive information?
Once you get a clear understanding of your project requirements, you can make a better decision to hire the right translation agency.
Things to Consider When Choosing the Best Translation Agency
Here are the factors to consider when choosing the best translation agency for your project.
1. Accreditations and Certificates
When looking for your new translation partner, ISO certifications should be the first part of your criteria list. With ISO 9001 for quality management, you can be assured that your projects will be handled properly. But these certificates don’t always prove “quality.”
2. Business Reputation
When evaluating your new translation agency, you should check testimonials. It shows what their clients think and how much they are satisfied with the results. Don’t just check for a company that offers testimonials on its website; seek out an agency that offers detailed feedback, case studies, and references on request. Browse the Internet, check reviews, references, and recent posts before you can make a right decision.
3. Professional Translators
When analyzing your translation partner, you should pay attention to their specialization, recent projects, and translators. Choosing human-powered translations will ensure greater accuracy and fluency of the translation work.
But just because the native speaker doesn’t mean they are language experts who know all the linguistics techniques and subtleties of a language. For successful language translation, you need industry experts who have proper certifications with mastery of the local language.
These experts ensure the proper terminology is used in the target language, so your content sounds as professional as it did in the original language, especially in fields like finance, medicine, marketing, or, technology.
4. Quality
Checking the qualifications of translators and the reputation of a company is a good way to go that considers the Linguistic and Cultural issues in translation as well as the technicalities of your business. When choosing the best translation agency, ask for previous samples to check their translation quality.
5. Delivery Schedule Adherence
When choosing a translation company, you will need to know that you can trust your translator to complete your project accurately, within your deadline. Only professional translation agency will definitely offer you this option to meet the deadline and without sacrificing the quality.
6. Financial Situation of the Translation Agency
If you intend to work with an agency on a long-term basis, you should analyze whether the company is financially secure and profitable.
7. Responsive Customer Support
This is one of the most important aspects while choosing the best translation agency. You should also note their consistency. Appropriate service, and fast response, either by email or by phone which provides added value for clients.
8. Expertise in Your Industry
Request the agency to assign a translator with niche expertise in your industry. There are many jargon and technical details that a translator without domain expertise can’t translate and localize accurately.
People in different countries may have different jargon for the same term. Thus, it’s crucial to assign a translator with domain expertise to your assignments that require great accuracy and adherence to brand guidelines.
9. Translators Sign an NDA
It’s a common ethical practice in the translation agency for the translators to sign an NDA. Don’t hesitate to confirm with your translation provider that their translator has signed an NDA to prevent the leakage of sensitive information.
You can also provide an NDA to the translation agency and ask for a copy, just to be sure.
Looking To Hire a Translation Agency?
There are more than thousands of translation services worldwide. Each has its own specialties. To review content translation vendors, discussing, and onboarding a language partner is time-consuming. The internet has made it super easy to fetch all kinds of data anywhere in the world. When you work with a translation agency, keep these tips in mind, and choose wisely! Give Activeloc a try and build a flawless localization workflow with our team.