3 More Translation Quality Myths

Each year our company performs and delivers many professional translation projects to long-time continuing clients and new clients alike. The vast majority of projects go smoothly and result in satisfied customers. When questions come up (and they are inevitable in any activity involving human interactions) they sometimes stem from one or more of the following “translation quality myths.”

1) There is one only one correct translation for every word/phrase/project.

In most cases there are multiple acceptable approaches to arriving at a correct and acceptable translation deliverable. Professional translators work daily in transferring meaning from a source language into a target language. While professional translators’ judgments are not beyond question, their decision making in the course of performing a translation project are in most cases vastly superior to others with some language skills, but without the day-to-day experience of working between language pairs.

2) Shorter translation projects are easier to perform than longer ones

In fact shorter translation projects are often more difficult to perform to a client’s satisfaction because relative brevity leads to greater scrutiny of every translation choice. Unfortunately greater scrutiny frequently does not lead to higher quality final translations (i.e., too many cooks).

3) Clients are always the final arbiters of translation quality

This can be a sensitive point because in business we’re often taught that the client is always right. We try to make sure that our clients are never “wrong,” although in some cases clients can make observations that are not linguistically sound. In such cases responding to the observations of client-side reviewers of translations requires not only language but also deft customer service skills.