Our website contains the phrase “no machine translation” displayed prominently on the home page. Client occasionally ask us if we use machine translation for our projects. We do not and we want prospective clients to know. Why Is Machine Translation Used By Some? Machine translation (that is, translation of text performed solely by a computer) […]
It’s rare that we turn down an opportunity to bid on translation work. We work so hard just to have an opportunity to quote projects by investing in various forms of marketing, so there’s a cost for every lead we receive. A lead not pursued is a waste.
Still there are sometimes potential projects that come our way that we don’t bid or quote on. Here are a few of the categories:
1) Someone who considers themselves to be a translator, but just wants an official translation of their material, frequently is not a good translation client. Often what clients like this want is someone to translate in the same way they would. Any departure from their preferred terminology, approach, or style, is considered incorrect.
2) The source material is in such poor condition that post-delivery attention is almost a certainty due to poor legibility.
3) The schedule objective is unrealistic. We understand that sometimes clients have time requirements for translation projects. However, if they exceed human possibility then it’s better to pass on the project than to be excessively stressed about meeting a deadline.
The above project scenarios are ones where we nearly always decline to provide a quote when the request comes from a new client.
There’s one other scenario that out of principle we’re tempted to decline:
1) We receive a request for quoting a project and we’re one among multiple translation companies copied in the cc email address field. Are our services a commodity? That’s the implication.
We build our business by successfully performing one translation project after another and earning repeat business from happy, satisfied customers. That’s what choosing projects where the probability for success is high, not disadvantaged due to circumstances beyond our control, is a factor in choosing which projects to pursue.
Our website contains the phrase “no machine translation” displayed prominently on the home page. Client occasionally ask us if we use machine translation for our projects. We do not and we want prospective clients to know.
Machine translation (that is, translation of text performed solely by a computer) is of interest for two main reasons:
1) It’s faster. Large volumes of text can be translated much more quickly by machines compared to human translators.
2) It’s cheaper. Machine translation can be performed at a fraction of the cost of human translation. The marginal costs for translations are close to zero for producers.
Nowhere on the list of advantages of machine translations would we expect to find “higher quality translations.”
Affinity Translation works within its network of skilled human professional translators to ensure that all translation projects adhere to processes that promote high quality translations. Post-translation proofreading by a second translators is a quality assurance step automatically built-in to our translation rates. The use of translators that are native speaking in the target language is another practice employed to promote high quality translations.
Some companies offers categories of translation services performed by machine as an option. Some companies offer hybrid machine/human translations. Human translators are tasked to edit the output of machine translations to make them acceptable.
So the option to the client then becomes: a) would you prefer a high quality human translation performed by skilled linguists, or b) would you prefer a machine translation (or machine/human hybrid translation) that’s less expensive, available more quickly, but lower in quality?
So which will it be?
Pursuing High Success Probability Translation Projects
It’s rare that we turn down an opportunity to bid on translation work. We work so hard just to have an opportunity to quote projects by investing in various forms of marketing, so there’s a cost for every lead we receive. A lead not pursued is a waste. Projects We Don’t Bid On Still there […]
No Machine Translation
Our website contains the phrase “no machine translation” displayed prominently on the home page. Client occasionally ask us if we use machine translation for our projects. We do not and we want prospective clients to know. Why Is Machine Translation Used By Some? Machine translation (that is, translation of text performed solely by a computer) […]