Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

By its very nature the translation business is intangible and international. Over the last decade or so it has spread across the whole planet, partly due to the Internet.

We have seen changes both for the better (there is a wider range of translation services available than ever before and deadlines are now far shorter) and for the worse (numerous people with no real training as translators have started to swamp the market).

This has led to a bewildering range of prices which clients find very difficult to understand. Whereas a technical translator working from Dutch into German can earn up to 200 euros per 1000 words, there are some “translators” working from English to Spanish who only charge 20 euros per 1000 words…

We at Translatin have taken the decision to work only with qualified, experienced professional translators and to keep our overheads (offices, administrative staff, etc) down to the absolute minimum. This means that we can offer very high quality professional translations at a price which is generally well below the market average, but without dipping into price ranges where you simply cannot expect professionalism (below a certain price, there’s no way that a translator can earn a living and still buy the best equipment and suitable reference tools).

In other words, we think we offer the best value for money you’ll find anywhere on the market.

The 1,000-plus companies who have chosen to work with us think so too (see a list of our main clients at: http://www.translatin.com/references.htm)

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

Would you take French classes from a neighbour just because he or she happens to have spent a week in France ?

1 - Only a native speaker can translate properly into his or her mother tongue.

2 - A Turkish translator who has been living in Paris for a decade will not be as up-to-date with the language as one who lives in Istanbul. In ten years, he will have lost touch with his culture, the newspapers, the television, advertising, etc. He will have missed out on all the changes to his language.

We see these two points as crucial and as a result we work only with “native speakers” living and working in their own countries. Obviously the Internet has made this a lot easier to do.

We have a network of over 300 carefully-chosen translators and proof-readers, so we can guarantee the best possible linguistic quality combined with extremely efficient deadlines. Another factor in choosing these people is their availability (we need to be able to contact them several times a day) and their computer equipment (broadband, latest versions of Microsoft, Adobe and Trados products).

Each translation is assigned to the best translator for the specific job (a financial text will always be given to a translator specialising in this field where at all possible) and is proof-read by a second translator before being delivered to the client.

As far as possible we stick to the format and presentation of the original documents and obviously we also offer complete confidentiality. Each of our translators has signed an agreement not to disclose any documents sent to him or her to anyone else.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

As a translation agency we can get to know you: we know what kind of business you’re in, what terminology you use, who your products are aimed at and how quickly you need the work done. We will not hesitate to ask you questions if a translator is not sure about something and if the document we send you is not exactly what you wanted then we’ll revise it and make changes until you’re completely satisfied.

We do our best translations for the clients who have been with us the longest.

They become far more than just clients: they are our partners and we have a stake in their success.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

Would you pay the same price for a Picasso as for a copy ?

Well, hopefully not.

These days there are translation tools available to make sure you don’t have to pay twice for the same translation.

Trados, for instance, is an application which stores each individual segment of all documents translated in a file known as a “translation memory”. If a particular sentence comes up four times in a particular document, it will only be translated once and then inserted automatically the other three times. The same thing happens if this sentence happens to crop up again in a document you send us a year later.

These “translation memories” can have a huge impact on your budget because any repeated or previously translated items are only billed at a third of the usual price.

In other words, loyal Translatin clients who send us large amounts of work tend to save significant amounts of money.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

Stable human relationships are important in the world of business.

We understand this and at Translatin there is only one project manager for each client – although obviously we have to provide holiday cover for them from time to time. So you will always be speaking to the same person.

This person knows all about you and your needs so he or she can constantly keep track of the work.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

Rightly or wrongly, we still judge the people around us on their linguistic standards, their spelling and how clearly they say what they mean.

A company which publishes manuals full of grammatical mistakes is not going to be taken seriously by its clients, even if technically it is highly skilled in its area of business.

A company which sends its partners letters full of spelling mistakes will soon become a laughing stock and people will steer clear of it.

If a company’s website contains grammatical mistakes this is the first thing people will judge it on, even if the products are excellent.

Saving a few pennies on a translation by using the cheapest agency can turn out to be a false economy. It can sometimes lead to unexpected losses which may be worth hundreds of times more than the initial saving.

When we lose clients, they don’t always tell us why they’ve left us.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

Because you feel that your “tour operator” will be making your choices for you and getting you the best prices on somewhere to stay and good food, as well as providing competent guides to take you around the main sites of interest in the region you’ll be visiting. And, at the end of the day, it’s cheaper, in terms of both time and money, than if you’d taken the same trip and organised it yourself …

The same goes for translations. Yes, using a translation agency is a little bit more expensive than finding a freelance translator for a project yourself, but an agency offers you a high quality all inclusive service and, at the end of the day, this saves you both time and money.

Basically we pick the best translators and proof-readers for you. We take a long-term view of managing your projects and we are aware of your requirements.

So you get the trip of a lifetime with no nasty surprises…

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

You might well find that work ground to a halt before the roof had even gone on.

There’s no chance of this happening with Translatin.

We’ve been growing constantly for ten years now. We have over 1,000 clients (you can see a sample at http://www.translatin.com/references.htm) and our turnover has been growing by 20% a year, so although in global terms we’re a medium-sized agency we’re among the very largest in Belgium and more specifically in Brussels, the capital of Europe.

If you give us a project now, we’ll still be working on it in five years’ time, with all the professionalism of a large company but with the craftsman’s love of a job well done.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

And why not?

But we rather hope you won’t try and make your dream come true because we prefer our clients to stay alive!

Large scale projects and dreams need to be handled by a group of people all working together.

So at Translatin, we only ever set off up mountains when we’re all safely roped together.

The company is one of the divisions of the Web-Refer SPRL group which also runs GoTranslators (http://www.gotranslators.com/). This day-to-day contact with the largest directory of translators in Europe means we know the business inside out and we always have the very latest information at our fingertips. It also gives us a pool of over 33,000 linguists from all over the world to choose from.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

We will sometimes try and help them out when we can see that this is something that has come up unexpectedly and it’ll be better for them to head off with a document which isn’t absolutely perfect than with nothing at all…

But, generally speaking, we won’t accept this kind of work for the simple reason that it goes against our quality criteria – and these are very important to us.

To translate a technical document, a translator needs to start by reading all the documentation available (e.g. the client’s website). Then he or she will ask any questions, use his or her dictionaries and encyclopaedias, maybe ask a colleague for advice, translate the document, read it through and finally send it to the proof-reader, who also works for Translatin and who will repeat the whole process…

You can’t do all that in just 24 hours.

In the same way that fast-food is generally thought of as being not just bad food but bad for your health as well, fast translation can only ever lead to bad communication.

So, in their own interests, we ask our clients to take this philosophy on board.

Would you get on board an aircraft which was four times less expensive than an Airbus or a Boeing ?

With Translatin, you won’t be the first to make the right choice and hopefully we’ll soon see your logo on our page of satisfied clients: