Choosing Translators

This topic is part of About Working with Translators.

Consider the following questions when choosing translators to work with:

Will you use in-house translators or translation vendors?

Although in-house translators might seem cheaper in the short-term, bilingual workers often have other responsibilities and perform translations in addition to their main functions. Consequently, the results that you get might not be as good or as sustained as those you would get from hiring an outside translation vendor.

Another factor to consider is that, just because an employee is from the country that you are localizing for, it does not necessarily mean that they have the knowledge to translate your terminology correctly into the current professional vocabulary for your industry in the target locale.

If you do choose in-house translators, then make sure that they read the trade publications in your field published in their native country, at minimum.

There are many translation vendors to choose from, many of whom specialize in software internationalization, localization, or globalization, depending on your needs. For a selection of specialists, see the Web site of the Localization Industry Standards Association:

http://www.lisa.org

How do you choose the right vendor?

While cost is one factor to consider, to judge whether the cost quoted is good value or not depends on the services that you think you need and on what other vendors offer for a similar cost. Find out from each vendor what their charges entail and compare each vendor’s offering based on the value of the service to you as well as on its cost.

For example, some vendors bundle the cost of project management into a quote, while others break out this cost. Some will charge extra for defect fixes, while others will not.

Do you require that your translators work on site or can they work remotely?

Most translation vendors use skilled specialists expert in translation for particular industries, who might be located in other U.S. states or even other countries, as opposed to in-house translators. Be prepared, whenever possible, to ship your translators flat files containing the localizable text strings and to clearly identify which strings should be translated.

Sometimes it might be most effective to work closely with qualified translators at your site. Doing so might be appropriate when the product is being localized very rapidly. Having translators on site allows defect-fixing to occur quickly. It might also be appropriate when the product requires engineers to input localized text, as when there is no separate localization utility. Having translators on site to work together with the engineers will be highly advantageous, but is generally more expensive.