The market for translation and document preparation is international, heterogeneous, and largely unregulated. Given the low barrier to entry of providing translation services, customers are faced with a plethora of options when it comes to meeting their translation needs. These range from the casual (asking a friend or colleague and paying in cash) to the very professional (formalized contracts and bidding processes with pre-approved agencies), depending on the needs of the customer or organization. Important aspects in determining the appropriateness of a vendor include price, convenience and speed, reputation for quality, and ability to grant credit payment terms.
The following are summaries of a number of interviews conducted with people involved in the process of sourcing professional translation, either internally or through translation agencies.
Name: Max
Nationality: Korean, based in Seoul
Role: Project Manager, Korean Trade-Investment Promotion Agency Description:
As a project manager, Max deals directly with translation agencies on behalf of the KOTRA government agency. Most recently he is responsible for contacting agencies to translate important brochures for the agency’s high-level talks with Malaysian trade authorities. The Korean government is attempting to promote Korean-manufactured electronics and cosmetics in Malaysia. His organization restricts him to sourcing amongst
approved agencies only, which are reviewed through an annual approval process. Currently 5 agencies are approved.
Experience:
Max requires a 5-page document to be translated. This document is legal in nature and
requires expertise and precision. Max contacts the agency via email. He negotiates with a single contact at the agency, who himself is a translator. The agency’s turnaround time on the document is 48 hours, and Max receives the final product as a MS Word document attached to an email. Quality is high and the agency is known by reputation for reliability.
Typically, documents contracted to agencies like this can range from a single page to a 200-page annual report. The organization produces many reports and published papers originating in Korean and translated for international audiences.
Name: Olwen
Nationality: Taiwanese, based in Taipei/Hualien Role: Translator, part-time
Description:
As a translator, Olwen handles document preparation for a small agency that deals almost exclusively in the field of immigration. Wealthy Taiwanese looking to obtain immigration status for their children in the United States or Canada pay high fees for standardized documents required by Canadian immigration authorities. The clients also require consulting by professional accountants, since they are required to disclose important financial information and especially information related to penalties they may have paid for aggressive tax avoidance practices.
Experience:
While Olwen remarked that the agency offered a competitive wage, she also had the
impression of dishonesty and tolerance for poor quality in her agency. Olwen was not allowed to have any contact with the clients themselves, despite providing services for her assigned clients entirely on her own. Aside from a single foreign lawyer, all employees of the agency are Taiwanese. The agency pays a good wage, but turnover is high and the boss is known to be extremely controlling over the entire process.
Typically, Olwen would be responsible for 50 pages’ worth of documents and a turnaround time of 2 weeks. All work occurred within the office on office computers and no work was allowed to be removed from the office. Clients negotiated on price, and typically paid by check. Work involved frequent revisions, which required messages to be relayed back and forth through a salesperson.
Name: In-Young
Nationality: Korean, based in Seoul
Role: Public Relations, Baxter Pharmaceuticals Description:
In-Young is responsible for contacting a large Singapore-based translation agency for
periodic translation of press releases and other corporate materials. These materials frequently but not always remain internal. All Baxter branches in the Asia-Pacific region are required to contract with this agency. However, the company has also contracted with freelancers and smaller local agencies in the past.
The pharma company specifically avoids contracting exclusively with any one company, preferring instead to maintain a competitive bidding process. Each translation job requires solicitation of bids from multiple agencies. The company prefers the Singaporean company specifically due to past issues with translators lacking necessary expertise with the pharmaceutical industry and associated terminology.
Experience:
In-Young communicates with the agency almost exclusively via email, and via phone on
rare occasions when time is an issue. The person with whom she spoke is the single point of contact within the agency, and is responsible for both client relations and translation.
Although expertise in the pharmaceutical industry is required, the agency’s reputation and status as ‘registered’ is the primary signal of quality.
In-Young first contacts the agency by attaching the relevant document within an email, and expects a quote within a few days. Once the process has started, In-Young can expect multiple back-and-forth emails as she and the translator discuss numerous necessary revisions. The translator uploads the document to a cloud host such as Google Drive and gives In-Young the ID and password needed to access it. After the job is complete, In-Young will deliver an invoice provided by the agency to her company’s finance department, and the agency will be paid in a lump sum.
Name: Linda
Nationality: Malaysian Chinese, based in Singapore Role: Translator/Executive Assistant, Singapore
Description:
Linda is a full-time employee of a Japanese multinational’s branch office in Singapore. The
corporation provides a variety of specialized construction services for large infrastructure projects in the Southeast Asia region. Linda’s job includes but is not limited to translating internal documents created by the Japanese headquarters and intended for the company’s Singapore-based engineering teams. Linda translates 2-3 documents per week, ranging from 1-5 pages in length. The documents always originate in Japanese and are translated into English or Chinese, which are both languages she speaks fluently. She also performs some executive-assistant tasks and translates a number of documents for the branch manager’s consumption.
Experience:
Linda is not a native Japanese speaker, but attended a Japanese university as an undergraduate full-time. A confounding issue that she had with the job upon hiring is that proper translation required knowledge in mechanical engineering, and Linda had no engineering expertise. In her words, she took ‘a full year on the job’ in order for her knowledge of engineering terminology to develop to meet the needs of the job. Now, she said, she is fully knowledgeable about the required terms and translating most documents is routine.
However, over time she has become bored with the lack of variety in this type of translation work, and she stated her intent to leave the company within two years.