GOLDEN TIPS FOR BUYING TRANSLATION SERVICES

TRANSLATION AGENCY OR TRANSLATOR DIRECTLY?

NOTE: WWW.MULTILINGUAL.CH is NOT an agency: it provides direct access to professional freelance translators and interpreters.

There are myriads of translation agencies on the market of varying degrees of quality. However, with agencies you have no idea exactly who will be translating your documents.

A serious agency will only use qualified translators working INTO their mother tongue (the only way to guarantee top quality), but unscrupulous agencies will not be bothered, as long as they get the client's order.

Besides, agencies often take a hefty commission (sometimes up to 50%!) so that the translator ends up earning far less than if they worked for you directly.

Now ask yourself:

Will a translator working for you through an agency (for far less than their normal rate) be sufficiently motivated to devote the necessary attention to your text in order to produce a high-quality translation?

In fact, most professional translators refuse to work for agencies for that very reason, which begs the question:

Will a "translator" contacted through an agency actually be a qualified, experienced translator or rather a bored housewife, an unemployed taxi-driver or a student only interested in making a quick buck, with no qualms about taking on a job for which they are not qualified? (In order to make a profit, many Swiss agencies send work to "translators" abroad, where standards of quality may not be up to Swiss clients' expectations.)

If you entrust your documents to an agency, you will never know for sure as most agencies prohibit direct contact between client and translator.

Besides, professional translators will often need to contact the author to sort out any queries regarding the intended meaning of unclear parts of the text. Therefore, direct contact between the client and the translator is crucial for high-quality translations.

Finally, professional translators create client-specific glossaries to ensure consistency for repeat jobs; With an agency, you are likely to be getting your documents translated by a different person each time, inevitably leading to inconsistency in every respect (e.g. terminology, style, variety of English (US/UK) etc.).