When
I founded our translation company in 1989, I had just stopped working for a
manufacturer of construction machinery.
I
was looking for translation customers. I telephoned hundreds of them. It’s
never an easy task. It’s very difficult to get past the switchboard – and email
was hardly used at that time.
Then
one day I thought “Why don’t I try the company I used to work for?” (I don’t
know why it took me so long to think of that). So I contacted that company and
received plenty of translation work.
Our
company expanded. It had its ups and downs, but it managed to weather three
recessions (one in the UK ,
one in the USA
and another in France ).
We were translating mostly engineering documents, service manuals and the like,
for construction and agricultural machinery manufacturers, plus various
engineering companies.
It
was still difficult to find enough new customers.
Then
I suddenly realised that the reason why we got so much work from construction
machinery manufacturers was because I knew the business and I had been able to
build up a team of translators who had also been in that business. Our
customers had confidence in us and we were supplying their needs.
What
our customers needed were translators who had practical experience in the
industry or profession concerned. Not just people who have a degree in the
language concerned, but people such as engineers, doctors, programmers,
bankers, accountants, lawyers, geologists, scientists and technicians, people
who know the business and who also speak the languages concerned.
We
then had to devise a procedure for finding such practical experts. It took
time, but after all the tests were completed, we assembled a large team of
translators who meet our requirements. We know we can satisfy our customers and
that they can be confident that the translation will provide correct
information to their own customers.
The
work of a translation agency in 2014 doesn’t stop at translating. We can use every
sort of DTP program and we have the right translation memory software to supply
translations with harmonized vocabulary and harmonized phrases for repetitive
actions.
People
in your company who are responsible for your technical or commercial literature
would be very interested to learn about translation
memories, which are a good way to cut your translation costs and improve
consistency in your documents.
You
can read our general paper on translation memories by reading the next post.
John
Hadfield
General
Manager
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