Project Managers, you know the drill. You get that urgent translation back from a linguist in China, who clicks send then promptly signs off for the night.
You open the file, which the client needs by the starting bell in London, but you notice there is a sentence missing.
You e-mail, you call, you WeChat, you consider hiring someone on Upwork to walk over to her apartment in Haidian and knock on her door…
To no avail. And your client desperately needs this file on time. So, you look at your other list of Chinese translators. Who…either ignore your e-mails since it will earn them all of a whopping 20 cents or…they want to charge a minimum fee that comes out to 20% of the whole file.,
Lesson #1: Treat Your Translators Like Royalty
It isn’t that hard to do. Between opaque payment practices and frazzled PM’s, translators do not always receive the respect and admiration that they deserve, especially given their talent and skills. But LSP’s are a dime a dozen. If your company treats linguists well, you’ll stand out from the crowd, and translators will be more incentivized to keep you as a client. That means transparent payment practices, e-mails with full sentences, and saving first-come first-serve mass e-mails for when you are really, really desperate (this one frustrates translators to no end).
If translators like to work with you, not only will you prevent instances of missing text, other translators will be more likely to do you the favor of translating that one sentence for you. It isn’t just a good business strategy…it is also a nice way to work!
Lesson #2: Be Ready with A Backup
Like we said, LSP’s are a dime a dozen. If you don’t deliver stellar service, your client has hundreds of other options to choose from. So be ready to take the hit on that minimum charge. You might also consider opening up a Top Up Account at Meridian Linguistics. With Top Up Accounts, we’ll charge you that minimum charge, but we’ll apply it to all the projects you order from us in the future, meaning you’ll be covered for all those instances of missing text (or small changes to websites, or small stylist change requests…) that happen to you in over two hundred possible language pairs.
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