Guidelines for choosing a language service provider

It can be a bit scary to hand over your important product information and clinical trial documentation to a language service provider (LSP) for the first time. Still, if you’ve done your due diligence, this firm might end up being a long-term partner of yours as you expand into new markets and grow your product line.

Follow these steps as guidelines for choosing the right language service provider for your needs.

Organize your files for translation

Decide what files, for now, will need to be translated some time soon. As time passes there will be more files, but for now, select from what you have. This is important for defining the scope of the capabilities required by the future LSP. For example, if you are in procurement, gather files from various departments. Your goal is to reach the full denotation-connotation spectrum, which can cover scientific journal articles from R&D, legal contracts from Legal, eLearning from HR, website and marketing content from Marketing, and social media content from PR. Alternatively, if you are a manager in one department, then collect a representative set of files that you think you might need translated in the future.

Check the complexity of your files

Review your files. One main challenge in finding a good LSP is finding one that specializes in the types of files and content that you have. For example, if you only have docx file types (Microsoft Word), then finding an LSP to translate those types of files is easier than if you had both docx and mp4 (video). For each different type of file you have, a different type of software will be needed by the LSP. Moreover, each type of software requires its own skills to use. While everyone may know how to use Microsoft Word well enough, not everyone knows how to Adobe InDesign.

Note the document type and terminology used in your files. For example, is the terminology legal, highly colloquial or associated with some kind of regulation such as 8th grade reading level or patent filing?

Review files: what file types are they? what terminology does it contain? Are there any cultural or regulatory considerations? Ie. colloquialisms or patent language requirements.

Define the scope

Scope refers to document scope, language direction and/or target country, budget and timeline. In combination with the files selected, this will limit the types of LSPs eligible to work on your projects and save you time in the selection process.

Here are a few examples of limiting scope in documents:

excluding references from a scientific journal article
excluding sections from a contract
excluding voiceover from an eLearning project
excluding certain product pages from a website
excluding measurement tables from a manual
only translating highlighted text

These exclusions can be very real in regular projects so noting these and including them in a future pilot project is important to assess an LSP’s ability to follow instructions, which is extremely important for getting what you want without causing delays or additional surprise charges.

The reason country is important is because, for example, there are three kinds of Spanish (Mexican, Latin American, and Spain) and one universal. It’s important to know that these differences exist and that they lead to different preferences in terms and style.

Budget is important because it’s important to set expectations accurately from the start. All LSPs offer “translation services”, but few explain how they do it. It’s possible to get translations at any cost – machine translation is free on Google- so sharing a budget reveals to LSPs how much money they have to work with to get you the best quality they can offer. If you depend on LSPs to tell you what “a translation” will cost, you will be left with whichever salesperson sold you machine translation at the lowest price. Also, translation methods should vary with the purpose of the translation. For example, machine translation should be used for gisting purposes, and the ISO 17100 process should be used with most medical translations. If you have no idea what an appropriate budget for a translation project should be, here is a good starting point that covers about 95% of all languages at the ISO 17100 process level:

Any process less rigorous than the ISO 17100 will cost less.

Timeline is the final parameter to limit scope. Here are the three timeline questions an LSP will ask:

When do you need a proposal by
When will you make a decision by
When do you need the translation by

The 2nd question is critical for knowing how much time the LSP actually has to do their job as the clock starts on that date and ends on your delivery date. If you’re aiming for “human” quality, then understand that the industry standard metric of a translator’s speed is about 2000 words per day and an editor’s speed is 4000 words per day. Estimating a translation timeline is partly art as you never really know when exactly a translator will be done with their current project and how long it takes to successfully assign a job to a translator 8 time zones away. Nonetheless, you can estimate how long it takes to translate (not DTP, QA or anything else) a document using the ISO 17100 process based on this formula:

Any process less rigorous than the ISO 17100 will take less time.

Check reviews

The value of reviews is debatable, but there is one thing that all reviews validate- whether or not a company or service is a scam. Unfortunately, in the translation industry, this is so common that they even have websites dedicated to tracking them. This is also why partly of why LSPs exist. To avoid being scammed, look for these clues:

Only contact via email or website
Email address may be inconsistent with web domain
Less-than business-level writing or other communication skills
Extremely low cost
Eager to start a project without all the information

The results are as expected:

unedited machine translation (unless this was what you asked for)
no delivery
excuse-after-excuse for delaying delivery

Unfortunately, you won’t know you’re scammed until after the fact. Google the name of the company and the word “scam” to check.

Check processes used

All LSPs offer translation services, but not all LSPs perform translation services in the same way. To a non-bilingual buyer, the result will be same – something that “looks” like the target language. However, if there is a person who can read the target language, then they will see that there are noticeable differences between the different processes. Here is a list of translation processes:

ISO 17100 translation process: one professional translator followed by a second professional translator
One person of varying qualification
Machine translation followed by a person of varying qualification that fixes the translation
Machine translation only

Each process has a very clear distinction in price point as the more people you add to the process, the more expensive it is. Also, the qualifications of the translator can vary significantly, which will be reflected in the cost. For example, the ISO 17100 is very particular about who qualifies as a translator, but an LSP that is not certified in the ISO 17100 but “uses the process” can be using substandard translators. For example, some people, of the gig economy, who translate as one of the various jobs they have will not be properly qualified and will not be aware of what a professional charges but will be willing to work at any rate. One way to address this is to ask for the “anonymized resume” of the individuals who will be working on your projects. Technically, these can be forged, but it’s better than nothing.

Check the technology they will use

There are several key areas where technology needs to be considered:

File transfer
File Storage
Translation memory
Terminology management

File transfer refers to how files will be exchanged. If email interception is a concern, files can be exchanged via a safe FTP upload/download portal. HIPAA compliant TP services should meet any requirement needed. This would also meet file storage requirements.

Translation memory technology or computer-assisted translation (CAT) technology should be a readily available type, not a “custom-built” solution. This is because the memory bank of segments created during the translation process is the client’s, not the LSPs, and the file type must be something accessible to the client and another LSP.

Terminology management is typically done by a CAT tool. It’s how the client and the translators will agree on what terms should be translated consistently and, sometimes, what terms to use in the target language. The key point to note is that the LSP uses one and that they work with you to create a glossary in the first place, if the translation projects require it.

Request copies of their certifications

The primary certification of interest is the ISO 17100:2015. The ISO 17100 includes standards for processes and resources to deliver quality translation services that meet provided specifications. This is technically the only certification an LSP really needs. However, consistency in quality is a separate organizational challenge.

For a company to be able to deliver consistent quality (ideally defined by the ISO 17100), then the organization needs the ISO9001 Quality Management System. This is a certification that is non-industry specific and addresses quality by accounting for the context of the organization, leadership, planning, support, operations, performance evaluation and improvement – specifically corrective and preventative actions that lead to iteratively higher quality outputs. It also contains eight key principles of quality management that are not auditable but do form the fundamental characteristics of quality management.

Around 2000 – 2010 it was popular for translation companies to seek the ISO 13485 (A certification for medical device companies) to win business with medical device companies, thinking it would help. It turns out that collecting irrelevant ISO certifications is not cost-effective for clients. If you are wondering how a translation company can be certified in an ISO meant for medical device companies, it’s because companies can elect to exclude themselves from parts of ISO requirements. For example, the ISO 13485 includes requirements relating to clean rooms, which has nothing to do with translation services, and so the translation companies exclude these sections (and probably many other sections) from the requirements. One important element that the ISO 13485 had that the ISO 9001 did not have was risk management, but the latest version of the ISO 9001:2015 does include this, so now no argument can be made to still have the ISO 13485.

Propose a pilot project

A pilot project simulates the translation service from the very beginning to the very end. This allows you to assess:

Responsiveness
Availability
Price
Quality
Speed
Post-delivery support

Evaluating different elements of the service is important for different reasons. Evaluating responsiveness is important for knowing how quickly the LSP will respond you when you need their help very quickly. It’s not uncommon for clients to request translation only when they realize they need the translation right then, so anything that reduces turnaround time is helpful. Availability is akin to responsiveness as responsiveness without availability is useless. There are many times clients turn to us because alternative resources are unavailable due to holiday, timezone issues or unexpected leave. Availability is particularly important when assessing a backup LSP vendor. Perhaps the most commonly missed factor to assess in an LSP is their post-delivery support. The worst scenario is when a translation is delivered, there is some kind of problem (font rendering, not following instructions, or anything else) and now the LSP is missing, slow to address the issue or anything other than resolve the problem immediately.

The benefits of proposing a pilot project should hopefully be clear. You are ensuring that you are getting what you paid for when it really matters. Moreover, the pilot should be free unless you want to test on something substantial because you don’t really have a choice.

Submit a project with LSPs

Given the significant benefits of proposing a pilot project with LSPs, consider the following in your pilot project:

Use a common source and target language
Keep the project small, but not too small
Ensure that the terminology in your source documents are not generic

Choosing a common source and target language makes the project realistic and free of confounding factors that might affect typical translation quality, price and turnaround time. It would be a mistake to use a pilot project to discover that, this time, the quality, price or delivery time are atypical due to the availability of a proper linguist.

Regarding project size, you want a project to be small enough to be free and manageable to discuss in a post-delivery debrief, but large enough to NOT be a “minimum” charge in practice, which prevents you from learning what a project would typically cost. Minimum charges are misleading as the translation of 30 words would cost the same as 500 words.

Finally, ensure that the terminology in your source documents includes either highly denotative (technical) or connotative (colloquial) terms to actually test the skill and experience of the translation team.

Have a call with an LSP

Prior to the project starting, have a call with your main point of contact (POC) at the LSP. This is the time to learn anything you could not learn otherwise and have a discussion about any concerns. All topics should fall under these categories:

Project context
Project scope
Project process

In the context of a pilot project, the “context” would be why you are contacting the LSP, any past experience you have had procuring language services, and any client onboarding questions the LSP might have. The LSPs job is to ensure that they fully understand what you want and communicate what they can do for you.

Scope is the communication of what file types you intend to send, what documents they are of, what language pairs you’re interested in, what file type you expect to get back, and any additional instructions you want to convey, such as method of file exchange or additional file handling that you want the LSP to do.

The project process is a good opportunity to learn what the LSP is capable of delivering and how. There should be no surprises here. You want to know about the use of technology and the role it plays, and any other tools that will be used along the way, such as a style guide, glossary, etc.

Receive proposals from LSPs

When all parties are done doing their due diligence, it’s time to receive proposals from the LSPs and follow up with pilot projects – choose the same exact project scope for all the LSPs to make the comparison easier. In the proposals, the questions you want answered are:

Were they listening?
Does it meet your expectations?
What was left out?

It’s critical that your POC at the LSP is able to follow instructions. If your POC cannot follow instructions, it’s a guarantee that the translators will not be able to either as they won’t receive the right instructions in the first place.

There should not be any surprises in the proposal. Everything should have already been explained to you in the call. The proposal should merely be documented confirmation of what was discussed.

When sales people don’t have good answers to questions, they avoid answering the question altogether. Make sure that all the most important, sensitive and difficult questions are answered.

Choose two LSPs

After all the deliverables from all the LSPs have been received and scored, choose two. Have a preferred vendor, and a backup. As a backup to some of our clients who were required to go with an alternate LSP due to procurement’s instructions, we get contacted rather frequently. When we ask why they contacted us, they say that, right now, they really value that we are responsive and available to meet a tight deadline or odd some circumstance that their primary vendor was not able to deal with.

Since there may be no perfect vendor or that vendor may not be the one you picked, it’s important that your backup vendor at least be a highly responsive and available vendor because chances are you will go to them only as a last resort, after being declined by your primary vendor, but now you have less time than previously scheduled to do the same amount of work that was declined by the primary vendor.

If you’d like to learn more about how BURG Translations helps you ensure high-quality translations, contact us today.