How to evaluate your buying decisions? - Ad-Hoc Stage

We've blogged about the stages of maturity and how buyers of translations could use it as a benchmark. As a buyer of translations, it is easy to get overwhelmed with information, especially at the Reactive Stages. Therefore, we've developed a few basic questions that may help to get a conversation started with LSPs when evaluating buying decisions at each level of maturity.

Today, we'll cover the Ad-Hoc stage.


Excerpt from our Presentation on Localization Maturity

Ad-hoc Stage
The Ad-hoc stage is the first stage of maturity. Organizations at this stage are beginning to respond to international (or domestic foreign language) market demands.

Buying translations is a black-box to many. Because buyers cannot evaluate the value points when they purchase translations at this stage, price is the only factor to fall back on when evaluating buying decisions.

1. Why is there a price difference in my quotes and how should I evaluate the price difference?
Even at the basic level you should ask critical questions about what is quoted, why you get these services and how it would affect your outcomes. Is translation just based on word count or are there other critical processes that I should keep in mind, such as review and project management. What service level do I expect? What are my timeframe options? How can I be sure that the translation is done by a qualified team and how does the LSP evaluate this? How can I be sure that my project is evaluated and I don't end up with costly out-of-scope work?

Recommended read: We've written before about evaluating price differences in a previous post called "understanding what you buy."

2. What should I expect from my Language Service Provider (LSP) at this stage?
Translation could be a long-term commitment. When organizations start to support foreign language speakers with translated content, that creates a commitment. What will your LSP do today to make your project a success and what can you expect when you go back to them for more work? Are LSPs building assets for you like Translation Memory and Glossaries and do they share these with you? Do they care to explain how these assets can help your organization? Are they interested to help you move up the maturity levels; are they knowledgeable about your industry and interested to learn about your organization, goals and objectives?

3. What risks are there to my project's outcome?

At this stage, project outcome is the main concern. Even though the project may seem small, investing your time and effort to do this right at the start can not only bring a positive start in reaching out to your second language audience, it also is a positive start for your organization to start with translation.


A display advertisement by McDonalds went viral.

A proof by a Project Manager after this went to layout should have caught that the Hmong translation had no spaces in it. This is a case of a translation company just getting a translation and not even looking at it. 

No matter how small a project, each communicated piece is a purposeful effort to reach an intended audience. Start a conversation with your LSP about your audience and what your goals and objectives are. Does your LSP ask in-depth questions about that the content in relation to the intended audience and are they able to talk intelligently about the subject?

Translation gaffes often involve small things and where risk does not seem to be so apparent. Often, the smaller projects are the most complex projects. The risk of a bad outcome in - for instance - a work safety manual is very apparent. But a seemingly innocent and relatively simple and creative Coca-Cola project with random words ended up in a marketing debacle for this large organization.

That also brings another point about risk and maturity levels: even large international organizations may not always be a mature buyer of translation services. Even though Coca-Cola has done some very innovative advertising with their name in foreign languages (name and brand = risk) and other work that we have posted on our Facebook page, this effort clearly showed buyer immaturity and lack of project management.

In conclusion
Use these 3 questions to discern the value of what you are getting from their translation project and move beyond the price evaluation alone. Understand that even at this stage of maturity, a translation project has value to your audience and your organization.

Understand what you buy

It is essential for buyers of translations to understand how management of the translation cycle impacts their costs. We manage our translation projects by process and provide a detailed overview of what is entailed in the scope. Breaking out a project per process allows buyers to:

• compare apples to apples when evaluating bids to ensure that all bids include the same services
• see how their organization's own processes can impact the quality of the translations
• understand how the order of the processes in the translation workflow can affect their overall costs

Compare apples to apples
How can a corporate buyer of translation services compare quality and price without looking at the processes involved in the translation workflow?
Most organizations look at the price per language when comparing quotes from multiple Language Service Providers. This allows them to assess their budget for each market. However, we mentioned earlier that if budget is an issue and organizations want to gauge which languages to choose, price should not be the leading factor. The organization should strategize as to where their dollars are spent most efficiently by looking at the language and cultural factors between the domestic market and target market. The potential within the target markets should be a deciding factor on what regions or countries to focus on. Those target markets that benefit most from translation and or localization should be on the top of the list.
Pricing out translation projects per language also inhibits process efficiencies that you may have when you combine languages together. Some project management tasks only need to be done once in a project – regardless of the number of languages. Therefore, buyers can see cost savings if languages are bundled together.
LSP TIP: Ask questions! When the price differs between vendors, find out why.
Buyer-side processes impact on translation.
A key piece of insight that we share with our clients is the importance of considering the entire Content Lifecycle. Many of the metrics in our Client Mentor Philosophy (CMP) focus on the processes that precede the translation process. Additional efficiencies can be achieved during translation if certain things are in place before the source copy is sent to translation.

One area we assess in our Global Readiness Scorecard is Content Readiness. Do we need to modify the files our clients send us before we send them to translation? Or, is the content ready to be translated?

The first steps in a translation project are File Preparation and Preflight. These two steps are impacted by the quality of the source documentation. The processes the buyer goes through before sending us their files affect the amount of preparation we must do before the translation can begin. One example is if a client sends us text in a Word file that has been stripped from a PDF, the line breaks that divide the phrases must be removed so that the translators have entire sentences to translate, rather than broken pieces. Another example is if the text contains cultural references that would not apply to the target audience. These references will not be affective if they are simply translated. The source text would need to be revised so that the cultural references are removed. Or, the translator would need to adapt the translation to include a reference appropriate for the target culture.
Translation buyers must understand their translation provider’s processes in order to see how their processes can impact the quality of the translations. This is where transparency and mentorship come in and can be of great benefit for translation buyers in the 80th percentile of the GCMM.
LSP TIP: Strive for transparency! Get insight into your translation provider's processes so that you can work together to make efficiencies in the Content Lifecycle.
Well-planned workflows = Predictable costs and timeframes
A process-oriented workflow enables you to predict inefficiencies that can creep in later in a project. Organizations tend to overspend on projects when strategic decisions are made after the project has already started. When additional phases are added by the organization as an afterthought, the processes before and after these new phases are affected. That is why the Client Mentor Program focuses on those leading indicators.

Often clients are focused on the end goal of getting their translation by a certain date. They believe that getting the translation started as soon as possible will get them to that end date more quickly. What we point out in our Client Mentor Program is that preparation is everything when it comes to effective project management. Taking time before translation starts to evaluate which phases must be part of the project may add a few extra days on to the schedule. However, with a well-planned project workflow, we reduce the chance of adding in phases late in the project that require rework or repeating phases that are already complete. Repeating phases adds to both the schedule and the bottom line.
LSP TIP: Take the time to understand what steps are needed in your project workflow. You'll see the extra planning time up front will save you time and money in the end.