Can a QA procedure fix cheap and shoddy work?

One of the hardest nuts to crack for any localization company is to recruit qualified and reliable linguistic resources. In the past, this was difficult enough and a plethora of tests and evaluation procedures were developed to try to sort out the good from the bad. 

This testing and selection process is difficult to refine, time consuming, and of course, costly for every company in need of the resources. The company must be able to boast to translation buyers, and make them believe, that they really do have the best and most suitable teams available for whatever subject matter that would fill the needs of their customers.

But do they really have the "best qualified and most suitable" people on the job? Given that the client expects and is promised to receive a high quality result, it is usually the case that the work is handed off to the lowest price resource that will accept the task. 

Is it any wonder then that we also see that clients are demanding some sort of QA standards be employed to show up any deficiencies in the deliverables at the end of the project? But how exactly does a set of standards or a QA process actually improve the quality of translation work that is performed by unqualified freelancers?

Admerix has trained teams of proven talented translation professionals. We don't need to continuously scour the internet looking for someone to take the work and then just hope and pray for a good result.

We know what we can expect, and we consistently deliver quality results to our customers and we don't get complaints.

How is this achieved?

The answer is simple. Stick to basic, proven, logical, workable, industry standard processes. We never try win a project on price (recipe for disaster) and we don't have to continuously trial new people and, after they pass the test, try to crunch down the price.

Our teams have been working with us for years, work exclusively for our company, and are only retained on our team by the delivery of consistently high quality work. But it is not cheap, and it is not done on crash schedules. 

When you want a professional translation or localization result, you must simply follow the process of applying proven industry standards, using only professional teams, overseeing the project by veteran project managers, and paying a fair price. 

Cheap and shoddy work will always be cheap and shoddy no matter what you try to do to it after it is completed.

Get it done right by starting right, processing right, allowing the right time frame, and paying the right price - or put more simply: the input will determine the outcome.

Here's Some Localization: Ikea's Saudi Arabia catalog erases women; company expresses regret

Yikes! Here's some localization: Ikea's Saudi Arabia catalog erases women; company expresses regret
...In one instance, a pajama-clad woman — shown standing at a bathroom sink along with a man, young boy and toddler nearby — was erased from the catalog distributed in the Arab nation, leaving just the three other people in the picture...

How should you treat a rush job or other crazy request from a client?

We know clients want quick work, but at the end of the day they won't accept anything less than perfect quality--no matter what they say at the hand off of the job when they just want to get it assigned.

I know everyone wants to win a project no matter what. And if you try to explain to the client what is really possible and what is not, you still risk losing the work to the many vendors who will say "yes" no matter what.

These are the aggressive vendors, both in India and China, who will take any project, whether they can really do it or not, on the hope that getting a job is the main thing and they will likely get some payment even if they can't come through 100%. This is the idea that obtaining some money now is more desirable than having an on-going relationship with a client.

However a more mature view is that you should not just be jumping through hoops for a client who wants something crazy--you need to be educating them on what is and what is not possible. This means telling them they are making a mistake by demanding the ridiculous and impossible.

(It should be noted that localization, for all the pretension our industry gives it, is simply "translation" in most companies and considered a little more than a back office administrative task. This mean the drones who are interfacing with you in handling the project have little power to do anything other than try to fulfill the insane demands their bosses made of them concerning the localization work. This means to make you pitch to change the way clients do things, you have to deal with those higher up in the chain of command who really can make the change.)

So when you get these rush requests, the only way to go is to ignore the client's wishes and quote the right time and price for what is really possible and they can take it or leave it.

Anything else risks a bad result that hurts your relationship.

In all my years in localization, I have been in too many staff meetings and spent too much time trying to figure out how to do stupid things for a client that just won't work and will mean disaster later on for the relationship.

The time should be spent on educating the client and making sure they know that the way they have decided on doing things will lead to disaster and all of them getting fired for botching the job.

Admerix in full force during August!

As a reminder, Admerix localization teams remain hard at work during August.

The Eurozone cultural convention of month-long holidays around this time of year usually causes a dearth of localization resources, but not at Admerix.

Here's our post from last year that says it all: We are here in August!

Where are the all fake translator resumes coming from?

We have reported on this blog in the past about scammers sending what look like genuine resumes to translation companies. These resumes all have one thing in common... they are fake.

Worse than just being an annoyance, they are dangerous for translation companies to ever respond to. The danger is that these scammers are only interested in receiving genuine documentation from established and respected LSPs so that they steal that LSP's identity and get real translators working for them.

The end result is always that the translator never gets paid and then mount a campaign against the company that they believe they were working for to try to receive compensation. Such campaigns when conducted on translator forums and websites can have a serious impact on the reputation of the targeted LSP.

Clearly the process of recruitment of experienced professional linguists has become not only more complicated, it is now even a very risky part of the business. These scammers are causing big problems for the industry as a whole.

But who is interested in investing time in tracking the offenders down? The answer is that no one will because it is almost impossible (not to mention expensive) to get any kind of redress! These scammers are on a free run and they know it. The issue also is impacting on the hard working freelancers who wish to try to promote themselves and widen their client base. 

The only defense seems to be to the same as for any unsolicited email that comes in - delete it immediately and get on with your day. But if you are a resources manager and under pressure to recruit more linguists to expand your existing pool of talent, how to then proceed? The answer is to find a competent, established language supplier who offers economical rates and provides turnkey solutions for localization projects.