Can you reduce your translation costs without compromising on quality?

If you've tried searching the internet for something like French translation services (go past the many misleading offers of automated free translations), you will have discovered the hundreds of translation agencies proposing to successfully manage your multilingual projects for you. Unlike PR agencies whose expertise lies in keeping relationships with the press, or marketing agencies who sell ideas and technology, the translation agency’s job is more difficult to justify.

What if I told you that it is possible to get a cheap translation from a qualified and experience translation professional without decimating your marketing budget, simply by going straight to a freelance translator?

What your translation agency doesn’t want you to know

Often seen as the one-stop shop for all translation needs, translation agencies build their business on compiling a large pool of freelance translators with the view to responding quickly and efficiently to compagnies’ needs such as multiple languages, short turn-around times or specific industry knowledge.

Because they have wider shoulders (ie, a greater budgets and resources to promote themselves), they tend to be more visible on Google and their sales team can rally up a larger audience. This gives them purchasing power with freelancers, who all tend to spend long hours registering with agencies and jumping through their many hoops.

Interestingly, and despite the varying requirements and processes, the projects tend to land in the same freelancers’ laps. In fact, it is not uncommon for me to hear of an upcoming project from two or more of the agencies I work for. Eventually, the client will settle for one of them and, having finally found out who would get their hands on the margin, I can start translating. I rarely get to talk to the client and when I do, it is generally under the close supervision of the agency's representative.

Do you really need a translation agency, and what are the risks of cutting out the middle-man?

Agencies do have a role to play, and in some cases your translation project will work out better with their help. In many other scenarios however, you can save a lot on your translation budget as well as streamline your workflow by working directly with the freelance translators. Before you ditch the middle man and decide to manage it all yourself, here is a short summary of what translation agencies do and how you can make do without them.

Vetting the translators

• Translation agency: translators willing to register with a translation agency are generally required to send their CV and/or details of their experience in terms of languages and specialisation. The supply manager will also check qualifications and references, and negotiate the rate.
• Do it yourself : assuming your business normally manages their own recruitment, your candidate checks will be an easy match for theirs. Read about what to look for in a translator. You can also look for reviews online or get in touch with prior clients to get a feel for their previous work.

Managing the proof-reading

• Translation agency: the project manager generally appoints both the translator and the proof-reader to form a TEP team (translation-editing-proofreading) from their pool of linguists. They sometimes endeavour to keep the team consistent but in most cases, I don't even have the name of the proofreader and some agencies go as far as imposing exacting and rather inappropriate tools on their proofreaders such as "score cards" so they can further automate the process. These practices can get in the way of natural copy and reduce a language to a series of grammatical rules, thereby removing all the translator's scope for creativity and local style.
• Do it yourself : your freelance translator will probably be used to working with a proof-reader in their own language, and they’ll be able to either share their contact details or even manage the proof-reading for you. Whilst this may slightly increase the delays as they may not be instantly available, the process and the results will both benefit from not having to second-guess the proof-reader's style or work around the agency's confidentiality policies.

Driving down translation costs

• Translation agency: using their large work volumes as bait, agencies lean on the translators to accept lower rates and tighter deadlines. Far from benefitting from the savings, the clients only tend to inherit the pitfalls (such as poor quality due to rush jobs or underpaid translators)…
• Do it yourself : have an honest conversation about deadlines with a professionnal translator who will feel valued, well paid and will enjoy working for you. I'll let you guess which scenario is likely to produce the best results...

Managing multilingual projects

• Translation agency: one of the biggest selling points used by translation agencies is their large pools of translators working in many languages. This is very useful if you need your website translated in 50 different languages, but the likelihood is you only need to translate it for the regions which you can serve.
• Do it yourself : most of my clients look for the classic european combo of French-German-Italian-Spanish, and sometimes for Russian, Arabic or Mandarin. I have colleagues who can help and we really enjoy working together, sharing glossaries and discussing terminologies without the added layer of self-justifying technology and procedures which many agencies insist on.

Files and data security

• Translation agency: sharing sensitive files and informations with a third party is always a risk, and translation agencies often add many layers of technology to protect their clients' files.
• Do it yourself : if you're dealing in sensitive data, the chances are you already have systems in place to ensure the security of your servers or the confidentiality of upcoming news. Not only is it cheaper to simply apply these policies and processes to your language sub-contractor, but you'll retain a better control of what is going on.

Files formatting and processing

• Translation agency: project managers often process your files in order to integrate them to their own systems (such as Xtm or Lokalise) or to extract the text for the translator with the view to reinserting the localised version into its original format. This may be useful for large websites managed through CMS or if you work with rare file formats which a freelancer might not know or use, and I consider this to be the only real added value sometimes provided by translation agencies.
• Do it yourself : some of my clients have opted to run their own Lokalise account which can be integrated to a CMS by their IT department, or to simply onboard me and let me work within their own systems and IT teams. It's definitely worth a conversation.

Managing reference files and glossaries

• Translation agency: having received any references files (source documents, previous translations, glossaries or translation memories) from you, the agency will forward it all to the appointed translator.
• Do it yourself: if you need to share additional information such as brand voice or preferential terminology with your translator, you don’t really need a third party to do that…

Responsibility and reliability

• Translation agency: it is common to hear clients explain their choice of an agency with arguments such as "they can deal with problems better" or "they're less likely to disappear".
• Do it yourself: look for endorsements from governing bodies such as the Chartered Institute of Linguists, the National Register of Public Service Interpreters or the Institute of Translators and Interpreters. As a freelancer, I also choose to maintain a comprehensive professional liability insurance and since I like to look after my reputation and to get paid, it’s in my interest to deliver a decent French translation, on time.

In truth, unless your project comes in an unusually complex format or requires a particularly precise collaboration among a large team of translators, it is perfectly possible and easy to manage all this yourself.