Translation and localization services are becoming the essentials of globalization, which leads to high demand for premium language service providers and linguists. Providing professional language services is a lucrative business; however, to make it a full-time career LSPs have to understand industrial intricacies and standards of quality.
To cope with the growing demand for translation services, language services providers manage a huge volume of translations regularly. Ensuring translation quality with a huge quantity of content is quite challenging for LSPs.
Read this article to learn about the major challenges faced by top language service providers, what is the right way to mitigate them.
Challenges Faced by language service providers
Linguistic Challenges
Dealing in the translation industry, especially if you are targeting multiple language pairs at once is not easy. Languages keep evolving and translating high-quality content is a constant hassle. Some most common linguistic challenges LSP may face are as follow:
Understanding the context
Most of the time, quality issues arise when the requirements are not being conveyed or understood. A lack of contextual understanding of the message can lead to translation consistency in different regions. Moreover, when your translation is not contextually aligned with your brand message, it will only create issues for your brand image in the foreign market.
Keeping up with industry-specific terminology
This issue is most common with LSPs that claim to provide translation services to clients from diversified domains. When you are the jack of all trades, it is hard to master one niche effectively. For instance, an LSP may have a hard time translating medical or legal translations with complex terminologies if they don’t have experienced medical or legal translators available.
Working with rare or low-resource languages
Unlike bestselling books that only get translated into popular languages, global business doesn’t see any limits. Companies wouldn’t mind fetching for target audiences in far-off islands who speak rare languages. For instance, LSPs may have a hard time finding experienced translators to translate something into the Kawishana language. When your translators don’t know the source and target language fully, they translate “Finger licking good” to “Eat your figures off” in Chinese.
Technical Challenges
Other than linguistic challenges there are many other technical challenges that LSPs might face when it comes to maintaining the quality of translations.
Utilizing TMS tools
Where more LSPs are adopting professional localization project management platforms, here comes the challenge of utilizing the latest tools. Altering the current translation operations is not easy because employees take some time to adjust to new tools. Translators with a poor understanding of advanced tools will have a hard time navigating through the platform, and they might make mistakes often. That’s why a user-friendly and interactive interface is important, so all non-technical employees can easily work on it.
Handling different file formats
No matter how well an LSP has translated a document, if the formatting is not right, it is still not a good quality outcome. A lack of formatting understanding can put LSPs in trouble, and they will keep having arguments with clients. LSPs must hire resources that are well-versed in different file formatting to meet the style requirements of clients.
Time and Resource Constraints
It is hard to maintain quality when your team has to manage a myriad number of translations every day. Excessive work keeps your employees exhausted, and they will not be able to do their best work.
Meeting tight deadlines
Clients may pay you high fees when you commit to delivering work on tight deadlines. Most LSPs keep throwing extra loads on their translators just to earn some extra money and save the cost. It badly affects the quality and also puts your reputation at stake.
Handling multiple projects simultaneously
When your team is multitasking on different projects, they can’t concentrate on one thing single-mindedly, which causes quality issues. To optimize the team performance, you must assign each team member one task at a time; it allows them to focus on delivery quality and avoid cutting corners.
Strategies for overcoming challenges
If you are a premium language services provider, follow the below guidelines to optimize the language solutions and maintain good quality outputs.
- It is important to know your weaknesses and work on them by partnering with subject matter experts; you can always outsource the stuff that you’re not good at.
- Get rid of outdated and traditional translation management methods and invest in advanced technology and professional tools to maintain good quality.
- You must hire qualified native translators and editors who are not just good at their craft but also well-versed in the target cultures.
- Establish rigorous quality control processes incorporating both manual testing and QA software quality checks to avoid all possible errors in your translations.
Final Words!
Maintaining high-quality language solutions is indeed a challenging task, and language service providers have to constantly work towards improving their quality control processes. If you are thinking of building a career in language services, you better be aware of all the challenges coming ahead and how you can combat them effectively.
