If you’re thinking of creating a translation department in your company, you should read this

So, your company is doing well, and you have a lot of international customers and partners who you would like to reach effectively. Or maybe you have foreign employees and you need to take care of their documentation. Whatever the case may be, you are going to need a long-term solution for translation.

So, what are your choices? You may have done your research and found that you have a few: hire freelance translators, hire a translation company, or start an internal translation department (yes, I’m ruling out having your interns or secretary assume the role of translators, for your own sake).

Now, this is not an easy choice and it will depend on the amount of translation you need to get done. However, there are some good and bad things about each of these options, regardless of the number of documents your company needs to translate.

You see, translation is not an easy task (most of the time, anyway). And as every other job, it takes time to get good at it. It takes experience, calmness, research, know-how, and a very specific set of skills and software. Do you have time, or do you need 500,000 words for next week? Is it a technical translation or a general text that doesn’t require any particular academic degree? Does your company know anyone who would be willing to consult you on this matter? Let’s go through the pros and cons of each option.

Hire freelance translators.

This is most companies’ first line of thought. It’s simple: you send the documents to be translated, get a quote back, accept it and receive the translated documents. If things go south, you simply stop contacting that freelancer and look for another one.

Simplicity isn’t the only good thing about hiring a freelancer – prices will also be reasonable, and in most cases, you’ll find a linguist who knows what they’re doing and already has access to the necessary software. This means there will be no need for your company to go on a software spending spree and, if your freelancer is experienced, your translations may be flawless, and the rest of this text may be of no use to you.

On the other hand, a freelance translator will certainly have more clients and may not be available exactly when you need them, or they may be unable to deal with the number of documents you need translated within your deadline. You may think that this isn’t a problem, as you can just skip to the next translator. However, I wouldn’t advise you do this if you want to maintain the consistency of your translations.

One other thing that can be a problem is that it’s hard to hold freelancers accountable. I mean, they work from home and they can just vanish off the face of earth, leaving you high and dry and leaving your documents untranslated.

Overall:

Hire a translation company.

For some of you, this may be the safest bet. Translation companies usually produce the best results because they have access to several translators, from different areas and with various academic backgrounds. So, whatever text you need to translate, they can certainly get it done.

Another good thing about translation companies is that they usually offer proofreading by a second linguist, thus providing better results. Also, by hiring a translation company you’ll be hiring the know-how and output capacity of a large team, which makes deadlines achievable.

On the other hand, prices will most certainly be higher. There are usually more services included and these services have a price.

Flexibility and communication are other areas where translation companies may bring you some problems (depending on the translation company you choose for the job). Sometimes project managers may be hard to reach, especially when there are no account managers. For some translation companies, you may even have a hard time finding the email address and you may be stuck with the contact forms on their websites.

Plus, some companies may take longer to send you a quote than the freelancers, because there is a whole machine that needs to get moving. And then, of course, there are bad translation companies who may send you poor translations. Be sure to choose the right one. I’ve written about this before.

So, to sum up:

Create an in-house translation department

This may or may not be the sweet spot for your company. If you’re considering opening an in-house translation department, there are several things you need to consider.

Do you require enough translation to warrant an in-house department? Keep in mind that you’ll be hiring people and if they’re not working, you’re losing money. Make sure you have a lot of translation work and that you will keep having that same volume in the long run.

If you do require plenty of translation, then this is the safest bet. And the biggest advantage of an in-house department is communication. Your team of translators will have premium access to the product and marketing teams. Together they are powerful and can decide on the best translation for specific terms and focus on your company’s voice and image.

Don’t make the mistake of non-native translation. I know that there will be someone on your team that speaks the language you need to translate into, but simply moving someone with no experience in translation into your translation department may not be the best idea. It’s important that everyone inside your department has experience and training in translation and, of course, they must be a native speaker of the target language. If you don’t have anyone, either hire someone specific or consider outsourcing the work to a freelancer or translation company.

If you think you’ll have a lot of recurrent translation needs and you’re certain that the creation of a translation department is the best way to go, make sure that the first person you hire is the head of the department. This person should be a translator who knows the market you’ll mostly be translating into. They also need to be familiar with the tools (CAT tools, OCR, voice dictation, machine translation, glossaries, etc.) and be proficient in the area. Consult with this person and take what they have to say into account. They will help you build the department and give you tips on how to turn out a good product.

Another thing you can do is get yourself an external consultant. There aren’t many translation consultants (none that I personally know, other than myself), but I know for a fact that some translation companies provide this service.

Using an external consultant could have some advantages. You will have access to an array of solutions for your department, coming from someone who’s business is to know your needs and solve your problems (they may even advise you against the creation of a translation department). This person will know the market prices and how much you need to spend on translation to get the job done, as well as how many human resources you need. Plus, they will let you know which are the best software for the job.

All in all: