Are quality expectations declining among translation buyers?
Written by ForeignExchange Translations on Monday, December 10, 2012Anecdotal evidence indicates that the translation industry is engaged in a race to the bottom. We have talked about that a lot over the years, including here, here and here.
Now there is a bit more to substantiate this notion. Kirti Vashee's post Emerging Language Industry & Language Technology Trends features varied perspectives on where the translation is going. One of the comments that stood out was the following from an anonymous client:
Declining Quality ExpectationsIt got me thinking about state of quality in our business. Is quality perceived differently in different translation sectors (say, medical vs. legal)? Do clients in different industries (e.g., software vs. financial services) value quality more or less? And, finally, do different translation providers have different experiences with regards to clients' quality expectations? It is this last point that we want to put to test with a quick straw poll.
What's your take on clients' declining quality expectations? In your professional experience, is that accurate or not?
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In their mind they do not 'fear' quality is lower, they do know quality level is actually coming down.
Unfortunately they cannot acknowledge this is due to themselves driving down tariffs, also because their customers are demanding to pay less and less.
Economics dictates that prices come to their lowest possible level, but then so does the quality of whatever is produced. Inescapable, I'm afraid.
There are ways to combat the race to the bottom. 1-Decline work at low rates. 2-Improve your own work, keep your quality high, and market to clients/agencies that recognize and value quality.
I recommend Chris Durban's book "The Prosperous Translator."
@Covalent Translator: Since the poll is anonymous, we can't know how responds. However, everybody in the translation "chain" has a sense of the end-client's expectations re. quality.
If the client puts a high value on quality, that will result in stronger processes, more support, and enhanced quality feedback throughout the service-delivery chain. If, on the other hand, the client doesn't value quality as high as time or price, then those items will be stressed, reinforced, and used as selection criteria.
At the same time most of translation agencies implement improved QA processes.
So it seems that divergence is happening in the market, with different translation agencies adapting their quality requirements according to the clients' needs.
We too reorganized our business as well and are now a SLP, working exlcusivly the language pairs we really know. We have now 95% in-hous production and expanding.
They'll probably have to come back to that later on.
It's not the first time clients try to do that, and it's not the first time that the see that it is impossible.
In the meantime, however, good quality translation providers have lost some clients, but they can find some consolation in the fact that their formers clients have lost clients too, because of their lower quality.
Another aspect is the trend toward overseas outsourcing of translation, especially for Asian languages, where clients are happy to have either a poor to uneven-quality translation that can be used as is.
Thirdly, the outsourcing trend has impacted the remaining translation market such that companies are happy to outsource the translation, and hire 1st-world editors to clean up or proof the results of the overseas providers.
The downward pressure on rates and turn-around times is inexorable. Rates for Japanese have been reduced by 1/3, and Chinese rates have been halved over the past decade. Translation is no longer a viable career choice that I can recommend.
Some clients are expecting higher quality and getting it, even paying higher rates! Others don't care that much.
I think it depends on the client's needs. Huge regulatory documents are supposed to be accurate, but even the slightest change in rate has a huge effect on the final price. Besides, 500-page documents just don't get that much attention from the target. I used to do a lot of these kinds of texts (15 yrs) and I really worked hard at my term research. I never heard a complaint. Later, I was relegated to editing because I refused to lower my rates, which meant I often spent hours looking up terms and abbreviations the translator had merely guessed at. That short-lasting experience showed me that most translators were not committed to quality, so I quit editing unless I knew the translator. Clients don't care much about quality when the text is long and has a limited audience.
On the other hand, anything related to public image can readily command a better price. Anyone who isn't spending their own money (e.g., ad agencies) is also more concerned about quality (must be superb) than price.
Covalent Translator is right: "1-Decline work at low rates. 2-Improve your own work, keep your quality high, and market to clients/agencies that recognize and value quality." I also agree: Chris Durban's book and seminars are worth it.
An anecdote from a direct client I picked up through a family member... The conversation: "You really know what you're doing in our field! You have a pretty good grasp of the terms we use." "Oh really? Who did you work with before? "Agencies. Sometimes the texts were well done, but sometimes they were mediocre and sometimes downright poor. We'd rather work with someone whose quality is consistently excellent even if it costs more" "Hmm, makes sense"
Some of us aren't suffering any type of crisis and quality is precisely the reason.
Taking on project like these is usually to the detriment of the translator who is always at fault when something does not sound right.
'translation better than original'
wdk
Overall, the trend seems to be the same quality for less money and possibly in less time (which sometimes ends up going terribly wrong).
I have clients (end clients, not agencies) that used to pay for quality and that are now choosing what they want to have translated with top quality (meaning more money and probably more time) and what can be translated maybe not so well but cheaper. Sometimes I can help them, sometimes I can't or won't. It will depend on how busy I am and how much consideration I have for the client (which is proportional to the consideration I get from the client).
I would say that in addition to declining work at low rates (although this can vary a lot: when is the rate too low? I have seen miserable work having been done for rates that were way too high, even for a fairly decent work, and surprisingly good work for less money than I would have worked for, so there), decline correcting miserable work done by someone else. That will probably do more for quality than just not selling yourself short.
I believe the good translators are diminishing and the market will be left out with the average translators. I know many good translators who changed their career due to the status quo.
First is to be faithful as possible to the original writing. This means no editing of the original document. Run together sentences, ambiguous statements and illogical expressions are translated as is. In other words I do not act as an editor. That is the original writer's repossibility.
Second is to provide a readable translation so the the person requesting the translation does not need to struggle therough a poorly written document. I charge more for this because of the extra editing that is required.
The two choices are offered to my clients. Scientist tend to choose the first approach and journalists tend to choose the second approach.
Elmer H. Hara, Ph.D., P.Phys.
ATIS English-Japanese; Japanese-English translator/interpreter
I would also agree with the point made above that there is little incentive to stay in the market. I really would not advise anyone to take up translation as a career, it offers neither money nor security. One reason is a growing trend to machine translation followed by post-editing / cleanup. That is good enough for "translation for information", and I suspect that MT will slowly get better, so the low-end high-volume texts that are among the most profitable for a freelancer are lost. Instead we just get increasingly complex texts while the prices remain static or actually drop.
I am not sure that this kind of thing is becoming more common, but it is a problem with medical, and probably other technical texts, and possibly more so now the use of TMs is so prevalent (as translators are expected to work more quickly, even without a TM).
I feel that as an individual freelancer, I lack any kind of meaningful overview of our business. I do, however, have a gut feeling that there is something rotten in the state of the translation industry.
There sure are some greedy middlemen around, mere brokers who just buy and sell translations with no added value at all, and these would not really deserve to get rich on others' expenses, but even just "project management", playing interface between the end-client and a team o translators sharing a bigger assignment, reassigning tasks according to the overall progress etc... takes time too.
But there are also many small start-up agencies, actually freelancers who want to upgrade to agency, using the "look bigger than you are" philosophy while striving to get enough clients and work to really launch their business at the next level. These usually need to care about and check the quality of whatever they are delivering to their end client, which means re-reading everything they outsourced to other freelancers, so their work should be paid too, and it then is normal that they take some part of the pie too.
But then again, the end-clients are not dumb and have already found out about ProZ and other translators communities portals, and will for sure put everyone at the same level to ask for the best quote. This means most of the time there is nothing like the possibility of a big profit margin for the "agency", if they have to bid low to get the project assigned to, when in competition with freelancers who bid for the same project.
I hate the idea of being part of the translation "industry", but if this really is so, we must accept that, like in any other trade, there is a value chain, and that each link of that chain must find a way to get revenue from its work (preferably in accordance with the actual amont of work involved, which is the trickiest part of the eqation).
In other words, yes, the freelancers should accept to get paid less by agencies, if what theses agencies provide is worth the discount, i.e. : feed with a relatively steady stream of work and revenue, and take the hassle of constantly finding new customers and running after due payment, among other chores, away from their chests.
Martin
given less priority than speed and price.
Yes, "they" tend to care more and mre about low rates and fast
delivery, and less and less about quality, I would say.
And this trend will not stop as long as we have to compete against MT,
and against dumping by those living in countries where little money is
enough money to pay the bills.
We should be more unite, stick together to defend our interests as a
whole, but since everyone looks forst after one's own interests, this
is not quite likely to happen, ever.
Is there a miracle solution against this trend ? I guess not.
So I unfortunately have to agree with Procopius who said :
"Translation is no longer a viable career choice that I can
recommend", unless we specialize in a niche market, join efforts in small SLV units with in-house collaborators, or manage to unite into small teams and share work in a cooperative model, where everyone gets paid fairly, according to the involved efforts.
In regards to quality, there are clients who are demanding more, particularly in the medical industry (in my experience) and there will always be clients who don`t really know what to expect (i.e. don`t care or have no means of validating the quality through a native speaker). This is true for every industry though and I don’t think it has anything to do with "the nature" of the translation industry. What we, as translators, must be aware of is that we need to push for quality, we need to demand longer deadlines if we can’t do a good job within the time requested, we need to ask questions to show our clients that we are trying to do a good job for them…In short, I think we set the bar so instead of asking what the market is the demanding, we should probably be asking ourselves what kind of service you would be proud of providing and demand the conditions to do that. In my experience, it has worked.