Translation is often a forgotten function within an organisation, is left until the last minute and then panic ensues, or most worryingly it falls off the radar and holds no importance.

Some businesses with bilingual employees might choose to carry out their translations in-house, to try and keep costs down and prevent too much time or effort being ‘wasted’, but this, in turn, causes issues further down the line and can’t really be considered as an appropriate long-term option.

For businesses looking to make translation part of their global strategy, centralising the process is the best option in order to make cost savings, improve turnaround times and maintain quality & consistency in other languages.

1. Establish your strategy 

Which languages are most important for your business? Which of your materials are a priority for translation? When do you need final translations by? Make sure you understand and analyse your market before making these decisions – with translation, one size doesn’t fit all. If your website is your largest lead generation tool, you run a blog, regularly update your webpages, or you’ve worked hard to optimise your site for search engines, then website localisation and multilingual SEO would allow you to be easily found by international prospects.

Translation is often an afterthought but considering it earlier on in the process could save you rushed fee costs.

Whilst it’s not always easy to anticipate a translation needs until it arises, your Account Manager can advise on realistic timeframes and suggest methods to speed up the process, such as gist/summary translation or multi-linguist translation.

2. Get others on board

In order to reach a fully sound localisation strategy, it’s essential to get support and funding from Senior Managers. It may be difficult to get them on board initially, when the ‘get things done’ mentality often prevails and budgets are becoming tighter, but the longer-term strategy needs to be at the forefront of business decisions.

Cost-cutting or time-saving attempts such as using free translation or attempting to use in-house employees who speak the language will only cause unnecessary costs, frustrations and quality issues further down the line.

Start asking around within your business and you may find translation requests left, right and centre – legal, marketing, sales, HR, finance. By streamlining all of these translation requests to a single point of contact within your business, it’ll make the whole process much easier, allowing you to consolidate requests from various stakeholders, prevent silos building up across other departments, and effectively track translation spend and reporting.

3. Make use of available tools 

Language technology is changing the translation landscape, making the process quicker, streamlined and more cost-effective. By combining language experts with the latest translation technology, we developed CMS connectors, machine translation engines, quality checks, to name just a few.

Our SmartMATE Dashboard also provides secure, online access to your account and translation projects. Watch the video below for more information.

4. Set KPIs, metrics and SLAs 

If you want to be able to determine quality and consistency of translations, whether deadlines are being met, and generally monitor how well translations are being carried out, you’ll need to determine some targets. We work with you to understand what success looks like for your business, and create customised reports, allowing you to track progress, quality and cost.

5. Choose a trusted translation partner 

What is important to you? Quality, security, cost, timeframes, specialised content, system integration? Your priorities will obviously impact your choice of translation partner (and Eging TI tick all these boxes by the way).

By adopting a centralised approach to translation, you create a single point of contact, consolidating requests, preventing silos between departments and generally streamlining the process.

Centralising your translation requirements shouldn’t be a cumbersome exercise – quite the opposite. Outsourcing the process to one single point of contact means that you’ve got more time to focus on the bigger tasks at hand.