XTRF Team

Many things have already been written on the specific aspects of a business relationship with your customers – but let’s focus here on just those specific to the translation and localization industry. Keeping in mind today’s trends for smaller and quicker job requests from your customers, it’s impossible not to think about what influences a good relationship between your translation agency and your customers.

A perfect modern translation business is a constantly evolving target. You want to excel in your job, but the pressure is steadily mounting and you feel that you are fighting a losing battle against deadlines, margins, and requirements.

Products and services. Content and form. Everything we perceive can elicit our reaction — emotional or behavioral. Depending on what we experience, we may like or dislike the source, desire or avoid it. People use software products or services to achieve a goal or complete a task — not only for the sake of using them. Hence, any product should help the user and assist him throughout. The reason why products exist is that they can simplify our life or work.

Quality in the localization industry is taken as a given. A client contacting a translation agency about a potential project is expecting a product that will meet tacitly-assumed quality standards so that it can be readily presented to end users. Any localization company that wants to stay in business must at some point introduce a quality management system. Of course, the client’s needs with respect to quality may differ depending on their priorities.

It is with great pleasure that we publish a guest article in our blog, written by Seo‑Young Jun – M.A. Candidate in Translation and Interpretation (KOR-ENG) with Localization Specialization at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey. Soe‑Young has been getting to know XTRF at her university which is taking part in the Academic Programme by XTRF. Enjoy the blog!

A typical translation project has changed over the years. Now, it is usually small, rushed, cheap, has little context and needs many language combinations.

When I meet translation company owners I often hear them say, ”We are a small translation company”. There are so many of them who have great potential, are great leaders and have great teams. But still, they decide to stay small.

More and more projects keep coming. The deadlines are tight and getting tighter. It seems that regardless of how much effort and time you put into your work, there is no way you can come out ahead.

No translation agency can survive without their translators. They have a lot of pressure put on them to deliver on time and at high quality. It is thus very important to keep their motivation high so they treat your projects as a priority.