The promise of speed in service

Imagine yourself in the driver’s seat of a Bugatti Veyron, the world’s fastest automobile. The rush, the adrenaline pumping into your temples, the tunnel vision and the blurry sides of the road as you travel at 267 mph. Imagine running your business the way you’d run in this beautifully designed car. Is speed desirable in both scenarios? Maybe not.

The Bugatti Veyron Super Sport

Noted former Olympian and motivational speaker Vince Poscente wrote that the rules governing the well-known triangle of time, quality and cost have changed in what he charmingly calls The Age of Speed. He maintains that you can get top quality at the right price, and fast because new speedy technologies make this possible. More on this in a jiffy.

Like New York City’s skyscrapers, speed awe us the higher it goes. When I first visited the Big Apple and saw the Brooklyn Bridge and some of Lower Manhattan’s man-made towers of steel and mirror glass, I was amazed and nothing else seemed to beat the size and grandeur of this spectacle, an ongoing show for the masses.

We all like speed in different settings, from the gearhead with his love for fast vehicles to the bungee jumper to the fighter jet pilot. Speed can be measured in time and distance, and time is our main concern here as business owners. Time to get a loan approved, time to hear back from a prospective customer, time to market our new product, etc.

My goal in this article is not to tell you how to do your job faster or better. In the short space of a few paragraph, I hope to persuade you to stop and think about the priorities in your business that call for additional time to accomplish —and you already know they take additional time.

Back to the age of speed, Mr. Poscente is, like most motivational speakers, half right and obvious. Of course some things can be made with a higher level of quality, faster and cheaper. But services or certain products are not things. These things are supported by craftsmen, people who love their job, people who are making this world a better place thanks to the services they provide.

Take your most recent client: how long did it take you to bring him in to use your services or buy your products? Maybe weeks, months or years, correct? Regardless of the medium of contact or communication, from zippy email campaigns to ubiquitous phone calls, some businesses relationships cannot be rushed into being. Consider the following example.

I recently visited the Best Buy store in Avon looking for a netbook. A helpful employee dressed in traditional Best Buy blue garb greeted me and answered my questions in a clear and professional way; then he proceeded to push a thin folder with Geek Squad material into my hand, prompting me to take it. I said I didn’t need it or want it, but he didn’t listen. What happened next?

I’ve been a Best Buy customer for many years, so I won’t let an improperly trained employee steer me away from the shop. Perhaps he was motivated to do or achieve something fast, like how many Geek Squad folders he could deliver to walk-ins.

You may have recently read about the arrival of the iPhone 5 in a few weeks from now. It’s designed to be speedier and take advantage of 4G LTE networks, much faster than the old 3G or 4G networks of yore. But faster is not necessarily a better trait in a technology, and some technologies provide counterproductive results if they perform faster than desired.

Consider the newest A6 core designed for the iPhone 5. A technical analysis, as reported by Ars Technica[1], revealed that the core blocks were put manually, not by using software, which would be the so-called more intuitive way of speeding things up. Notes iFixit’s Miroslav Djuric, as reported in the Ars Technica site:

“It looks like the ARM core blocks were laid out manually—as in, by hand,” iFixit’s Miroslav Djuric said via e-mail. “A manual layout will usually result in faster processing speeds, but it is much more expensive and time-consuming.”

In physics, there’s a concept called terminal velocity. In layman’s terms, an object moving at a certain speed achieves terminal velocity, which is a constant value of speed, when confronted with the opposing force of say, a fluid or the force of gravity. Let’s look at this from a business point of view. Suppose your secretary types at 75 words per minute. You hired her because she’s a fast typist at the computer, knows how to compose business correspondence and makes very few, if any, typos. There are people out there who can type faster than that, and slower than that, like 40 words per minute, which is the acceptable minimum in most workplaces. Suppose now that you need to send out a very important letter to a client in France, in English, within 30 minutes. You met this prospect at a trade show, shared business cards and struck up a positive and enriching conversation. He wanted to receive some samples, but that time was not the right time. Today you received an email requesting said samples.

As an experienced and effective business owner, you can’t possibly just reply with a short email saying “Confirmed receipt of request for samples. Expect them next week. Your signature.” You are dealing with a new client, a promising prospect overseas, and he wants to see samples of your products! A hastily made email won’t do him justice, wouldn’t you agree? A letter, even if it is emailed as an attachment, is your best shot.

So you write up a draft for your secretary to type up, format in company template with logo, letterhead, the whole bit. You will then have it printed out in laser color, sign it yourself, scan it and send it to your French customer as an enclosure in a return email. The question is, do you want your secretary to hurry up and type it faster than usual?

Rome wasn’t built in a day, goes the saying. Tasks and projects that require attention to detail can seldom fulfill their goal if done faster than it is advisable to do. Big decisions in business require quality time set aside to make them, but only experience, trial and error and focus can help us weed out the inconsequential decisions from the really big ones.

I work with words every day, and I have to choose them carefully for my customers. I can translate some documents very, very fast and produce a highly efficient product. But other documents require more research, more reading, more formatting and more consultations with a client. With an eye set on what my client needs and not what my clock is looking like, I hope to continue to serve my clientele with the same gusto and drive that moved me to write this for you.

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[1] http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/detailed-analysis-of-apple-a6-core-reveals-layout-done-by-hand/ as published on September 25, 2012. Viewed on October 3, 2012.

Translators will always be wanted

I recently answered a poll at the popular site Proz. The question was Would you recommend translation as a career to future generations? There were over a dozen comments by the participants.

Understandably, some translators are concerned about finding direct clients or retaining the ones they got. Others doubt because technologies may replace our craft. Here’s my answer:

Absolutely, a resounding YES

I’ve been a full-time translator, often freelancing, sometimes inhousing, for the last 19+ years in America (oh, sorry, the U.S.A.) –I was born in Argentina.

I am not afraid of new technologies, Google, artificial intelligence or other tools because I don’t confuse excellent writing with so-called productivity. Translators who write very well are hardly in danger of being replaced by technology (how unimaginative!) or low-cost translators in third- and fourth-world countries.

Translation requires passion as do other professions and crafts, but excelling at writing in your own mother tongue is so germane to our occupation that you can’t be a good or successful translator unless you write very, but very well.

Our profession also requires an understanding and command of translation techniques and strategies, something you learn from translation theory. Don’t get me wrong, I am not talking about ivory-tower, only-for-academics theory. But it is required to understand why some texts can be translated in one way and other texts in another.

Finally, excellent translators know how to read and why (this reminds me of a Harold Bloom book I just purchased and that I am impatient to start reading!). My best friends are books (sorry, human best friends!). They’re always there, they help me reflect on what is said and how it is said.

Loving languages or being a polyglot are not enough to become a prosperous translator (I am using ‘prosperous’ here with liberty). You have to love to write, and write well. Anything else is secondary.

The poll and comments can be found here.

The Price Is Right

My readers will probably remember from a previous post that I am determined to slowly abandon the per-word pricing scheme for a more realistic model: the per-project fee. I have a few good reasons: it’s not just translation, and sometimes the project requires other services that add value to the job.

After a failed bid to secure a medium-sized project from an old customer of mine, I decided to take further initiatives, such as asking “What is your projected budget for this project?” instead of blithely giving a per-word fee and expect it to be accepted. These days, very few clients bother to email back asking for a lower fee because they go to a better (sometimes lower) bidder.

A few weeks ago, I found myself visiting my local Borders bookstore (I know, they’ll be gone; a pity). My curious and analytical mind usually takes me to magazines and books that have little, if anything, to do with translation or the translation business. That’s why I felt such a rush of feelings (surprise and pleasure) when I picked a copy of the July 2011 issue of HOW magazine. On page 42, I  found an excellent article penned by marketing mentor Ilise Benun titled “The Budget Game”.

In this feature, Ilise explains how to handle the discussion about project fees head on:

Broaching the subject of money as early in the process as possible puts you in the driver’s seat. It positions you as the professional you are, planting the seeds for the client to trust they are in good hands. It also allows you to weed out inappropriate candidates. Your goal in the first conversation is to determine whether you can provide what they need and, if so, whether it would be a profitable project for you.

…

Here are a few phrases to try:

• “What budget have you allocated for this project?” The construction of this question presumes they have allocated a budget.
• “What do you have in mind to spend?”
• “What can you afford?”
  (Source:  Adapted from Ilse Benun’s The Creative Professional’s Guide to Money. Reprinted with permission from the author)

This is good, meaty advice for freelance translators like myself, and I plan on sharing it with other colleagues. While I won’t be adopting the aggressive model of lawyers, who charge by the half hour for phone consultations, I am applying some of these recommendations to current negotiations for projects, with good results. The customer needs to be persuaded that the services in addition to pure translation do add value to his project. At that point, the customer will find little difficulty in accepting the additional fees.

Fellow translator who is reading this posting: Keep in mind that there is good advice and kernels of truth everywhere, not just in translation-related magazines and books. Dear customer, please feel free to add your general comments to this post. If you have some questions or concerns after reading this post, you know where to find me.

For more excellent material by Ilise Benun, please click here.

Testing medical software or how I learned to love the whirring microscope

In a previous post, I visited lightly on the concept of multiple meanings in a word. In Alice in Wonderland the March Hare gently tells Alice “you should say what you mean”. Many misunderstandings between two people are usually attributed to poor communication. We hear talk about communication skills, but analyzing the reason of the poor communication is a rare sight indeed. Then, we tend to go with logic in our assumption and call someone a “poor communicator” or someone who does not get it. The main problem is that we are using the same words for different meanings.

A customer calls and requests my services as a translator, claiming that the text in question is “non technical”, perhaps in an attempt at getting a competitive (ie, bargain basement cheap) rate. I deal with technical texts on a daily basis but, what do I mean by technical? And here’s the rub, the misunderstanding. If you ask people on the street what a technical document means, they’ll probably associate it with technology, computers or rocket science. That meaning scratches the surface, because technical has at least 6 different meanings, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. A user’s guide to a wristwatch is a technical document because it has some specialized language in it, even though most people would have no trouble understanding it. An IRS publication intended for the general public is also a technical document because it has plain-English words dressed in narrow meanings (tax law). So, it all depends on the situation and the purpose of the document.

To put the argument to rest for now, let’s just say that nontechnical documents mean documents intended for the public in plain English, with no arcane words or obscure meanings.

I recently finished a software verification project for a customer. This involved working on site for 17 days in the Bay Area in Northern California. The software in question is medical in the sense that it involves a powerful microscope and a workhorse of a workstation running Windows XP (64 bits) and 12 GB of RAM. The system is intended for histopathologists and pathologists at clinics and hospitals. They use the microscope to place dozens of slides with specimens inside and then analyze, magnify, create reports and share findings in a network by using this elegant and powerful software.

Now, pathology is just one specialization in medicine, and a specialist would call this program pathology software. For reasons of simplicity, most translation companies would refer to it as medical software. To find and place translators for such a project, they look for medical translators or software translators. Do you start to see the problem here? Many medical translators may have never worked with pathology-related documents, but they have experience with the general language of medicine besides the specialized medical language of their field or domain, for example, radiology, biology, epidemiology or oncology. Now, most translators and translation agencies would consider software translation as any content that uses software-related words, such as RAM, CPU, networking, data packets, wafer, chip fab and hard drive. But there are dozens of subspecialties within the software domain. This point was driven to me a few days ago while I was testing a particular feature in this pathology software with a Belarus-born electrical engineer. I asked him his opinion about NAS (network attached storage) hard drives, and his face drew a blank.

In short, many experts in translating software may have translated specialized medical software with varying degrees of expertise. It is up to the translation company to decide if the combination of experiences is suitable for the project at hand. The selection does not have to be a gamble, though. I am a firm advocate of stating expectations at the beginning of the work relationship to avoid misunderstandings in the end. I am glad my customer saw the whole of my expertise and decided that the mix of experience in and knowledge of software and medical texts struck the right balance for the benefit of their client in Northern California.

I don’t tweet

Twitter worth $7 billion? VC Fred Wilson doesn’t buy it. – May. 10, 2011.

According to the article that the above link points to, I share similar concerns: what if Twitter is just another tech bubble? The company hasn’t executed as expected. How will it make money for its investors?

And why is this important to you and me in the translation industry?

For years, I resisted using Gmail because it was a new service and I was not sure that the Gmail platform wouldn’t become another Rocketmail or CompuServe (remember those services?). For years, I resisted using Internet Explorer because Netscape was my browser and platform of choice, from browsing the Web to hosting my email account. Only after I lost my emails (my fault) on Netscape did I start to think about a different solution. I bit the bullet and went with Outlook. I have been an Outlook user for more than a decade now. Call me a late-late adopter.

Twitter is yet another social phenomenon in the Web 2.0 technology landscape being built on the so-called cloud. Marketing buzzwords aside, the cloud is nothing more than a server farm somewhere in Nebraska or North Carolina. Remember what happened to Amazon a few days ago? What to do if your enterprise or company documents, files, and other assets reside in a cloud account? A perennial solution is what engineers call redundancy. RAID arrays are useful for medium- to large-sized companies seeking to protect themselves from a catastrophic loss of data. The other side of this coin of risk management is data privacy: if you tweet for business, how safe is the information you are tweeting?

Back in the days of bulky cellphones and prohibitively expensive cellphone plans, I was using an electronic dialer (it cost me $40) as a pocket phone directory (poor man’s PDA). What a waste of 40 precious dollars! Then, the wave of PDAs swept the country towards the end of the century. Every time I visited CompUSA or Office Depot, I would give those slick PDAs a passing glance, leaving the store without buying one, even those on clearance. I did not see the need to have a PDA, but I saw colleagues use one.

I used a Blackberry for two years because I wanted a cellphone with a phone directory and email capabilities. Thinking of my enthusiasm for the Blackberry’s marvelous email functionality seems quaint now. I use an iPhone 3GS for my needs here and abroad. It has what I need. I was able to find a reason –not a rationale– to buy an iPhone because my business and professional needs so required it.

But I can’t make a business case for the Tweet service. In an era where many language service providers (agencies and translators alike) compete fiercely with each other for your business, I know I can’t be useful to you in 140 characters or less.

The language of business

The new facilities of my alma mater, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba’s Facultad de Lenguas, sit as part of the jigsaw puzzle that the whole campus reflects nowadays: school buildings that look like bunkers, spread in all directions like so many pebbles on a dusty playground. The 3-story building of my former language school is always buzzing with activity. Although Portuguese, German, French and Italian are part of the curriculum, English is by far the most popular for translation students.

Many of these English majors will graduate with a shiny diploma in translation studies into a harsh global marketplace that cares very little for diplomas. Still, diplomas and degrees confer an authority and an aura of respectability to its holders, but this newfound status does not negate the fact that they have to go on teaching English en masse at different private institutes, demoralized by what they see as predatory practices of the local translation agencies. Thus, the most venturesome will go on a join forces in pairs or trios to form “estudios de traducción” (translation bureaus) to offer language services. Alas, the last thing they know is business practices. Many don’t know how to market their services. Egos inflated by their recently acquired diploma will think nothing of working for some of the despised agencies and will try to fly solo in a market that is ruthless and ever unforgiving of costly mistakes.

One of these mistakes is ignorance of the business language. Concepts like return on investment, value-added services, and building customer relations are like Greek to many of these students and graduates. One reason is that their professors hardly mention them. These are professors well versed in the intricacies of language, linguistics, text analysis and dictionaries, but a love of language does not a successful businessman make.

I was fortunate. I attended a business high school and graduated with a degree in bookkeeping. We studied business letter writing in English and Spanish, and had typing classes for at least 2 years. Next time you talk to a translator, ask her how many words per minute she can type, and whether she can touch type.

However, I had to learn to market my services, write a resume that was geared to the business customers I was going after and network effectively. It took me years and I am still learning from my hits and misses. I recently revised and updated my résumé to highlight what I did for my previous customers and employers that added value to their organizations. And that’s the key for translators today: Are you a well-educated French, Arabic or Spanish translator with two university degrees and a 50-dictionary library at home? How do you translate your linguistic knowledge into a value that will improve my bottom line? How does good grammar and syntax help me close a deal? What difference does your expertise make for my industry?

I have to compete with thousands of Spanish translators of all stripes. If I want to build on my past achievements, my rates cannot be the defining factor but the value I add to your business. Bring it on!

Give feedback to your vendors

I just received an email from a very powerful organization. We were in interviews towards an in-house position in this organization. As part of the interviewing process, I was sent proofreading and writing tests to assess my skills. To their credit, the tests were well designed. Some of the paragraphs contained errors on purpose to make detection difficult unless you spent time reading it twice or even 3 times. An excellent exercise.

But this organization failed miserably when it came to providing feedback. In their formal email, they indicated that I did not qualify for the position because a great deal of linguistic and grammar acumen are required for it. No details, no examples, just a blanket statement, which I found troubling and telling.

In the everyday discussions about QA that many translation bureaus and translation vendors have, feedback is key to secure good assets and nurture good relationships for the long haul.

On another occasion, many years ago, I applied for a position at a well-known multinational from Europe. The translation test was economics. After I sent in my test, I received a terse explanation that it hadn’t passed because I did not know some of the industry terms. Not a word about writing style, grammar or accuracy.

If you provide feedback to your translation vendor or to a candidate, be specific. Better yet, agree beforehand on what constitutes a major or unacceptable error and how many errors are allowed. Do not assume. Spanish is spoken and written in more than 20 countries, and some syntax and phrase variations are going to take place. Style is also an important component in assessing the quality of translation, but it is difficult to gauge because the customer’s reviewer may add too much subjectivity into it. Also, be open to discuss what standards your organization adheres to, whether corporate style is paramount, etc. Again, be specific because it is a way of showing respect to a professional linguist.

The distant project manager

Quick, translators! Name your favorite project manager from one of your clients.

What? No favorites? Okay, how about naming the PM that treated you most favorably. Take your time.

Over the years, I have worked with a variety of project managers (PMs) in the language services industry, from the asinine to the eager. I don’t have a favorite PM, but I do have favorite traits that I seek in the PMs I have the opportunity to work with. Since I hate lists, you’ll have to deal with just a small bunch of brief descriptions.

1. Approachability. This means grabbing the phone to talk to your translator or editor, not just shooting emails. In the current sea of email messages, a phone call or an invitation to call you is a welcome respite and it helps to build rapport, trust…and exchange a jovial note that could make a difference in your otherwise busy day.

2. Full disclosure. An element generally related to NDAs and confidentiality of information, this is more an attitude than a check mark or obligatory note. It means that you will disclose (ie, answer and volunteer) all necessary information to your translator or language professional. This may require anticipating the needs of your translator, not just talking about word count and deadlines. Take an interest in the finer details, such as “The document is targeting young Puerto Ricans. Can you do that?” instead of “This document needs a US Spanish translation.”

3. Availability. Some of you must be using a macro to print this phrase at the end of your emails: “If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write or call.” Seriously, how many of you are quick to answer your emails, especially with project-related questions? I wonder if some PM might think: “Gee, this is a dumb question. This translator should read the instructions file I attached to the first email!” And you would be right. However, part of good customer service in any industry is the availability to answer any questions cheerfully and promptly.

4. Don’t ignore our questions. Sometimes we translators ask silly, dumb and risky questions. Sometimes we need to be put in our place because, well, some of us are just getting started in this profession and we don’t know all the boundaries. A risky or nosy question for me –as a translator– would be “Is the editor who is going to work with me a properly trained translator?” That question may be obnoxious and provocative in tone. Think for a second, however, that it just might be a request for information, not an indictment on your company’s screening procedures. If you choose to ignore our questions, we’ll keep asking them until satisfied.

5. Respect our role. We are thankful that you chose us to do this project. You sure have a good taste in translators! However, please, please do not second guess our work. We are trained professionals, we do the research, we know why we chose this particular word over that one. We appreciate that you know some Danish or Spanish but do not try to play translator with us. I personally don’t like to pull university degrees with my PMs simply because it’s gauche and just the wrong approach. I had to do it only once, however, in the past 5 years, because the PM insisted on second guessing his client and telling me how to write a certain passage in the translation. To the PMs out there who are nervously fretting over what the translator might or might write, remember: you chose us to do the translation, please do not micromanage us.

Now, I’ll do some crossover. If you liked the above content, I am sure you will appreciate the blog postings of a company owner who works with translators, Grace Bosworth, at http://global2localcommunications.com/category/blog/