Those Darned Agencies: Forging a New Alliance
Article published in "Tradurre", Novembre 2002
Words are tender things, intractable and alive,
but they are made for man - not man for them.
Cesare Pavese
This short article illustrates what an average Italian agency [1] can expect from translators, and also what it can offer them. My point of view, which is based on what I have deduced from conversations with other people who belong to this fantastic/terrible world of translations, is inevitably limited, subject to errors and inaccuracies that I take complete responsibility for.
There are a few premises I should make for this illustration and the main one is that translators should only contact professional agencies. What I mean by professional agency is one that not only buys and sells translations but adds value to that service by giving support to the translator during their work, revising the work before final delivery and providing after-sales assistance to the client. (In fact people who just shuffle papers across their desks are excluded from this definition.) Moreover, I also expect such a company to pay its translators according to the terms agreed upon. In brief, it should be easy to establish a relationship between the translator and the company so that the value chain runs smoothly and every step - in both directions - has a meaning and a purpose, is precise and punctual.
What do I expect from my potential provider of translation services? First of all, I would like to come into contact with real translators. This is a requisite that should not be taken for granted. In fact it often happens that we receive résumés from people who sell themselves as translators, without having the slightest idea of what they are talking about. Lies have short lives. In less than 20 seconds an expert personnel manager can discard proposals that are incomplete, beside the point, vague, etc. Nonetheless, an incredible amount of time is spent by agencies just to separate the wheat from the chaff (which incurs extra costs). And such a skill cannot be improvised - it must be acquired through experience. It would be nice if the opportunities for communication provided by the internet [2] led to essential communication and not the propagation of nonsense and useless information. Utopia? Perhaps.
Nowadays, with all the instruments we have at our disposal (the internet in particular), there are no longer any excuses. Since it has become so easy to discover everything about potential customers, when I receive a proposal I expect it to be targeted and directly to the point. To translators I would say: know your customers well, try to understand their dreams, needs, and fears; and all of this before contacting them. It is much better to send 20 targeted and personalised e-mails than 500 e-mails to a purchased list [3]. In the end, marketing is much more a question of common sense than refined technique. Certainly professional translators must know their environment, the instruments they have at their disposal, and so on, but they must use brainpower first and foremost.
There is an interesting article by Marisa Manzin which appeared in the September 2000 issue of this newsletter. It is full of advice regarding marketing for translators. Her ideas reflect the fact that without marketing even the best translators will blunt the tips of their arrows.
In any case, whoever contacts me should ideally make my life easier: in other words, the information they send me should be easy to consult and easy to check if necessary. I do not need diplomas or photographs that are not requested. I do not need long explanations about how large a screen they have or what they read. I would rather hear about what they are capable of doing as translators. I want translators to communicate with me effectively. To do this they must put themselves in my shoes and therefore send me a proposal that is:
- concrete, i.e. specific and tailored, useful to my work;
- complete, that says everything about what I need to know to evaluate them;
- concise, that tells me only what I need to know to evaluate them.
I would prefer (but this is just my personal preference) them to indicate what they charge for their services as well, because any offer of collaboration is complete only when it contains this information. In fact professionals do not apply for a job but offer their services. Therefore I expect the person offering the service to provide a complete proposal with a price, or at least an estimate of a price. And that price should not only reflect the market in which it is being proposed but also the level of quality being offered [4].
For a general idea on prices, you can check out the Tariffometro created by Simon Turner, which has been providing an accurate picture of our market for some time now, based on the accumulated experience of a large number of translators.
I also find the work of Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, very enlightening. He maintains that if purchase prices are too low, buyers of quality are worried [5]. As a buyer of translations, I worry about overpaying for a service, but I also worry about paying too little for it, because such a tendency cannot be favourable to the translation sector as a whole. Moreover, in a sector such as ours, which is not regulated, an offer for translations for two cents cheaper is, and will always be, a risk for everybody else. I firmly believe that the only way translators and agencies can counteract this trend is to increase the general level of the quality they offer.
In fact the issue of price cannot be separated from the issue of quality. It happens all too often that translators expect a certain fee without realising that their work is not perfect - but, if the service offered does not meet the basic standards of quality, any price we pay a translator is too high, because it involves a considerable loss of time in proof-reading and, in the worst-case scenario, it can cause you to lose customers who are upset by a service that is well below their expectations. So this is a factor that translators should think about: Is the service I offer absolutely excellent? I firmly believe that the only direction worth taking in one's work is excellence, without excuses. It is right to get the most from one's effort, but it is just as right to not scrimp on commitment, professional updating, applying extra care, etc. In this regard, Enrique Lòpez-Ebri states: "The fascination of our profession lies in the infinite variety of requests we receive. It is not possible to entirely and perfectly meet these demands, however the effort to get closer and closer every day to such perfection represents a challenge that each of us in this interesting line of work should take on with energy, creativity and competence” [6].
I have noticed with pleasure that in the past few years the average level of professionalism has increased. After a first screening, there remain many professional translators who know the market in general as well as their specific customer. What is more, they are qualified translators with a considerable amount of experience and education, people with whom it is possible to establish a valid and steady work relationship of mutual satisfaction. And this is an advantage for everyone:
- For the translators, who fetch higher prices than those they would get on a low quality market;
- For the agency, that can prosper thanks to the professionalism of the overall service offered;
- For the customer, who does not have to waste time and get angry about poor services;
- For the customer's customer, who receives a completely finished product.
Our service is only a small link in the value chain of a company. However our task is to make that small link shine and stand out.
A higher level of professionalism is a good thing, for the translation industry as a whole and for individual translators, because in the long run it helps to eliminate the less competent fringes of our line of work - the scourge of every sector.
Gianni Davico is the founder of Tesi & testi, the translation agency based in Turin, Italy. With his tranquil temperament, for years he has been making an effort to work at peace with himself, which he can do only by creating work relationships based on absolute and reciprocal fairness and professionalism.
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[1] Although I prefer by far the term "office" to "agency" when talking about my company, as I believe it to be more respectful and, in particular, closer to the reality of the value added to the services offered, I will use the second term "agency" in this article, as it is universally recognised by translators.
[2] As regards the expression "the internet" with a lower case "i" instead of the commonly accepted capital, "the Internet", see the eloquent and exhaustive elucidation by Gianfranco Livraghi.
[3] A great Italian book on the use of electronic mail was written by Gianni Lombardi, Posta tosta. E-mail efficaci in azienda, nella vita privata, nel marketing, (Tough Mail. Efficient e-mails at work, home, and in marketing) Milano, Hops, 2001.
[4] I will express how I feel about the price-quality ratio a bit later.
[5] Pour Your Heart Into It, New York, Hyperion, 1997, p. 234.
[6] "I requisiti sempre più elevati del mercato: siamo in grado di soddisfare i nostri clienti?", (The ever-higher demands of the market: are we really able to satisfy our customers?) in: L’industria della traduzione oggi: documentazione multilingue, tecnologia, mercato, Atti del convegno Federcentri, Bologna, 26-28 October 2001, p. 86.