Better-Cheaper-Faster Localization

What's more fun than having to rush your work? Rushing your work in multiple languages, of course!

This week, one client needed a couple of mid-length documents (totaling 5,000 words) translated from Spanish to English. Once they had read them and prepared answers, those answers (about 9,000 words) needed to be translated from English to Spanish. The turnaround was 5 workdays from first handoff to final approval, with plenty of text changes in the mix.

Are you familiar with the better-cheaper-faster triangle? Any kind of work puts you in the middle of that triangle, and the closer you get to any corner, the further you drift from the others. You can even figure out a way to get two of these qualities, but you can't have all three at the same time. (No, really; you can't.)

We spent a lot of time on that triangle this week, but we were the only ones who saw the "better" corner. The client was thinking only in terms of "cheaper" and "faster," so we had the privilege of thinking "better" for them. I proofread the translations as they were handed off, and they were a long way from "better."

Mind you, they weren't awful - well, actually, one of them read like the English instruction manual to 1967 Datsun - but it was obvious that they hadn't had a good scrub by a translation editor. Still, if you're after cheaper-faster, or even just cheaper, there's not much room for an editor.

The vendor's project manager explained that they had had to break the job into pieces - certainly among translators and maybe even among sub-vendors - to meet the deadline, and that that might explain some terminology differences. It did indeed explain them, but I'm the one my client would have barbecued if we hadn't introduced a bit more "better" to the mix.

Of course there were rush charges, and the clients understood why. That didn't prevent them from sprinkling in text changes all along; it probably encouraged them, since they wanted to get their money's worth.

So, what would you have done? Would you have delivered the translation with a caveat emptor concerning translation quality, given the time-squeeze? Have you ever done that? How did the client accept it? Which is your favorite: better, cheaper or faster?

Wordcount Woes - Part 1

Do you spend much time fretting about wordcount?

My hunch is that translators worry about it more than agencies do, because it's often the only metric by which translators earn their daily bread. Agencies have project management, layout, graphics, consulting, rush charges and other metrics to observe, but most translators have one line-item on their invoices: wordcount.

I suppose that we all live and die by it because everybody's calculations get down to wordcount - either source or target text - sooner or later, but no two tools define words the same way, so wordcount can vary considerably.

Still, the bigger issue with wordcount is "wordcount leakage." If you're working vendor-side, how many times have you quoted on a project, then realized that you had overlooked a chunk of text?

• Graphics are the biggest culprit. The document contains charts and diagrams that require translation, but TM tools don't find those words. Many vendors wisely exclude such text from wordcount and cover it in an hourly or per-graphic charge. (Nobody can ever find the source files for the graphics so that you can localize them properly, but that's a whole other talk show.)
  
• Bookmarked text is also slippery. It appears as text (sentences, paragraphs) in one place, and is referred into other places in the document. True, you only translate it in one place, but you need to deal with it - layout, formatting, page flow - in other places as well.
  
• Conditional text, a favorite of Framemaker professionals, can also cause you trouble. If you don't calculate wordcount with the conditions set to expose all of the text, you may miss it. The author should arrange for this before handoff.
  
• Embedded documents (spreadsheets, word processing, HTML, presentations) are very sneaky. We just saw this the other day with an MS Word document that contained several embedded spreadsheets visible only as 1cm square icons on the page; double-clicking the icons opened up the embedded files. The TM tools don't see those words, but the client certainly would have if they had come back untranslated. Fortunately, we caught this in time.
  

The Moral: Two pairs of eyes should review every file before the TM analysis, NOT one pair of eyes and a TM software package.