5 Tips to Experience Smooth Workflow on Document Translation Services in Chinese

You deserve a smooth workflow when it comes to translation services.

But let’s face it, there will always be issues and concerns as you go through the projects. Miscommunications or misunderstandings could happen. But you can still workaround on ways to mitigate and even avoid translation fiascos. 

The secret for growth in translation business is to keep on learning the best practices. The result must be to provide a better translation service to you – the client – whether the project is big or small, and whether it’s long-term or short-term.

Our team made a list of tips for clients to keep in mind when embarking on document translation services in Chinese. As always, the result must be a smooth workflow, a win-win where the team and client are happy by the end of the day.

#1 You need to decide and finalize the documents that need Chinese translation. Instead of sending by meal piece (which may cause issues along the way) meet and huddle with your team. Discuss your priorities for this project. You can create a table of content or spreadsheet to keep your team and keep the soon-to-be project managers in the loop. 

#2 Budget is essential. But you can’t decide on this one unless you do the first step. What’s the scope of the project. Is this for short-term or long-term? You need to plan the budget, too, so that you won’t be overspending in the future. There’s nothing wrong in asking for test translation when comparing the price. Make sure that you’re also after the quality of the texts. Cheap doesn’t mean it’s good when it comes to translation. 

#3 Provide a glossary of terms in your industry and source language. It’s expected that you choose a translator who is familiar with the industry and niche. But it would be helpful for them to understand the context of your content and document. Plus, they can use the glossary for future projects, too, and save those terms and phrases in the translation memory (TM).

#4 Tools, tools, tools. If you have worked with previous translation vendors, you can provide the latest TM to your new vendor. In this way, they can also help you spot the differences and inaccuracies. It will give room for improvement of the texts and translations. It’s a rule that translators shouldn’t change the CAT tool that clients have provided. So, if you have existing files and other file formats that can help the new or current vendor, feel free to share. 

#5 The project manager should be your point person when you have concerns on translations. In this way, the PM can cascade any translation issue to the team of translators and keep everyone in the loop. This will also avoid you from misunderstanding or miscommunication. If your in-house team works with vendors, you can also use other means of tools like Trello, Slack, other than emails. 

We hope these tips will help you on your next translation project. Let us know how LIMPID team can help you jumpstart your localization and translation strategies.