How to balance the cost of translation services with the quality of those translations is a quintessential question many an administrator has had to ask over the course of his or her career. In fact, this question can be put to lots of various business services: How can a company get the best rate, while still ensuring a quality end product?
When it comes to translation companies, there are a lot of variables to consider on your end, as well as on the end of the service you eventually choose. As with most things, you get what you pay for. While you don’t want to break the bank, you still want good work done for a reasonable price.
Are you willing to trade accuracy for a better rate? How important is overall translation precision to your job — or to your company as a whole — when you take into account your specific needs? If you do opt for a more cut-rate translation service, is there someone in-house who can clean up any less-than-stellar translated documents that land on your desk? Is the money you save by using non-professional translators (or agencies) worth the time you might have to spend dealing with errors or late work?
The best course of action, of course, is to ask and shop around, even if you’ve wrestled with the cost of translation services before.
Check online, get local advice, and look at reviews. By doing so, you can get a good grasp on how best to balance the cost of translation services in relation to you particular needs.
