How to deal with small translation projects?

by Target Language Translation Services

- October 25 2021

The matter of small translation projects is one of the biggest challenges for LSPs. By small, we usually mean anything less than 250 words or about 1 page. Many translation customers have core content that is repeatedly utilized for a single purpose but requests to be modified over and over to reflect a new target audience or time-bound purpose. This applies to organizations that find themselves re-using content across multiple channels in various formats, as well as those that frequently update older publications of the same format to create new versions. Large, single-purpose translation projects with long timelines are rare in a modern era. Companies digitize more content, publish across multiple channels, and release or update products and communications more frequently. All of this leads to high volumes of micro-projects that include only the small chunks of text needed to customize what is otherwise boilerplate.

A New Content Revolution

We are in the midst of a content revolution, with every company having to produce some form of media. Meanwhile, the economy is more globalized. The translation is no longer an afterthought but rather a crucial ingredient in go-to-market strategies.

Customers are increasingly less likely to create a large suite of published artifacts for longer-term use, which they then bundle and send to a language-services provider (LSP) for translation. Instead, translation is often happening before or parallel to publication; in fact, the published artifact may be the very last thing created in any language. The focus is now squarely on the content.

Now that organizing translation projects around large and infrequent bundles of content no longer fit the modern world, many organizations face the challenge of managing smaller translation projects and their related costs.

Challenges of Small translation projects

Here we explore why these small projects can be harder to manage than larger projects, and how to master them.

Limited time

A majority of people think that “small” should mean “fast”. After all, several words, a few sentences or 1 small paragraph can be translated within minutes. At least in theory. The vital thing to comprehend is that each localization project requires a certain amount of time before and after the translation is completed. No matter what the size is, The project managers need to follow the same workflow. The time to find an available and appropriate translator and editor, assign the project, send all materials, negotiate a deadline and follow through the entire process. For the linguists there are instructions, guidelines and glossaries to read and follow, automatic checks to run and reports to deliver. And all these steps require time that is usually more than the time needed to simply translate the text.

Resource availability

In the localization industry timing is significant. There is an optimal time to start a translation project, and an optimal time to complete it. With hundreds of various projects each day, the planning and execution of each one is calculated to the minute. And because of this small translation projects are the hardest to manage. They require higher availability at any given moment than bigger tasks, as their time window is usually pretty narrow. Basically, from the moment the task is received, time starts ticking and you need to act now.

Quality demands

Another consequence of the small size of these tasks is that the quality expectations are much higher. Oftentimes short texts are more visible, such as product page titles, descriptions, ads, marketing messages and many more. And with higher visibility come the higher quality requirements. It takes a lot of focus to translate small translation projects.

Context ambiguities

When translating a full-sized completed text, you can easily comprehend and follow the context. All sentences and paragraphs are connected and you can even resolve small ambiguities in the meaning if the context is clear enough. However, short texts can sometimes lack enough context to allow normal translation speed. This can even mean sending queries about a 50 word task, waiting for the Client to reply, and wasting even more time.

Pricing policies

A majority of the translation companies and translators prefer to charge for translation based on the number of words, which is believed to be fair to both the customer and the translator. It means that the more words a customer sends, the higher the chance for volume-based discounts. This is quite expected and is a practice in almost any industry. On the other side, lower-volume translations below 250 words are considered small and require a minimum fee or charge to process. Usually this is a flat rate. And here comes the most common issue – paying a minimum charge seems like paying a premium rate. And it’s always difficult to explain to the customer why they should pay more for less.

Solutions

Here are several tips to consider:

Implement a content management system (CMS) or similar repository to help streamline the process for authoring, storing, repurposing content into various formats for different purposes.

Set a Minimum fee for small tasks. Start from 250 words and go down if needed.

Be flexible. Negotiate terms which are acceptable for you and your cusytomers.

Explain your working process to your customers so they know how much time you need, why you need it and what’s their benefit.

Find translators who are available during business hours and are willing to undertake small tasks with short turnaround times. This is much trickier with freelancers, so the easiest way to ensure availability for small tasks is by hiring in-house linguists.

Guarantee quality. If a customer won’t agree to pay a minimum fee, you might be tempted to save costs by hiring more inexperienced translators, or by skipping some checks. Don’t! This could be very damaging for your business, as we already saw above. Small tasks have higher quality requirements and are the easiest and fastest way to lose a customer.

This article is reprinted from LanguageLine, and TransGlobe.

If there is a copyright, please inform us in time, we will delete it right the first time.