Process

Teamwork or Too many cooks spoil the broth

The ideal team for a translation project consists of a translator to produce a first draft (wording, terminology) and a skilled proofreader possessing relevant technical and linguistic knowledge to perfect this draft and detect any errors.
Following the proofreading step, the original translator will go through the changes and discuss them with his or her proofreader. With larger projects the work can be shared, so that one translator can translate one section, whilst the other can cross-read another section.

Final check

Before sending the final copy to the client, the text is double-checked one last time by the project manager for layout and other criteria (for instance, for language specific conventions such as lower case quotation marks in German, spaces between words and figures etc). These steps ensure a consistent high quality. The output of an experienced translator will typically be 2,500 words a day.

Timing

For a high-quality translation, a careful proofreader will usually take a quarter of the time required to translate the original copy. The final checks take far less time. In theory, this means that a day's translation work can be sent off to the client after 1.3 days. So, our output (at 2,500 words every 1.3 days) is approximately 2000 words per day. If more translators are required to work together on a project because a short notice project demands a higher daily output, efficiency will suffer as a result, because each individual translator is likely to have a different style which will need to be made consistent. In addition, terminology must be communicated to all (including external) translators involved in the project, causing additional overhead. The daily output per team member therefore decreases and the costs become higher.

For this reason, we recommend our customers to plan ahead in order to save money.