Best practices for centralizing translation
Language service provider In Every Language has released a free white paper describing the benefits and best practices of consolidating translation.
As businesses and organizations focus on reducing unnecessary administrative costs, centralizing and consolidating translation is a vital step. How can you tell when your translation approach outgrows your business demands? What should you keep in mind when considering a transition from a decentralized to a centralized process?
In many siloed organizations, we often see the purchase of translation organized in a variety of ways, exhibiting some of the following criteria when translation is considered an after-thought:
- Limited or nonexistent performance & ROI metrics
- Inconsistent brand messaging
- Siloed efforts
- Excessive spending related to duplication of efforts
- Inconsistent quality
- Multiple buyers
- Inconsistent or nonexistent training for buyers
- Limited or nonexistent collaboration between suppliers
Upon examining its process, Microsoft discovered 150 employees spread across three business segments annually spent $18 million with 54 different suppliers. After streamlining translation to one department, the company initially saved $12 million, with continued savings of $3 million each additional year.
3M, before streamlining, had relied upon bilingual employees to translate projects, so the average translation took 6-30 months to complete. Translation projects are now completed by professionals and only take 2-3 weeks. This has enabled 3M to increase ROI through quicker product launches and has allowed their employees to go back to the jobs they were initially hired to do.
While most businesses still view the purchase of translation as an expense versus a profit driver, forward-thinking business leaders leverage translation and localization as key, growth enablers. Many businesses are exploiting localization services to ensure translated messages accurately convey the customs, norms, tastes and perceptions of the target market. Best practice companies view translation as a digital asset and store it in a central repository, just as they value their money and keep it in a bank. By centralizing translation, businesses can ensure their translation partner understands the brand platform and knows how to incorporate it seamlessly into communications for any audience.