Recruiting freelance translators is easy. Outsourcing work to freelance translators is easy. Paying freelance translators is easy. But what about recruiting, outsourcing and paying other translation companies?  By Christina@Wocintechchat In an ideal world, a database would be 20% freelance translators and 80% translation companies. It would make things so much easier! Project Managers could allocate entire projects to one supplier, without worrying about splitting files, coordinating deliveries, lengthy quality checks etc. Unfortunately, that is not how it usually happens in the real world. Working with translation companies can get very messy and stressful for a Project Manager. A small mistake can leave you with thousands of words untranslated the day before the deadline. It is true that this can also happen when working with freelancers, but the amount of work allocated to a freelancer is usually much smaller.  While working at Xerox, I resourced a job to a company that dea...

Translation Vendor Management Group

One of the most controversial topics in the translation industry comes up when the Vendor Manager asks for a translation test. Whether it is a specific sample for client, or a test during the recruitment process, we can not make up our minds about it. Is it necessary? Should it be paid? The purpose of a test translation, as it names entails, is to test the quality of the translation the vendor can supply. However, each company uses their own methods and focuses on different things when assessing a test translation, so what might be acceptable to one company, doesn't necessarily mean it is for another. The quality of the translation is assessed against the standards of the company, so what the company and their clients think is a good quality translation may vary. I mention this in particular because not all the companies might be a good fit for you as a freelancer and not all the freelancers that answer your company's advert are a good fit for your company. As a Vendor Manager ...