As professional translators, proofreaders and copy editors we have our limits. Individual translators for the most part can translate up to 2,500 words a day, meaning they can translate around 315 words per hour on an 8-hour workday. Trustlations.com operates under these limitations so that we can handle our clients’ expectations and deliver on time.

As an LSP (Language Service Provider) we can handle higher volumes and multilingual projects. However, the impact of working with more than one translator on a project without using a single proofreader will influence the consistency of the resulting translation. This is important when taking care of brands, for example. When deadlines are short and time is of the essence, we might end up making compromises that affect the resulting translation. While the translation might have the highest quality, it could look like a mismatch.

Some of our projects are assisted by machine translation (MT) software, in which we first have to populate the project with terminological databases and glossaries, but this is done over time on long-standing projects. For new or single-standing projects we will not necessarily use MT software and the overall consistency of the translation may be affected. For example, a translator might decide to use a term like “cellular phone”, another may use “cell”, while another may use “mobile”. This is a simple example, but when there is a brand involved, we make an effort to be consistent to the brand. All this has an impact on the outcome as well as on the timing.

Another factor involved in meeting deadlines is working on multilingual, multicontinent projects where different time zones are involved. Our project managers have to report back to our lead project manager in order to ensure that our teams in different parts of the world will deliver on time for our client, who typically is in one time zone. This is all stressfully exciting!

In conclusion, we consistently meet our clients’ deadlines by using best practices and optimizing our resources. When our clients ask us for unreasonable deadlines we let them know what the implications are and if we come to an understanding we proceed to work on the project and deliver on time.

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