The phone rang and the client, an investment company, wanted to discuss a close co-operation to have their investor reports translated into German on an on-going basis. When I got there, I realised that they had already pursued various other avenues by having their documents translated either by in-house staff or by large translation agencies. Neither seemed to have produced the desired results. Why was that?
What was lacking was either the linguistic capability of bankers, who certainly understand their subject matter very well, but weren't used to translate fluently into another language and often didn't have the time to concentrate on it. On the other hand, large translation companies had many translators on their books, tried to outsource their projects last minute and just didn't meet the deadlines or couldn't guarantee the required quality standard. And what was worse, the client couldn't talk to the person who had actually translated their material to discuss the problem.
So we agreed to have a close working relationship, where I would establish a consistent style for the documents, compile a glossary of the most frequently used technical terms and ensure that the documents would have an identical look and feel to the originals. The investment bankers would, in turn, give me feedback on my language solutions, make sure the documents arrived in time to meet the deadline and offer clarification, if need be.
CLIENT REQUIREMENTSaccountability
communication
consistency
accuracy
For every assignment, I would send comments about passages in the documents, which needed to be checked or seemed to contain errors. From time to time, we would synchronise the glossaries we had compiled and plan future assignments. Very soon it became evident that it is the mutual exchange that is key in achieving a successful outcome.
This approach I like to call "interactive translation" , did eventually lead to a very fruitful cooperation and produced documents, which were received with praise by German bankers and investors alike.
Have a look at a typical project I translated for this particular client.
Example 1
Example 2