Editing Fallout

Yesterday I talked about an experience I’ve been having at work with regards to my editing of some translation we had done for us. The translation company apparently either fired or at least transferred: the translators, the project manager, and we switched the “language manager”. Today I met (in person) with the new project manager and she explained what they normally do when they have the “regular” amount of time to do translations (I did mention that we’re doing these translations on an extremely short deadline, right?) At any rate, it turns out that because of the short time frame, their entire process for editing their own translations themselves broke down, and that’s why they ended up having to change everybody around. (To wit: the other set of translations that we had to done in the same amount of time by the same company [different translators & language], they were fine. So obviously they could do it right in a short period of time.)

What really surprised me was that they normally only ask their customers to test out the functional part of the translations (we’re putting the translations on our website), not the actual context. Well duh, I thought it was strange that I was asked to do that type of review, but was happy to do it. They normally fix all the things I was complaining about while they’re doing that contextual review themselves. The project manager got messed up with the short time lines, and couldn’t handle juggling both their contextual review and our functional review in that short period of time. She freaked out, went to her boss who went to the head of the company, who called the head of my company and so on. That’s why things got so out of hand. But again, the second set of translations they did for us in the same time turned out fine, so obviously there was a problem with the quality of translators they had, as well as the quality of the project managers.

So I guess the lesson to be learned here is that you should always follow a process regardless of the time line. If it’s a good process, it will hold up. Otherwise it’s going to be a bumpy ride.