translation agency

No two days are ever the same – a glimpse into the work of a Translation Services Manager

25.1.2023 by Sofia Väänänen

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to work at a translation agency? Well, I’m here to tell you! I interviewed our Translation Services Manager Jenna Holopainen about what an average day in the Translation Services team looks like.

Jenna joined Delingua as a Translation Services Manager in December 2021. If we were to sum the work up in a single sentence, the work of a Translation Services Manager is fast-paced and involves project management and customer relationship management tasks. Of course, this is a simplification, as there are also many other interesting background tasks.

No two days are ever the same

The work of a Translation Services Manager involves a lot of email communication, phone calls and general interaction with customers. There are orders and quotes to process, projects to start, layouts to check and translations to resource and return. The work involves various types of translation, proofreading, transcription and subtitling projects in fields such as economics and marketing. The days also include internal and external meetings as well as more technical tasks, such as term base maintenance and file conversion.

However, no two days are ever the same at a translation agency: “No two days are ever the same, and the list of tasks changes constantly. At the moment, my to-do list includes resourcing a few projects, starting orders and preparing for a customer meeting, i.e. making an order report and finding out what has been done with the customer in question over the past year. When I find the time, there’s also a term base for me to clean up,” says Jenna.

The TSM team has regular cooperation meetings with customers. The meetings are rewarding, as they provide a good understanding of where we have succeeded and what things we should focus on in order to maintain or further develop the customer relationship: “It’s always nice to handle the projects of our regular customers, as those are what I’m most familiar with and there’s closer contact with the customer.”

Meaningful work in a close-knit community

The work gives a broad overview of how different customer industries operate and communicate. So, while working, there’s a lot to learn about different industries and about the translation industry itself, such as the technological possibilities it offers. Delingua’s special advantage is that we constantly strive to develop processes and technical solutions that make coordinating projects significantly easier.

“I’d say that working at Delingua is fast-paced, engaging and diverse in nature. The diversity of the work and the opportunities to develop play a key role in how meaningful the work feels,” says Jenna.

In addition to interesting tasks and projects, the work is made meaningful by Delingua’s warm and welcoming work community. Delingua’s human-centred approach is conveyed both in teamwork and in customer communications. Instead of just working on the texts, Delingua maintains close contact with its subcontractors and customers.

“Our team of Translation Services Managers, in fact all our personnel, are top professionals and work together to create a great atmosphere. Human contact in general is one of the best aspects of this work, and it feels nice to work with both translators and customers,” says Jenna.

Time management and prioritisation

What kind of person would be suited to working as a Translation Services Manager? Important qualities include time management, orderliness, stress tolerance and problem-solving and technical skills. In a hectic work environment, it’s important to keep a cool head – you need to be able to schedule your days efficiently and at times prioritise tasks intuitively. As every project doesn’t follow the same pattern, sometimes you just need to know how to decide which route to take.

However, you shouldn’t burn yourself out even if things are getting hectic. Instead, you should be able to rely on your team: “Personally, I enjoy working at a fast pace in a busy working environment. We have people with different areas of expertise in our team, so you can always get the help you need.”

The language of football

29.11.2022 by Delingua

Although the Finnish national team has once again missed out on the FIFA World Cup, which is underway in Qatar, armchair supporters shouldn’t miss the competition under any circumstances. The World Cup is the world’s biggest sporting event, offering both a footballing and linguistic spectacle.

In its own way, football is the world’s most understood language. A football is round for everyone, and the game brings people together regardless of nationality, skin colour or sexual orientation. If you can play football, you will get by anywhere in the world.

You’ll do even better and get inside the culture if you understand football slang in the local language. In Spanish, dar un baño literally means “to give someone a bath”, but in football it means to totally destroy the opposition. In German, Schwalbe is the name for a small bird, a swallow or martin, but on the field of play Schwalbes win free-kicks and penalties by taking a dive on purpose.

If you’re discussing the previous evening’s match with your English-speaking colleague, make an impression by using expert terms. A team that decides to protect its lead by defending deeply will park the bus. A player who has the ball passed through his legs is nutmegged. And if the attacking team narrowly misses by hitting either of the posts or the crossbar, they hit the woodwork.

If you want to be really on the ball, enrich your language with expressions borrowed from football. In addition to kick-off and playing in a league of their own (omassa sarjassaan pelaaminen), which have both made their way into the Finnish language, you can also insert into any English conversation football-related words and phrases such as game-changing (mullistava), know the score (tuntea faktat) or take sides (olla puolueellinen).

The World Cup takes place over 29 days and will involve 64 matches. The final on 18 December will most likely be followed by a billion fans around the world and will be played at the Lusail Iconic Stadium, where 80,000 supporters will do the Mexican Wave (la-Ola-Welle).

On the internet, you can find all manner of football glossaries, which will help you read about your favourite team’s stars also in their own language. If you speak one of the big football languages and you’re looking for the best big match experience, I recommend listening to the match commentary on internet radio in your team’s language. If your team scores, it could be that you only hear GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAL!

What a translation agency does (and doesn’t do)

17.2.2021 by Katja Virtanen

Last week, a potential customer told me they prefer to translate their marketing texts themselves. They’re not interested in ordering translations from a translation agency. They had once ordered a professional translation from an agency and, as a result of the experiment, their relaxed marketing style had been turned into what the customer felt was something more like a scientific research report.

We discussed what might have caused the failure in the translation service. This customer, like many others, seemed to have a somewhat incomplete understanding of what a translation agency does and doesn’t do. The biggest surprise for customers is usually how technical translation services are today.

So, I will try to summarise below what we as a translation agency do to make life easier for our customers.

1. We offer translation services in different languages

Naturally, a translation agency can provide you with translations into different languages. The language selections of agencies vary. As a rule, the larger the translation agency, the wider the range of languages. Customers contact a translation agency especially when they need translations into languages that they don’t master themselves.

If the customer maintains several language versions of their documentation, software or website, ordering translations from one place is absolutely the reasonable approach.

2. Efficient translation service process

Ordering translations is not just about individual translations. Translation agencies sell a service that covers the entire process, from workflow to project management and advanced technology. We maintain tools that handle different file formats, optimise the order process and speed up translation work.

At the translation agency, the customer relationship is supervised by an account manager, who knows how to propose solutions and smart practices that benefit the customer. Individual translation projects are coordinated by a project manager, who can keep several balls up in the air in even the most complex assignments consisting of numerous files. They don’t know your needs and style requirements in advance but, as professionals, once they hear about them, they can suggest a solution.

3. Cooperation between people and technology speeds up the translation process

Ordering translations from a translation agency and the translation work itself become faster when the translation is done by a professional translator with the aid of language technology. Language technology refers, first and foremost, to translation tools that speed up the translator’s work and help them maintain the correct style and terminological consistency in the translation.

If the customer company doesn’t have a dedicated translation department, it will rarely have any translation tools either. Without such tools, translation can be painfully slow and, in the worst case, the same text could be translated from scratch several times, wasting valuable time and resources.

4. The translator learns your style and terminology

Although many translators specialise in a certain field, few automatically know the style and terminology of all customers. It’s not reasonable for you to send your text to be translated without giving any other information and expect the result to be perfect. Of course, you could but why would you? You wouldn’t order a new visual corporate image from a graphic designer or a new advertisement from a communications agency without telling them about your target audience and style preferences.

A translation agency uses translation memory and terminology tools, reference materials and style guides as an aid in translation work. The more effort you put into the terminology and reference materials used, the smoother the ordering of translations from the translation agency becomes.

5. Easy to reach, with reliable deliveries

Customers who have their texts translated by one of their own employees or a single familiar translator usually start to sweat if this person is suddenly unavailable to do an urgent translation assignment. Where on earth could they now get the translation done within the given timeframe?

One of the strengths of translation agencies is they are easy to reach. If the translator reserved for the customer’s translations happens to fall ill, the project manager can arrange for a replacement or an entire team of translators to complete the translation. We’re not dependent on a single translator, and we don’t throw the towel in, even in challenging situations. For many, trustworthiness and delivery reliability are the most important factors when ordering urgent translations.

6. Save time through system integration

To an increasing extent, a customer’s translatable materials come in formats other than traditional Word files. Often, translations are required for materials in the customer’s own content or product information management systems (CMS and PIM systems).

In such cases, the smartest approach is not to copy texts to and from Word files but to integrate the systems so that the files move smoothly from the customer’s system to the translation agency’s translation management system and then back to the customer’s system after translation.

7. All language services under one roof

In addition to translations, translation agencies usually provide other language services, too. In addition to review by a native speaker and interpretation services, there is an increasing demand for subtitling and transcription of videos since the Accessibility Directive entered into force, for example. A translation agency can also provide customers with search engine optimisation of foreign-language texts, software localisation or secure machine translation of large volumes of text, among other services.

A good translation agency is a strategic partner for the company in all language-related issues. A partner who is easy to turn to and who knows how to suggest just the right language service solution.

The purpose of a translation agency is to make your life easier. This happens when your time is freed up to do things other than waste time on random searches for translators or monotonous copying and pasting. You don’t need to translate yourself if that’s not part of your core competence. Instead, a professional can perform the task quickly and cost-efficiently, provided they get all the information they need for the job.

If you feel your translation service provider just creates additional stress for you and the service doesn’t meet your expectations, it’s time to change the agency.