Linguistic Review

Our client’s in-country employees (marketing team members, customer support, etc) are giving us feedback on translations. However, the reviewers frequently introduce spelling errors, terminological inconsistencies, and regionalisms, all of which conflict with the TMs, glossaries, and style guides. The marketing manager of the internal review team thinks that we are just being stubborn and inflexible, but that is not the case! We are only trying to maintain quality, while still valuing the opinions of our client’s team that is conducting the internal review. 

My team is tasked with introducing an all in one solution to the company that they will readily accept. There are a few challenges in this: the solution has to be easy, comprehensive, and more importantly we have to convince the company that this change is worth their time and won’t hurt their pocketbooks.Our main evangelization strategies include stressing the free and easy nature of our solution. We also stressed that training would be provided and gave an in depth review of the proposed technology while highlighting each of its functions that would solve the present issues.

What went well in the presentation: overall we sold our solution pretty well, and our client did not protest too much at the idea of having to use a new software, SmartCat. I feel like we were able to provide specific reasons for needing to use SmartCat, and additionally we were able to show that the solution we are proposing, in fact, has built in functions (glossaries, translation memories, due date function that automatically adapts to the time zone, chat system/ability to comment) that handle all of the problems that have come up when our team is incorporating internal review into the final translation. We were able to show the client this easily by providing several screenshots of the interface and giving a brief overview of the main functions before we go into more detail about how we plan to use this to solve the present issues. 

What went wrong:  Personally in my portion of the presentation, I feel that the main thing that went wrong was leaving out some points that I initially wanted to mention. Despite the information, which was just a simple explanation of the progress bar that SmartCat’s interface has as well as some other similar details, I started to rush myself and ended up omitting these important details. Also, I feel like my team forgot to leave out something very important, which is an alternative solution. While we discussed this solution, which is described in greater detail below. While we discussed alternatives in our group meeting, we never thought to include them briefly in the presentation, which as an after thought, would have been a good idea. 

What could have been done differently: I feel that enough time was not spent showing the client the (worse) alternatives which would have highlighted the brilliance of our solution. Some of the alternatives would’ve been using a CAT tool such as MemoQ, exporting the documents for review, and then retrofitting those changes again using MemoQ. Perhaps explaining this process and the cost associated with MemoQ licensing would show our client that we are serious about helping them in the most cost-efficient way possible.

Lessons learned: Any person who has been through formal education has heard the advice of not rushing through presentations; however, I did not heed that advice in the moment of my presentation, and this experience was a gentle reminder to take the time to deliver the information points you practiced earlier. Instead of rushing because you are worried about time, trust in the planning and timing that you practiced in advance. Give yourself time.

Another lesson learned would be to always present the alternative to your client, even if it is a bad alternative. If anything this will highlight the strengths of your solution and also show that you are flexible and open to other ideas if for some reason the client does not care for your preferred solution. I also think it is important to not present the alternative in a totally negative light (it is still your idea after all) and if the client ends up liking the alternative more than the original proposal, that could make both you and your client feel foolish.

Conclusion: While there were no major mistakes made during the presentation, and my team was easily able to win over the sharks, there is always room for improvement, especially in the areas of timing and presenting other solutions to the problem.