This blog post shares 3 reasons why having multiple vendors can kill the efficiency of your translation projects.
Now a-days, it has become important for organizations to translate their business communication and training programs into multiple languages to reach their global audience more effectively.
In a survey done by CommLab, it was found that 85% of the respondents shared that they get their eLearning courses translated into 10 different languages, with a majority of them having at least up to 2 languages and most of them agreed that they get the translations done through their vendor partners.
But because of this high demand for translations and many other reasons, organizations start using multiple vendors for their translations, which is not a good practice. In this blog, I am going to discuss 3 reasons why having multiple vendors can kill the efficiency of your translation projects.
1. Lack of Trust:
“Success with vendors and consultants relies on mutual trust and reciprocity, and nothing will kill a project faster than to abuse the relationship.” – By Marc Rosenberg
Yes. TRUST plays a key role when it comes to working with vendor partners. Some people think that having a basket full of vendors will add more value to their eLearning translation courses and so they do not stick to one vendor partner. They forget that only if we trust our partner, they will give their best to keep up to your expectations. Organizations that keep on changing their vendors finally fall into discrepancies with them.
2. Thinking that they may get a better quality:
Generally organizations try multiple vendors thinking that they may get a better output; but this is not true. Every time you go to a new vendor, you should start afresh and this takes lot of time to understand each other. You need to spend a lot of time and energy in order to explain what you want and there is no guarantee that you may succeed by the end of the day.
Example: One of our clients using multiple translation vendors simultaneously awarded his translation projects to a new partner, without checking on their capabilities and domain expertise. All his courses were to do with technical subjects, and the service of a technical subject matter expert was very much needed. But the vendors used translators with a non-technical background for his job. They did not understand the client’s requirements and their background before assigning and completing the job, which did not give any satisfactory results.
Another example: One of our clients very recently shared that he used to work with multiple vendors for his eLearning translation courses and faced lot of problems communicating with them. He was frustrated to the point that he almost wanted to stop all his eLearning translation projects.
Therefore, it is always better if we use one vendor; you can focus on just one vendor and get satisfactory results. Dealing with a single vendor will take just one fourth of the time that you would actually spend on multiple vendors.
3. Thinking that they may reduce costs:
Also people think that they can reduce the costs on the translations if they can get it done through multiple vendors. But do you know that using a single vendor can save lot of costs? Translation vendors maintain the content database for your eLearning translation projects with the help of translation memory tools.
If anything is repeated, you will be just charged of the amount. The more you use his services, the bigger will be your database. He can also maintain glossary, terms library, resources that can be used in upcoming projects.
It could be better if you work with one vendor. The longer you work with him, the more he gets familiar with your projects and requirements. He will master your projects and will do the job with ease without any complications.
Instead of wasting a lot of your time, energy and money on multiple vendors, choose one right vendor who can make your eLearning translation projects up to the mark using the knowledge. But still if you want to use multiple vendors for your eLearning translation projects because the demand is high, then I suggest you to use just two vendors and not more than that. Please feel free to share your views if you have any.
