Consistency and Savings

Enticing, limited-time offers. We know them all too well.

 “SuperBrush, the revolutionary dental tool that will change the way you brush your teeth forever! And, if you call in the next 15 minutes, SuperBrush is yours for only $19.95—and BrushitBright will even give you a free SuperBrush!”

What motivates giveaways like these, anyway?

From a business standpoint, these kinds of offers seem to incentivize the consumer experience. But here’s the concern: incentives eventually run out and then you’re left with an overpriced toothbrush. These offers are not sustainable. And they don’t feature a mutual exchange of benefit between the client and the service provider.

A few blog posts back, we outlined the assets and potential barriers that come with post-translation review, or the use of bilingual employees to translate company materials.

In those posts, we eluded to a process of savings that is a mutually-beneficial, sustainable guarantee that TLC practices with every project—establishing a memory of your company’s past translation content.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the translation process, translation service providers often utilize CAT tools (Computer-Assisted Translation) to aid in consistency but also to help you save time and money by storing your previously translated materials in a database. This database of previously translated materials is called a Translation Memory (TM). This TM (which is a CAT tool) then allows our translators to compare materials they are currently translating with already completed and approved work, as well as any client-specific glossaries (also called Term Bases).

Do not be confused though; TM is not Machine Translation. TM draws upon past identical translations created by professional, human translators, whereas Machine Translation uses computer algorithms and statistical probability (think Google Translate). Both programs deliver savings; but only one delivers correct context, reliability and consistency. With the other—free translation—you get what you pay for: poor quality.

Using CAT tools such as TM not only delivers correctness, speed and consistency, but also great savings to many of our clients. As you continue your business with us, the TM watches for phrases that have been translated in the past to make sure that you are not being charged the full per-word rate for content already translated.

In some of our largest-scale projects, clients on average realized savings of 40 percent of the total project cost thanks to our CAT tools. These clients have spanned from international defense agencies, manufacturers, architectural companies, insurance and health sciences, just to list a few industries that seem to benefit the most.

One of our larger health sciences clients experienced 40 percent savings in our first year of partnership and 60 percent savings in some of the projects in our second year of partnership! That means on several projects in the second year of partnership they saved more than they spent!

While we might not be able to give you a free toothbrush or furniture, we can certainly guarantee that using our CAT tools and establishing a TM will consistent translations and increased savings over time, which makes us all happy. These great incentives are not limited-time offers, but a part of our quality processes every day. With TLC you can also rest assured that any savings we generate are always passed to you, our customer – no exception.

And, unlike the commercials that prompt you to buy on a whim, we put our money and our reputation on a solid, long term relationship with you.