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Posted on13 August 2013

Can I have my translation tomorrow?

Anna Davies is the Manager at Atlas Translations, and has been with us since 2004. As you can imagine, she’s dealt with a lot of work in that time! When we asked her what clients want most of all, she didn’t hesitate – they want their work NOW! Or at least very soon. Here’s what she had to say about tight deadlines.

This is the sort of question we at Atlas Translations hear every day and as we are the sort of people who like to do what we can to help our clients, the answer is usually ‘yes, of course you can!’

translation deadline

We know that time is important to our clients and that deadlines are crucial. We and our translators are used to working to very tight deadlines, but here are a few reasons why it may be better to extend the deadline if you possibly can:

1.  All of our translations are carried out be real life human beings! Machines are able to ‘translate’ (*cough) things in record time but our translators like a bit more time to read over their translations and make sure they have translated not only the text correctly but also the style and feel of your document. The more time they have, the more they will be able to go over the translation and refine it.
 
2. Translators work every day – and not just 9-5 Monday to Friday. Perhaps your 5pm on a Friday delivery could be pushed to 9am Monday morning? This would give the translator a whole weekend to work on the translation rather than rushing to deliver it for last thing on a Friday when it may possibly just sit in your inbox until Monday?

3.  Did it take you a few weeks to create your document from scratch? The likelihood is that your final document has been seen by various members of your team and had a lot of input from other people. In order to do right by your document, it would be best to allow the translator the time to work on it properly – look up any queries and ask any questions so that they can do their best possible work and deliver a translated document to you that you can use – with very fast turnaround times the likelihood is that the translation will come back with queries marked as there was not enough time to come back to you to find out the answers – this in turn makes more work from you. An extra day or half a day could make all the difference.

4.  If you do need a very fast delivery we sometimes have to split the document between 2 or more translators. Your Project Manager would always inform you about this beforehand and would alert you to the problems this may cause. Yes, you would receive a complete translation at the end of it but the likelihood is that you would be able to tell that different people had translated different sections. No two people will ever write in exactly the same way whatever their language….

Having said all of the above, all of our translators are highly skilled and used to working to tight deadlines. With an average turnaround of 2000 – 3000 words per day we could hardly call them slow!

Your Project Manager at Atlas will always give you the best possible turnaround time for a translation taking not only the word count into consideration but also the style, subject matter and end use for the translation. If the deadline your Project Manager gives you is not suitable – please tell us – we are here to help you so will of course try and meet any deadlines you have.

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