Why Choose a Small Translation Business?
Why go small?
If you want something translated for the first time, you might Google ‘Translation from German to English’. Upon hitting enter, you’ll be overwhelmed by a raft of results ranging from ‘instant translation’ by a machine, to large multinational translation agencies, perhaps an industry body with a translation directory (like the ITI) and maybe – if they’ve made it far enough up the SEO rankings – smaller translation businesses and individuals.
How on earth do you choose between them?
Here's why you should dive a little deeper beyond the first, promising-looking search-engine hit before you commit to getting your work translated. And perhaps, a reason or two to choose a small business.
What are your options for translation?
Most people outside of the translation industry don’t know a lot about its internal workings. So let’s peek under the lid… broadly speaking there are three places you can get translations from.
1. From an ‘anonymous’ engine, for example, Google Translate or ChatGPT, where you simply enter your words and get other-language-words returned to you via machine translation (what’s happened in between remains a bit foggy).
2. From an LSP – Language Services Provider. These are companies set-up to connect you with translators. They may have in-house translators or work with freelancers. They may be huge multi-nationals with a workforce in the 1000s or a small business with just two or three employees. The main advantage of an LSP is that they’ll handle all the project management for you and they have software to make your processes smoother.
3. Individual freelance translators and very small businesses – like me, hello! Think of us like a boutique, we tend to work in a specialised industry and have a personal relationship with a small but loyal clientele.
Why would anyone choose a small business?
Why, you may ask, would anyone ever choose a small translation business? You have to think about translation like all other walks of life. For some things – like the weekly shop – you might need a supermarket, but for specialist ingredients you’ll tend to go to a smaller seller. If you want a unique or artisanal present, you’ll probably shop small. You may see a slight price differential between small businesses/freelance translators and the larger LSPs, but that’s because the product and services you receive are different.
When to choose SMALL:
There are many times when picking an individual, specialist translator or translation team is the best choice for your business. For example:
- You want to create new, custom content with a unique tone of voice.
- You want to reach a niche or specialist target audience.
- You have a unique, deeply technical or scientific, or specialist subject matter – find a translator in your niche.
- You have small content volumes but want good oversight, consistency and swift communication.
- You’re working from one language (or just a few) into one other language.
- You want a personal relationship with one translator who becomes your ‘you’ in the other language.
When to go BIG, and choose a larger translation firm:
Of course, there are myriad jobs which larger translation agencies, or LSPs, are much better suited to.
- Large volumes of content. You need the numbers to handle the big amounts.
- Large volumes of repetitive content where you’re looking for consistency and thorough QA processes.
- Multi-language translation projects where one lot of content needs to reach dozens of different countries/languages or where there’s back-and-forth translation of different things across different languages.
- Sporadic workflows where jobs could appear at any time of day or night on various time zones. Multi-national agencies may have translators in several time zones.
Think you might like to ‘shop small’ for your translations? I work with Dutch and German into English and I’d love to work my magic and make your content really sing. Find out about my services or get in touch.
