To be or not to be an RLV,
for CEE or the wider world
Marek Makosiej
Region Focus
matter and then it occurred to me how
simple but smart that solution was. It
was fair to the potential SLV clients
and actually gave some of them an
added value (some of the clients think
the in-house resources can be controlled more effectively, but that's the
topic for another long article), and, at
the same time, allowed the company
to keep its credibility across both SLV
and MLV profiles. It's even more interesting if you notice that the situation
was kind of reversed the company
was not upgrading" but downgrading," or perhaps it's better to call it
sidegrading" after all, they didn't
want to quit their MLV operations.
That example shows that what
really matters is flexibility, but most
of all integrity. You need to stick to
what you do well and keep it as the
main line of your translation/localization business. But you should also
listen to your clients and react to their
changing needs. Adapt or die, as they
say. There's even more to it: you can
be proactive, as well. If you know now
that sooner or later your SLV business
will face the dilemma of becoming
or not becoming an RLV, you may
start preparing for that. Begin to
gather knowledge and know-how,
and source linguists for those additional languages. You don't need to
announce it to the whole world We
have officially turned into an RLV."
Just prepare and see what happens.
In the worst case scenario, you will
end up with more valuable knowledge and an expanded database of
qualified resources for Central Eastern
European, Nordic, Baltic or any other
regional language groups. And when
the clients start asking Look, you
do so well with Polish for us, do you
think you could manage Czech and
Slovak as well?" then you will have
everything in place. Of course, the situation may become a bit tricky when
the client asks But wait, can you
promise me that the quality of the new
languages will be at least as good as
the quality of your main language?"
There's always a risk of losing a client
this way (it's actually the first thing
that comes to mind when analyzing
the consequences of such changes).
But one important part of our business as a language service provider is
talking to clients and educating them.
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Region Focus
processes, both for sourcing providers
and for production, give equally good
results as for the single language you
have provided so far. That may mean
the changes to those processes for one
or even all new languages that will
make you an RLV. As we all rely on
the quality of our vendors, we need
to know that we have access to quality resources. If you are not able to
source the providers that will meet the
requirements you and your clients set,
stick to what you do well, as there is a
high chance that you will overdo it. In
certain Central and Eastern European
languages, for example, there may
be a limited to very narrow qualified
freelance translator pool. Analyze the
pros and cons, both for your business as well as for your customers.
Make an informed decision. Prepare
a good transition plan. Observe and
tweak. Adapt to actual results and
requirements. In an ideal world, you
would have time for this, but busi-
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editor@multilingual.com