S03E02: Effective Translation Vendor Management

Carla Itzkowich

Thank you so much, Sultan, nice to be here with you.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I hear you have a colleague with you today. I would love to hear about her.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Yes, Norma Armon is our creative director and chairman of the board. She’s my partner and she’s also my mother.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Wow, pleasure meeting you Norma. How are you?

 

Norma Armon

I am well. How are you?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I’m very well thank you, so please tell us about what you do these days. What are you up to?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Well, International Contact is sort of our life. We’re a multi-language communication agency that we founded in 1982, so it’s been a little while. And we translate and localize in all media, including interpreting and videos and document translation, web translation as well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thank you for sharing that, can you tell me how you started out in this industry? I guess there will be two answers. You know, we’ll be hearing from Norma as well as yourself, Carla. How did you start out in this industry?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Actually, this story is kind of together, but I will let Norma speak every once in a while. Uh, we… Norma… we’re both from Mexico and so we moved to Los Angeles in 1977 and Norma was a personality on Spanish TV at the time. She started a show called Mundo Latino and so when I started working, I wanted to do videos and since we were from Mexico, people asked us to do videos in Spanish and Norma kept pushing me to go into the Hispanic market because it was just beginning to be something, but I really wanted to be in the Anglo market so we started out doing videos, we had a home shopping program on local cable and we were doing —- infomercials for clients.

 

And one of the clients said you’re from Mexico Can’t you do this in Spanish? And we said sure and all the time, Norma was encouraging me to do Spanish work, and then after a few years of doing Spanish work, a client said you do Spanish, so then you also do Japanese, right? And as I like to tell this story, I was brave and young then and so I said yes we do Japanese and quickly set about finding someone to do that for us and we got very lucky because the guy we found was a very good copy writer and he wrote very smooth Chinese, Japanese… sorry, but a couple of years later a client who we were doing intermodal shipping containers that was the beginning of that too called me and said Carla, do you know that we promised the Japanese people that we would be delivering the goods that were not damaged and so that was my first big lesson that translation is not just about being smooth but also about being accurate.

 

Norma Armon

Being exact to the English is the point.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Norma, what has your experience been I guess you have seen this industry from the outside when you were in the media and then from the inside. What’s your perspective?

 

Norma Armon

Well, basically I always say that when we first started translating, there weren’t, there was no entry in the Yellow Pages for translation.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Oh that’s right.

 

Norma Armon

But we were the first ones to buy Yellow Page entry and have an entry for translation here in the Bay Area so that that’s the experience we were opening doors throughout the time for other people.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

You were certainly pioneers there. Now, that’s a nice segue for my next question. Give me a sense of the changes and developments that you have seen on your way to where you are today compared to where when you started in 1982.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Well, certainly that I mean the thing was that it was that we were a multi-language communication agency. We started out doing just videos as I was telling you we did video production. We did video subtitles. We did video dubbing and then people would ask us, you know, can you look at the cover of our video or can you look at this collateral brochure that goes with our video and we would see it and it would be translated by the manicurist or something and so it was really in bad shape, right? And then after a few years of getting this, you know telling the client that it was terrible. It was terrible. We decided well. Why don’t we go into print and that was circa 1987 when the very first Macintoshes were coming into play. And we were working here in the Bay Area. We’re very lucky ’cause we were working for like Apple Computer and other technology companies and they just started their multimedia program when they asked us to write a book that we co-wrote, three people in this company, called Your Guide to Producing Localized Multimedia.

 

And in that book, the very first sentence was multimedia is more than a slideshow with voiceover and so basically, one service led to another, but I would say the technology there are two areas to answer your question. One is the technology. Obviously when we started there was no translation memories. There were no CAT tools. There was no business process manager.

Norma Armon

We used to send out videos to the talent so that they could see what it was that they were going to record.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Right, we used to send like Betamax or VHS to the people to look at the video so you know from a technology standpoint, obviously it has changed dramatically, right? The availability of worldwide. I mean, when we first started being in the Bay Area was very important because we were close to Stanford and we were close to Berkeley and we had a lot of access to foreign language talent, right? But as the world has gotten smaller and connected now we can hire people all over the world. Those studios that we used to do business with that we used to do something called Foley Sound. I wonder how many people in our industry even you know what is Foley Sound, which is the sound that you make in the background so that the voices sound anchored when you’re doing video dubbing, right? Or, in the case of translation, for print we used to do typesetting with letting and you know galleys and cutting and pasting.

 

So definitely technology is one of the areas that grew the most but the other area that grew the most is the formalization of the language industry. It was about 20 or 25 years into my career when I lifted out the eyes from the road because we were so busy, we had a backlog for a long, long time. There weren’t a lot of competition, so now there’s a lot more competition, but there was Monterrey Institute and that was it. There weren’t really a lot of language schools that were training workers or translators there wasn’t, the ATA was pretty small. The NCTA was formed during my lifetime. Right? So the formalization of the language services industry and then circa maybe 15 years ago that I joined the Association of Language Companies and people like CMA research came on board and Renato and everybody.

I started to find out that Oh my God, there’s all these LSP’s out there and they because we were a marketing multi language communication agency, we had no idea that there were language service companies. And so, we joined the revolution, we started out with Trados. Now we work with MemoQ and with Plunet with BoostLingo for OPI and Kudo. And so, — when we started, we had no idea that this was going to be a multibillion dollar industry with all of these various discipline within that, But the thing is, is that International Contact is a one stop language company. So, for our mostly marketing communication-oriented clients that we stayed with that they come to us as a one stop language stop and so since the pandemic, for example, our biggest growth area has been in zoom interpreting and of course website and ecommerce as well is hot right now. But I’ve gone on for a little long so tell me if that answered your question.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That’s perfect now before I dive into my next question, let me ask you about, given the fact that you have such a long tenure in this industry. Do you still have clients from the early days do you still stay in touch with them?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Yes, we do. We have clients for 35 years. We just celebrated our anniversary and we have many clients. But now they’re starting to retire so how it’s sort of interesting to see how it goes, but for example we just semi lost a client that’s been with us from the very beginning called Sprint because they merged up with T-Mobile. Right?

 

Norma Armon

I mean Sprint was so much our client that I talked to the big boss to talk him into doing Spanish.

 

Carla Itzkowich

That’s how long ago we’ve been thinking.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Oh wow, congratulations, that’s a record in our industry, I guess.

 

Norma Armon

And not only not only our clients, but our staff among our staff, we count people that have been with us for 30 years.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Yes, that’s true too.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

It’s an absolute record, I think and you’ve done an amazing job there. Let me zoom in on the topic of our conversation today, which revolves around vendor management or resource management, which is basically discovering, qualifying, onboarding, educating, maintaining, and in some unfortunate cases, removing off translation and localization resources inside translation companies. Can you share a few words and give me a high level picture of what is going on from your perspective with vendor management today?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Well, what I like to tell our recruiters or our vendor managers is that they are like the buyers at Macy’s. OK, what you’re doing as a recruiter is you going out there to find what you’re going to sell, you’re building up your inventory of qualifications and what you are able to sell. Because we are a comprehensive one-stop shop we work in over 100 languages, we have to have a pretty vigorous recruitment going on, and speaking about changes that’s an area that has changed dramatically. I mean not a day goes by that I don’t get 5 or 10 unsolicited resumes from people and so much so that it’s a real frustration. I’m sure you live it too, because now there’s a bunch of spammers that are like stealing resumes. I haven’t figured out what they’re looking for, but there is a lot of people who are offering their services. There’s a lot less people who are willing to do a sample for their services, so at International Contact we require either a certification, a reference, you know, like an existing vendor tells us of another vendor, or a test. We have also been moving towards what we call multi language vendors who service some of our language needs but are maybe smaller than a language services company that sells more directly to clients, so we think that our linguists and our staff are definitely our most important asset.

 

Technology is important, sales are important. I mean, there’s a lot of things that are important, but if you don’t have quality goods to sell, certainly in the marketing space, you’re not going to get very far. I mean, we benefit in our business because a lot of people don’t read what we translate right, so I think a lot of my competitors maybe are not as focused as we are on the quality part of that and why we can boast that we have clients for 30 years is because they know that they can sleep better at night with the process that we have put in place. Before I give it back to you, let me just mention that our process is always 2-tier.

 

So we always have a translator in the country and a reviewer in the USA. As the industry has gotten more codified and structured, we’ve all landed on TEP, which is translation, editing and proofreading; but for us at International Contact, we separate the proofreading from the editing.

 

So, we have language directors in our main languages that we call Creative Directors and they are the ones who screen the samples of the people that we recruit. So, when we have a recruitment drive, let’s say that we get a new subject or we’ve done some Mien work occasionally, but then all of a sudden we need someone and thank you for coming to our rescue by the way recently. So you know, Mien is a very small language, I mean without a lot of work, if I’ve gotten 10 requests over my lifetime for Mien translation, that’s too many. Because Mien is not even the written language, right? So, the recruiter does need to have certain knowledge or curiosity to learn the different modalities in each language, because every language is different. And when you service so many languages, you really need to have a good methodology for figuring out who’s a good translator because I certainly don’t speak Urdu.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. Carla, on that note… while you were talking about that, you mentioned that your focus is as a service you prioritize TEP, so you offer translation, edit and proofreading. Now how does that reflect in terms of consistency? Does your organization comply or is certified against ISO 1700 standard for example? And having that seal of a standard like that, what does it mean for the end client to basically in terms of vendor management, what does it say to them that in terms of what type of people you choosing to work with?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Actually, we are not ISO certified yet, but we have been part of a lot of quality standards and models and we belong to the ASTM and we support the standardization of the standards. I feel that it’s still in discussion, those standards that we’ve been discussing at the ALC; but definitely meeting the standards of whatever quality level you have, is super critical for our customers to know that they’re going to get a quality product. And in our case, we have taken those standards and customized them without certification to be that we have these language directors who generally review the work product.

 

So, if the work product is too big for one person to review it, we certainly subscribe to term bases, glossaries and style sheets that allow for consistency and we use the technology that helps us do quality assurance and ensure consistency with the terminology as well. So bottom line, whether you are actually certified or you just subscribe to that way of working, what you’re doing is you’re ensuring a consistency between languages between subjects you know, and generally we at International Contact will work with a subject specific expert. We have a couple of vertical markets that we service directly like semiconductor, for example. and that requires very, very technical levels of expertise, right? So the recruitment of that is very, very difficult. We definitely test those vendors and I would say in Japanese maybe one out of 10 passes, in Chinese, more like 3 out of 10 passed, but then after they pass the initial test; that becomes the real test, right? Because the initial test in our case is unsupervised, they can just submit. A sample that passes them in, but then they never just finish the work themselves.

 

We have a process where if we don’t have the expertise internally, through our creative directors, we will work with two or three vendors to triangulate and make sure that everybody agrees. In my experience, the difference between good and bad translation is black and white. The difference between good and better translation is very subjective, so we pass them first at the black and white level. Are they a good translator? Are they a bad translator? And then we see whether they have a certain flair, because as I mentioned, we do mostly marketing communications, so it’s not just being able to convey the sentiment from one side to the other from one language to the other, it’s the ability to actually make it sound great and appealing in the foreign language as well. So that second tier of vetting happens through our review process in the very work product, and then finally the market is the one that speaks. Right? Because we encourage all of our clients to provide feedback on their translations to create their glossaries and to give us that technical expertise that only the clients have.

 

And ultimately, even though that is a lot of work, Sultan, to actually encourage feedback from the client, we find that that is one of the secrets to our success is that client who has an opportunity to weigh in makes a much more satisfied client.

 

Norma Armon

Particularly when you’re doing translation for accounts overseas, the client has people there who have doubts about having the stuff translated here and what brings them in is that they buy into it when they are involved and they then see, they see that what we are there for, is to assist them and give them good stuff.

 

Carla Itzkowich

That we are their partners in trying to achieve their goal, right?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That’s right.

 

Carla Itzkowich

And so we encourage that! Now, I hire a lot of production coordinators and stuff and they always complain a little that we’re actually encouraging the feedback because it’s a lot… it’s a hassle to process that feedback. Right? But we find that extra hassle to do that… and then eventually on these accounts that we’ve been with for 30 years we’re no longer waiting for that feedback because we have their glossary, we have their terminology, we have the teams and we also have a pretty strong commitment because we’re not going for the lowest cost we’re going for that value proposition of quality and value for the money, right? And so, but we need that consistency that you mentioned. You can’t… a lot of companies maybe they put their top people to work initially. This happens to me with MLVs. So basically they give you their top people and then when they work with you after a while for two or three months, then they stop giving you those people. So it’s very important for us to keep those teams consistent for the clients so that they know that they can count on that quality.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What does the persona of an ideal? A translation expert look like today? We’ll get to interpreting in a moment, but if we focus on translation, who provides the best translation?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Translators…. generally attention to detail is very important to them, but they really have to have a very good foundation in both the source and the target languages.

 

Norma Armon

It’s mostly a great interest in language. People who are proud of what it is that they do. They don’t do it as a, you know, a way to make money. It’s something that is a satisfaction, and in addition, that’s how they make their living. But it is a love for the language itself that is the evidence of a good translator.

 

Carla Itzkowich

And having good writing skills in their target language is very important for, especially for a creative transcreation and that kind of thing. But I would say the understanding of the source language might even be, I mean, I don’t know what’s more important because they’re both very important, but understanding the source language, and so sometimes if we’re working with people overseas, highlighting their experience in the target country is very important or in the source country, I should say so, like if people who are living in China, but they actually lived in the United States for a year or two. They should definitely highlight that because it’s not the same to study English than it is to live English, right? And you don’t need to live in the United States. You can live in any other English-speaking country, but in general I look for that kind of experience as well.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Are we still dealing with the wrong notion that anyone who speaks 2 languages is a translator? I mean, that’s the perceived understanding of what translator is outside our industry. But what do you have to say about that?

 

Norma Armon

Well, the first thing that I bring up is medical appointments and asking your family to be your translator and why that is not the right thing to do. Why you must have a professional translator, and this is standard in the Medical field they request their patients not to bring their family and yet we will hire one of these family members because they are fine for somebody else, because the patient should have privacy about their medical issues, and doing it with a with a family member doesn’t work. And this is true in general. You need to have a professional to translate because it is a completely different thing to speak two languages than to translate from one language to the other.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

You alluded to this earlier, but let me ask it is there are lots of very competent and qualified translators out there, but it does seem like there are a lot of other people think that they are experts in translating. How do you identify the best resource for a project and weed out those that should not be qualified?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Again, it’s the job of our creative directors and the track record. I mean being in business for so long has allowed us to say to our customers that our translators are market tested and so that market testing is what we call the returning clients, right? And also, the compliments that come from translations. That are well done by people who appreciate the craft that we have. Being able to speak two languages, like for example, I’m fully bilingual ’cause I’m from Mexico, right? But finding the right word for the occasion or fine, I mean, it is not an effective work for me to translate the stuff, of course, as a native speaker of Spanish, I can tell whether something was done by a native speaker or not, right? Because there’s all the all the grammar like I was saying, good writing in the foreign language is very important. And then a very deep understanding of the source language is very important. And then the marriage of the two together with the experience and the use of the tools that are available to translators today make a true professional. Right?

 

So, you might enlist the help of a foreman at a place where you’re translating the employee handbook, for example. Why? Because you would like to make sure that the handbook will communicate at the level of the workers. OK? That doesn’t mean that the feedback that we get from the worker is necessarily what we’re going to put in the printed manual, right? But by getting that feedback from the field, we are proving that the translation is doing its intended thing. I guess that that would be my summary when you’re doing translation, you’re doing communications. From a marketing communication discipline, how do you know that you’re successful is because you achieve the desired result, right? So, in the case of a hospital, if we’re trying to help them get people vaccinated or keep their distance or something like that, you can see it in the results of what you actually bring in and I would say that that is a big differentiator for us and why we have such repeat and referral business, is because we try very hard to find out what the end result is. A lot of people say here’s a document to translate. They don’t give any context, they don’t tell you where it’s from, and a good translator will, you know, it’s always a fine line how many questions are you going to ask.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Well, of course yes.

Carla Itzkowich

Because if you send me 20 questions every time I send you an assignment, we’re not going to be happy with you because we don’t have time for 20 questions, you know. But if you send me insightful questions that help me sell my client and keep my client tied to me because I asked him, how come this form doesn’t fill out on his website or something? Then I’m gonna love you forever and you ensure your job satisfaction. So that is a very fine line. How much you into it by yourself and how much you ask the client. But translators who ask insightful questions that are helpful towards the completion of the work are usually get top marks with us.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

This broadcast is also heard by a lot of translators. We love them, we respect them, and we recognize their efforts and their value in this industry. Carla, what is your message for those translators that apply to every job that may be relevant or irrelevant to their experience and expertise?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Well, I think that if I was the translator starting out right now, what I would do is I would definitely specialize when you specialize you begin to have vocabulary that is special for that, you begin to understand deeper what that particular industry or topic is about, and so you are much more than just converting words that anybody could do. By the same token, if you’re just a generalist and you say I can translate and you give me a list of 20 different topics that you translate, then I’m not going to be so impressed, because how can you be a specialist in 20 areas, right? Maybe you can do it but maybe you can’t, and some translations don’t require that level of specialization, but in those cases what you want to show is that you have nice writing skills. Now I have a very small but very important tip for all you translators out there. I know that making samples is work and I know that a lot of people don’t like to do samples, but resumes that come to me with samples go to the top of the list because our processes when we get resumes, our next thing is to ask for samples, so if the samples come already with the resumes, then you’re saving me in step and you will definitely get to the top of the line.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Our educational institutions are doing a phenomenal job training the new translation workforce. What is missing and what is ideal from a language services company perspective? What can these institutions for example do better to help us develop a stronger workforce that meets the demand of the changing customer environments?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Geez, it’s so hard to say but this makes me think more of like production coordinators and account managers and project managers that these institutions are training and for those positions; being bilingual definitely helps because you have a very good understanding of what the linguists are going through, what their questions are about formal or informal, or you know, you are closer to understanding what the translators are going to be doing. But in general, I find that all of the people that are coming out of Monterrey or other schools with project management degrees that they just don’t have nearly enough… I don’t know if it’s experience or common sense to link the things together. It’s almost like they’re missing teaching that you have to start with the end in mind, for example. So I’m going to say that they should teach more common sense ways of organizing work and understanding the context and the position of the work in that context question is also good for translators because context is everything when we haven’t talked about context, but context is everything as well. Sorry, I’ve said three things that are everything.

 

Norma Armon

Well, I think that what what the institution should require is at least six months of internships.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Yeah, actually internships are wonderful.

 

Norma Armon

I think it makes all the difference in the world because they get the practice of what the process is rather than the theoretically based notion of what it is.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Yeah, and I think that giving coordinators the opportunity to do some translating is good and definitely giving translators the opportunity to see the cycle of a of what a project manager has to do and how we satisfy clients and keep them coming back. Because selling to language companies is very different than selling to clients. So I would assume that most translators are trying to sell to language companies. I don’t know enough about those services that are selling resume propagation, Sultan, those ones that come unsolicited, but I think that that’s very bad, right? Do you guys use your unsolicited emails very much? I don’t know if… I’m not really sure who’s using those or what those people are charging or how much of a scam they are, but personally getting a list I think is good. Going to ATA is good and then making a very personalized message. There are three…

 

Norma Armon

Reading the… reading the job descriptions…

 

Carla Itzkowich

Yeah, those are things that are important in terms of when you apply for a job, but as I was saying, I’ve hired like four or five people that are stellar translators for us because their cover letter was so good and complete, so. It made me feel like they really understood my job and they gave me all the data that I needed. They gave me their rates, they gave me their samples and they wrote a cover letter that was pretty personalized and unique.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

And that impressed you, basically.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Absolutely, because as I was saying to you, the source language is as important or sometimes more important than the target language. If you’re working with native speakers, right? If you’re working with English speakers, then the target language is more important, but I mostly start with translations overseas, so I didn’t mention that to you that generally we’d like to translate overseas and review in the US. So that way we get the best of both worlds. We get a native speaker who does the original translation that’s very smooth, but maybe their understanding of the source language isn’t as deep as needed. So then the reviewer comes in and edits that and we set up what we call A workflows and B workflows. So the A workflows are where the reviewer is better than the translator, so basically the translator does it usually in the country and then the reviewer reviews it here in the United States, does it quality assurance and the reviewer has a better score than the translator. So that’s an A workflow, only two steps.

 

If you don’t happen to have that available either because they’re busy or you don’t have a specialization available or something like that, then we do a B workflow where the reviewer is not proven, so they translator has a higher mark, so then the translator does the translation, the reviewer reviews with track changes, the translator accepts and rejects the reviewer and scores the reviewer does building up the resume with us of the reviewer to see if they can get better than the translators. So if you don’t have reviewers that are better than your translators ten, in our opinion, you have to burden yourself with an extra step of putting the translator and the reviewer in touch to create a better whole from the two efforts.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What is the process of sourcing a translator for a translation company if we are talking generals, does it differ from company to company or there is a standard process for getting them on board?

 

Carla Itzkowich

As far as I know it varies from company to company, but I would love to know if anybody has found the perfect formula. We at International Contact, we’re looking for linguists under rocks, so some of our better linguists are coming from like our clients themselves, you know we travel the world, we look for people. We talked to people… a lot of times the spouses of the engineers or whatever are very educated and competent linguists to be developed, so we find them that… we lately have been using ProZ. Right? We like the rating system on ProZ because the Blue Board tells you whether they’re going to work again. It’s not an absolute, we still test them, but if somebody has, you know 20 will work again, then they’re probably OK, right? So we also have a very strict criteria that we use for scoring the translations and I don’t know if we have time to go into that, but it, but it’s kind of interesting because we find that people really hate to fail people, Sultan, so we have this category called try not to use.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I understand, yeah.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Right?

 

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Sultan Ghaznawi

Do you think that a scoring system like that improves loyalty besides quality?

 

Carla Itzkowich

That’s a good… that’s a good point. You mean from the linguists or or from us to the linguist?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Both sides, but from linguists’ point of view like you are giving them constantly feedback in order for them to maintain a good relationship, do you communicate with them that they have to maintain a certain amount score amount basically if you will?

 

Carla Itzkowich

You know what? We have not, but we do give them feedback and I what I found is that the ones that are good really like feedback. This goes back to what I was saying about eliciting feedback from your customers. Same thing is that you know we don’t necessarily want to hear you know will you rate US, will you rate US? You know that’s not what we want to hear, although we will rate. Some people, but more importantly, what we want to hear is like how was the translation, did you review or make any changes, I’d like to keep track of those changes for the future, right? And there’s always an opportunity to learn. So if you ever do get someone that gives you feedback, make sure that you use it as a springing board to have a conversation with that project coordinator, and so I think that our linguist, I mean as Norma said, we’ve had linguists for 30 years. Right? So our linguist, I think that they like us number one reason that our linguists like us is ’cause we pay on time. So that’s always really important for language companies is to pay on time, but the second reason why they really like us is because our assignments try to take into account the context, the glossaries, all of those things that they need to do a good job.

 

And most importantly because they know that if they didn’t meet the requirements they are going to get back at track changes file with the question saying hey what happened or FYI for the future. We are lucky because in the marketing communications area we get to work on style sheets and glossary definitions and development and so we are always bringing in, you know, new information. So if you happen to get lucky and get on a job where, for example, we were doing all these Sprint mailers, Right? And we had one vendor who decided that they would go research a competitor of Sprint and they sent us a list of terminology that they found on the competitor site, right? And so, Oh my God, I mean, this is our favorite guy for Sprint. No, no doubts about it. I mean, as Norma was saying, he’s interested, he’s committed to doing this work and he’s part of the team in order to improve the performance. I mean, what more could one ask?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely! Now we talked about, you know how our industry has changed over many years. Carla, do you think that our industry has matured to the point where we can comfortably find translators, source them and place them into our projects? Or do we still face a challenge identifying the right translator for what we need?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Oh my God, I think that that’s our biggest challenge, Sultan and I don’t know when that’s going to be solved, because once you’ve… I mean, in the languages that we work every day like Spanish of course it’s easier to keep everybody busy, but when I find somebody who does great Hmong and then I don’t have a job for six months for them, they they’ve moved on, they’ve gone somewhere else. So the very nature of what we do as language companies makes the sourcing of translators to be the biggest pain and the biggest source of our success. Of course, ProZ and Translators Café and the ATA certification, and the degrees with the language you know you can get a translation degree now in various universities, so those things definitely helped to… as I was saying in the beginning removed the bad from the good. OK, but then between good and better, there’s a lot of space and so what makes the translators better than good is that customer service that extra concern, timeliness of delivery is super important. It’s no good to be super good and take your time making beautiful translations and always deliver your product late. That’s not good, so… so it has to be a right mix of affordability, availability, professionalism, timeliness and then a certain flair for finding just the right word.

I think being a translator is one of the hardest things, so the long answer was that the short answer I don’t think that it’s ever going to be solved, and it’s always going to be a pain for language companies and for workers out there, this is a fantastic market that doesn’t seem to ever going to be slowing down. So if you find yourself with a brain that can do multiple languages and you have a love of finding the right word from one language to the other, I think you can be assured job security.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carla, let’s talk about education one more time here. I’m sure the translators are very interested in continuous learning and education. Obviously they want to stay up to date with the industry. What can language companies do to help them grow and develop better expertise?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Great question, I guess I’m going back to the feedback and also I think that there’s a lot of translator groups, peer groups where people can chat about specific terminology and specific solutions that they’re trying to solve. So I think that that’s a good resource for translators in terms of us as a company. I really don’t think we do anything else except occasionally we organize like powwows and get togethers with our interpreters and our translators so that they can in fact network through there. And I believe that things like and NCTA and the ATA at some level are filling some of that. again, if you happen to be blessed with a wonderful mind that has a very good grasp of two languages, then the only thing that you need is that professional training to use the tools, because any translator in 2021 will tell you that no matter how good you are, the tools make you better.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely, what is the reality of deploying the wrong skill set to a project from a business point of view. People use sometimes resources blindly without, as you mentioned earlier, verifying what expertise they present. What could be the possible consequences of doing that?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Well, it’s terrible. I mean, basically, if a reviewer… so my advice for solving that, besides all the screening and qualifying ahead of time that I mentioned earlier, is that you start with a little tiny file. So just because somebody sent you a sample, it doesn’t mean that you can send them 10,000 words the next day, but based on their skill. So generally if I have a 10,000 word job to assign and I did a recruitment project and I selected based on the samples, then I also still give them only like 1000 words to start and have the reviewer give them feedback before they proceed with the rest.

 

The consequence of getting a translation that is 10,000 words, that is inappropriately sourced, is that the reviewer has to retranslate that thing or worse yet remember the garbage in garbage out, and I’m sure any reviewer worth their shirt here listening to us today understands that if you get a bad translation, you might as well just redo it, because fixing a bad translation will never yield nice product in the end, so I definitely think that sourcing the wrong translator is very common, it’s very easy. The pressures of the deadlines, the pressures of the way companies run their business, the pressures of all those resumes coming out at $0.05, a word or whatever you know makes you want to try to find different alternatives to source your work, but I would strongly, strongly recommend that you source a real project, not just the sample, but a real project in a small way with a new vendor before you give them a big chunk of work.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

In other industries, for example, transportation or hospitality, there are headhunters and temporary resource agencies that find people for temporary placement. Is this a concept that has a place in our industry in translation and localization industry?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Actually, I think we’re maturing into that I mean, we definitely have recruiters for language company positions. You know there’s probably, I know of at least 15 of those people. So I think that the headhunters are definitely looking at that level. But at linguist level, I think it’s a lot less. I think that you could consider those MLVs to be the people who place the translators. I have had several people who just in the last year and mostly on the interpreting side, but I have had several people who are like I can refer you some people if you pay me a commission.

 

So I think that these people are people who are working maybe in court houses around the country here in the US and those court houses have ways for interpreters to be in touch with each other. They sometimes like hang around the courthouse waiting for the for the cases to come up and so they know a lot of colleagues in different languages. And so I think that with the push to incorporate translators, because of the independent contractor issues, and also because the networking availabilities and in those groups that I was mentioning where they support each other with language tips and stuff like that I have seen little language groups getting formed and people representing other people, but I think it’s very ad hoc right now.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

OK, and the issue of rates you briefly talked about that earlier. It’s a contentious issue, and while the supply of translation services is increasing significantly, we see that the quality of translation work is dwindling in terms of numbers. Where is the disconnect then? How can translators understand that reality better?

 

Carla Itzkowich

There was a guy I don’t know if you saw this, Sultan, but somebody picked up an ad from a guy that said that you could make a fortune if you just advertise yourself as a translator and then use Google tricks. Did you see that?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I havent…

 

Carla Itzkowich

It wasn’t ridiculous. But the guy was like you can charge 25 an hour and then when you get the thing you just put it and I’ll show you how to use the Google Translate and then you can just return that to the other people we used to call that envelope translation in the past, right, where it was, just like the translation company was just handing it to the translator, the translator handed the envelope back and the translation company didn’t even look at that because, because because a lot of times people translate stuff that nobody reads, or certainly that your customer doesn’t read. A lot of times people stay on board with really bad translation. You don’t know how many accounts we take over that they give me their old stuff and it was really bad, but I think it’s because nobody was reading it because we don’t get away with that. If anybody reads our stuff and it’s bad, we certainly hear about it, so I mean not that often because our stuff is quite vetted but but there are a lot of people who are rushing to the bottom at two cents and who are using using machine translation to deliver it.

 

I think that customers are becoming aware of this, and I think that there is a trend. We’ve been in business long enough where they go away and they come back when you’re lucky enough that they come back because they had a bad experience with bad quality, they become the most loyal customers ever. We are lucky, we have a couple of those and So what I would say to translators who are quality driven is hopefully you have enough resources to hold out for the right customer and as an industry I think that we need to continue to to promote the the danger. I I do a lot of negative selling, Sultan. You asked me earlier in this conversation what are the consequences of using a bad translator. Well, the consequences is that you could have that shuttle that crashed, right?

 

Because they didn’t do the correct measurement conversion. Or you could give somebody the wrong medication or the wrong dosage. You could have people you know, I mean the the risk of bad information is super, super big and the possibility of having bad information in translation is also quite large I think, and so I think that as an industry, and every linguist in general, we just need to make our clients quite afraid, because think about how many people proofread a piece of you know, let’s say a brochure for our company, right? I mean they have the marketing agency and they have the corporate communications had and they have the proofreader and they have the head of business services that also understands it and reads it and everybody in a corporation maybe 30 or 40 eyeballs get to look at a brochure and then they come to a translator. And they want to hire one guy with two eyeballs to do the work of 30 people to ensure that the information is accurate, right?

 

So we try to do the two tier with a third tier on proofreading to be at least three people, 3 pairs of eyeballs that are commenting on a piece of communication. So many of our clients are just going machine to print or two cents translators to print and then they have a rude awakening at some point when somebody actually tries to install their equipment and cuts their finger off or you know, really horrible things that could definitely happen.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Carla let me ask you my next question which is, if you could explain to me what an effective and successful vendor management department should look like. Is there a template for building the best vendor management team that can deliver the best value for your organization?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Oh my gosh, I need that. One of the things that is a challenge, I’ll just tell you some of the challenges in areas. I mean like Norma said for a linguist, for a recruiter the most important thing is an understanding of the different areas that you need to look for. As I was saying, if you’re applying for for Macy’s, for example, well, you need to know what language you want. You need to know the specialty, you need to know the the qualifications the experience of the people and as of yet I haven’t even found a good vessel, Sultan, to hold all the information. In Plunet, you have a quality module now where you can actually rank your vendors and their scores. By just setting up the right properties in order to to find the right people when you’re looking for them is a very very big challenge. So I’m sorry I I don’t have a good answer for that, but of course having the recruiter be fully interested in finding people as I was saying under rocks over the season and in unsuspecting places is really a good trait.

 

Norma Armon

Just like for linguists, there has to be a love of language. For recruiters there has to be curiosity.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely. I guess they need…

 

Carla Itzkowich

And my best recruiters… let me just say that one test that other language companies can use for their recruiters is if they ever brought you someone from when they went to lunch, because my best recruiters was like oh I was talking to this guy and his cousin just came from so and so. You know and so it’s really a person to person kind of thing to find the very best ones I think.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

They they need to have that people skills.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Yes, the people skills for the recruiter is the number one thing. Being outgoing is very important. Being resourceful and having very good search.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right!

 

Carla Itzkowich

A lot of times they don’t understand like one of the things I trained some of my lower level recruiters is that anybody that you find, like for example when you go try to find somebody in Burmese. OK, what are you going to do? You’re going to look to the consulate or to the embassy, but if you the one who’s calling the consulate or the embassy to see if they have a list of translators, then other clients are also calling that embassy. So I tell my recorders become the best friend of that person at the embassy because they will refer you linguists, they will refer you clients and those personal referrals are really worth a lot. Particularly if you know that it’s a high level, you know console or you know you happen to know somebody who’s a police officer or who is originally from India or something. They would be able to help you screen, and that’s another really good point I hadn’t I had forgotten about, which is that when you don’t have anybody of confidence like that, you have to triangulate and get like 3 linguists involved. As I was saying earlier, when you find mediocre talent everybody can do better Sultan, but when you find somebody who’s good, everybody defers to them for professional courtesy so If you actually submit, there’s conflict of interest, right? Because they all want to be your vendor and why are you having them score somebody else and stuff like that. But in my experience, you know if you show one person to somebody else, they’re like, oh, that’s not good, I could make it better like this like this, and then you show it to a third person and they could make it better also you know. And everybody can always improve, right?

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right! Right.

Carla Itzkowich

But if you ask them, was it good? When you find a good one, everybody says they were good. So what you have to do in order to get your team leader, your creative director, your person who’s going to guide you on whether or not the people know what they’re saying. That person you need to keep going until two or three people say that person is good, that person is good, right? And then you know that that person is good. And then when somebody comes and says that person is no good, then you say, well they have a market track record.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Yeah, yeah, let’s you alluded to technology earlier in terms of how machine translation is deployed to to to get work done. But I think technology has come a long way. As you understand from the time when you started, now technology and automation is applied everywhere. In your opinion Carla, and also Norma, do you think technology play a better role in creating a better match between translator skill set and the demand of a specific project? For example, if I’m looking for a translator to translate something for a telecom company and should I be doing it manually or is there no technology available that with a few keywords it’s able to find the right translator from the pool that I have?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Well, as always it’s a, you know, availability and demand and supply, right? So I mean, finding the resource is super super hard without the technology, so I would say definitely the technology helps you narrow your search. The AI can go through the entire site and with those keywords pull out the people who have those keywords, but it’s always still what they’re saying they’re good at, right? And when we started with that Japanese creative director that I was telling you about, it was really evident. You know some cultural differences because one of four Japanese translators that applied was good, but one of 20 Chinese translators that applied was good. And you know what the main difference is. I had 100 Chinese translators and only 20 Japanese because culturally I think that they come from a different perspective and so Japanese people are generally, in my experience, more modest about their abilities and the Chinese applicants, there’s more of them, and so maybe they don’t need to meet the same quality standards. So generally speaking, I think that those search engines are super super helpful.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

What message Carla and Norma do you like to send to language companies that are struggling with resource problems? And also, what message do you want to send out to translators?

 

Carla Itzkowich

Uhm, well, we’ve given them a lot of messages, but so number one thing for companies with resource problems, I think that if you get people working for you as I was saying some referral resources I think are really wonderful because they come somewhat pre screened. And then for translators, as I was saying, I think that include your sample with your resumes and make a really very good very proof-read cover letter because when I read the cover letter is where I see how is your English, right? And so if you send me a cover letter that’s full of errors, then we probably won’t even look at your sample.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Please share a few words if you will about how do you see the future in terms of collaboration between both sides of the fence, translators and translation companies.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Well, I think translators need to understand that they are the inventory of the language company, so they in some ways can call the shots for the collaboration. Those very collaborative ideas and trying to become part of the team of the language services company is part of what makes you stand out from the hundreds of resumes that come our way, saying we want to be your linguist from the language company side, same thing. You need to realize that the vendors are your lifeblood. Without them you definitely cannot do this work. So understanding their position trying to include them and hear them out, making sure that when they have concerns, and maybe as you were suggesting earlier, I will definitely try to think about it more, Sultan, because I think that being a translator is also kind of lonely for them.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Right, right?

 

Carla Itzkowich

So I think that creating some more opportunities for them to share and grow and learn I think are good.

 

Norma Armon

I think providing all of your needs, when you get an assignment, you get the the glossary. You get the stylesheet you get the background that has been done before and you’re there… I mean you have all of the materials that will make you a better translator that makes the translator feel valuable. Somebody has taken the time to provide these things to them.

 

Carla Itzkowich

And what we found with a lot of the loyalty of our vendors is that that’s what they say, they say that they like to work with us because we care about the quality. A lot of them say things to me like you were the only company that screened me, that gave me a test, I knew you were gonna be a good company to work for because you gave me a test, you know? So I I think that that’s important as well. I think that for the translators, depending on where you are on the specialization also, how far along you are in your career, there might be some interesting things that maybe you could even tell me about, Sultan, because you work with language services companies.

 

So I assume that you are doing even more recruiting than we are because now as I was mentioning at the beginning, because we work primarily with clients and we have high demands for some rare languages. For a language services company like us, it’s much more convenient to work with Afghan translations or any of our other multi language vendors who can be also a quality monitor for us. But the challenge in working with multi language vendors is that what I was saying earlier that you don’t have a visibility to who your vendors are and so what we’ve been requiring of our multi language vendors is that they give us the name and the blind resumes of the people. And then if we find some quality that’s not to our standard, we ask that those people don’t work for our accounts.

 

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

So if your vendor has certification against a standard where they’ve been audited and confirmed to comply with certain requirements in terms of process and quality assurance. Does that give you a better confidence doing business with that particular vendor?

 

Carla Itzkowich

In the case of a multi language vendor it helps. I mean if you are a single language vendor and you have ISO 1700, that would be very unusual. So it would definitely help. So if you’re talking about language vendor, I think that it helps by… I have been oftentimes quoted that they’re ISO certified, and then when they don’t produce, they just say oops, you know they don’t really have any kind of odd, make good or real quality there, so hearing that they’re certified is helpful, but really the proof is in the performance. So again, try them with a small project and then build their performance with you. Because tests and ISO certifications, they are only a first screener they’re not really a guarantee that they’re going… so oftentimes we say we start with ATA certification, so if you’re certified by the ATA test, you’re probably OK, but you may or may not be an International Contact translator. It will depend on your actual performance that we evaluate all the time.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

That was a fun and very interesting conversation caller and thank you for getting normal to join you and add her wisdom today. And there’s a lot of great history there for all of us to process, I thoroughly enjoyed it and if we were able to give one useful and helpful idea to our listeners, I think we have hit our goal today. With that I want to thank you for your time and your valuable thoughts and experiences you shared with us today.

 

Norma Armon

You are you have a wonderful we say in Spanish, Sultan, toreas muy bien.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Thank you so much!

 

Norma Armon

Which means you bullfight very well, you use the cape and bull fighting very well.

 

Carla Itzkowich

But of course that’s no longer a good cultural reference!

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

I take it as a great compliment. Thank you very much Norma and and I’m I’m very blessed to have you today, that I’ve I’ve heard your words of wisdom. You are a pioneer in our industry and I think you and I we should have a separate episode where I should be asking about your experiences.

 

Carla Itzkowich

Let’s do that. Thank you so much.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

Absolutely!

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

We heard from Carla Itskowich on vendor management. I’m also very happy that Norma was able to join while the term vendor equally applies to language companies providing services to other language companies as well as individual freelancers, it is an art and a science to find the right match between the vendor and the buyer. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misconceptions about vendor management in our industry. On the buyer side or LSC side, I’m sure you have received those random calls or LinkedIn messages telling you how a freelancer or LSC is the best and everything that they do. That shows a lack of understanding of how business works and quite frankly a disrespect for the potential client by wasting their time. Similarly, on the buyer side, there are misconceptions about vendors, pricing and quality of deliverables. Those topics are beyond my analysis here today, but well worth the research. I’m pleased that our industry is an example for sustaining an independent workforce for decades, and while there are efforts to change that for both sides of the fence, the freedom of choice for sustaining this business trump’s efforts to disrupt that model.

 

Sultan Ghaznawi

There you have it. We covered an important topic in the industry. As the year draws to an end, I think we have been able to address many interesting industry issues and concerns. If you need to hear from a specific leader about the certain topic, broadly align, the goal is to educate ourselves to be better and business and life. We have lots of experienced leaders or open to sharing your experiences with us. Let’s open that knowledge to the world.

 

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Translation Company Talk podcast on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify or your platform of choice. Make sure to give us a thumbs up or five star rating to boost our popularity and keep those comments coming.

 

Until next time!

 

Outro

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