Publishing in Different languages

[Alison Craig]

Bill is right in his advice about the low bid as well all the other things that should be accounted for in the quote.

In my case, I could spell out all the details as I have a lot of experience in the process and, as an ISO company, we have an internal procedure that dictates some of our requirements. Again, everyone got exactly the same instructions. The interesting thing was, not everyone supplied the requested information (with or without associated costs). One bid actually came back with just a final figure and no other data.

As for my accepting the low bid, this was from our existing LSP (we'd been using them since before I joined the company) so I knew what I was getting in terms of quality.

Alison Craig, Technical Writer
Ultrasonix Medical Corporation
Tel: (604) 279-8550, ext 127
E-mail: alison.craig at ultrasonix.com
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Swallow [mailto:techcommdood at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, June 07, 2010 10:25 AM
To: Alison Craig
Cc: swhite at alamark.com; framers at lists.frameusers.com List
Subject: Re: Publishing in Different languages

> I've been handling the translations for my company for 4-1/2 years (we've have some products in up to 17 different languages other than English). Last Fall I did a large RFQ: 10 LSPs in addition to my regular LSP. They all used exactly the same FM input files, exactly the same Glossary and exactly the same Translation Memory (TM).
>
> Prices ranged from a low of $7,621 (our current provider) to $9,000 to $11,000 to $14,000 to $16,000.
>
> Also, word counts varied by up to 16,000 words.
>
> And remember, this was an *exact* apples to apples quotation for each LSP.

This leads to another caveat: Consider HOW they will approach the
work, not just the final product. While some low bids actually reflect
knowledge in how to go about the work (from example above, excluding
placed variables, cross-references and such from word counts and
counting them once as elements might account for the 16,000 word gap)
while other low bids could reflect complete ignorance of what you
actually need done. Also, some bids will account for cost per word but
omit all of the "extras" like using translation memory, project
management, QA and other vital localization project elements. While it
sounds like Alison did her homework and found the low bid to be the
best accurate bid, don't always go for the lowest cost; you might be
buying a lemon.

-- 
Bill Swallow

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