Thank you for your email and informative website.
Our need for African translators is quite rare except for Amharic and Afrikaans. We get projects for those languages perhaps once or twice a year. However, we shall probably need to offer more African languages to a large US government client in 2010.
Please first tell me where you are. You have an LA address and a Czech email. Please also provide a phone number. We do not work with vendors whom we cannot contact by phone, if needed.
The LA address is for SEO purposes only. My main email address is kenax [AT] kenax.cz, but I also own kenax [AT] kenax.net and many other domains.
I tend to move around a lot but I am constantly on highspeed internet wherever I am. Therefore my mobile telephone number can change from time to time. Right now I am in Bulgaria. I prefer communication by email but by phone is also possible.
Without reading your website thoroughly, I would like to know how you screen your translators for quality and what QA process you use on all your projects.
It’s a rather complex process, but in short, I look at CVs and stuff like that, choose at least three people who seem good, and use them to assess translation samples. I put the assessments in an Excel grid, analyse them, find translators who were consistently assessed as very good quality, and then ask them to assess the translation samples. In the end I may have 6 or more assessors, and this develops over time. I cross reference the assessments and this way I can see who is a good assessor and who is biased, or not good. The above is more for when I enter a new language combination. The more quality opinions I get the better. I do not trust simple CVs or references and the sort. These can be easily fabricated.
I see that you require TMs, which is excellent. Is Transit the only one you use?
I prefer Transit because my translators do not have to buy anything, and hence I am not limiting myself to fewer or more expensive translators. In the process of activating Trados at the moment. I also have Wordfast, but I have extensive experience with Transit and believe it is the most powerful tool.
Also, what currency do you use? I noticed Euros on your site. Do you work in US cents as well?
I have bank accounts on several continents and can accept payment by PayPal, Moneybookers and other means. Payment in different currencies is definitely not a problem.
Okay, nice talkin to ya!
- Translation memory software - August 4, 2018
- Work on an older, slower computer - August 3, 2018
- Machine translation - August 3, 2018
