Cost-effective translations: can you see the whole picture?

When looking at the cost of a translation, be sure you take into account what lies behind the price your vendor is offering. You may be surprised.

Case Study

Lacrosse was approached with a request from a law firm: “We have 140 pages to be translated from English into Polish in four days and our client is very focused on price. What’s the best price you can offer?”

By examining the original documents, we could see that our ‘cheapest option’ could in fact turn out to be the most expensive for the end-user.

The translation in question was to be of the execution version of a complex high-value commercial contract. As high-quality and accuracy were essential, we knew that the lawyers working on the transaction would need to spend at least 30 hours carefully reviewing the translation. With overall cost in mind as well as quality, we were, through our TEP (translation, edit, proofreading) service, able to offer detailed review of the translation by our in-house lawyer-linguist. By sharing the review work with the client, we could dramatically cut down on the time spent by the lawyer on improving the translation to ensure that it was for purpose, and in doing so giving the end user significant savings on legal fees not directly related to the transaction.

Lessons learned: When it comes to translation, simply choosing the ‘cheapest’ option can ultimately mean multiplying that price several times.

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