The subtitle of this article could be: 3 spies that tell you if you are choosing the right interpreting agency.
If your company also sells on foreign markets, you may have hosted your clients in Italy for events, courses, conferences or conferences.
In these cases, what are the indicators that give you confidence that everything will be fine?
The first telltale sign of whether you are in the hands of a good agency is that they will RIGOROUSLY provide you with interpreters whose native language is one of the two languages in which the translation takes place.
For example, if you are teaching a course with Danish clients, you should be provided with a native Danish or Italian translator for translations from Danish to Italian and vice versa, not a third-country translator who does not fully understand either Danish or Italian.
It seems a foregone conclusion, but it is worth remembering, otherwise you end up as our new client who called us desperate, after the experience with the previous interpreting agency he had turned to.
For a course with Danish clients, he was sent a native Romanian interpreter who translated from Danish to Italian and vice versa but as neither of these were his mother tongue the understanding by the clients was poor.
The course was a technical and commercial flop.
Yes, I say commercial, because let’s remember that training courses are to sell!
If customers understand the use and the plus (for example) of a color will be encouraged to use it more and more and your sales will increase. You have invested at a loss.
The second tell-tale sign of whether you are in the right hands is for the agency to ask you before the event about the topic that is going to be covered.
In this regard, it is a good sign if the agency asks you to send them the course materials first, such as slides, or if they ask if they can conduct an on-site visit to the company. This is a clear signal that they are trying to prepare as best they can.
But that may not be enough when an unscheduled event happens.
As happened to us just before the course of one of our client companies…
The owner called us to ask for a Russian interpreter and we had confirmed the availability of our beautiful (which in our sector never hurts) Svetlana. Native speakers, of course!
Three weeks before the event I ask the client to send us the conference program with all the details of the topics covered.
From the program we learn that there will be a company visit, so we decide with the interpreter to make a preliminary survey to understand which machines are and how they work, so that we have plenty of time to ask questions.
We also ask the customer for the material they would have used for the presentation (catalogues and slides). This was a course on oxidation colouring.
On the morning of the course our interpreter goes to the company and…they surprise her with a change in schedule: they will not deal with anything that was reported in the materials provided!
Brief moments of panic, but within ten minutes the interpreter is ready to go on stage and fulfill his duty.
This was due to the fact that, anticipating, we did not have enough material sent by the client, but had provided the interpreter with a more complete preparation on oxidation coloring, from our own studies and previous translation experience in the same field.
Our specialization in the Hair&Beauty industry allowed us to come out brilliantly from this challenge and help the client achieve his goal: to sell the products presented in the course!
So, the third tell-tale sign that you are in the hands of the right interpreting agency is specialized preparation and a good dose of flexibility, which will ensure the success of your event even if last-minute unforeseen events occur.
I hope that you have found the information you need to choose your interpreting agency and I remain at your disposal to help you discover our services.
We provide professional (and strictly native) interpreters for your events with foreign clients for translations:
- Simultaneously (while the speaker speaks, the interpreter translates into the target language)
- in consecutive (at the end of the speaker’s speech, the interpreter translates into the target language)
- in chucotage (while the speaker is speaking, the interpreter translates into the target language, whispering into the ear of the speaker)
To request more details on these services, write to us at info@wetranslatebeauty.it
Good marketing, well translated!
Katiucha Boncompagni – Beauty Interpreter
CEO & Founder We Translate Beauty
