Below we are giving you an insight into the criteria that influence us when choosing the "core members" of the team, as well as extra fellow linguists who are drawn upon as required ...
In order to make sure quality language services with sound expertise do not end up remaining a mere lip service, alongside traditional linguistic credentials we also take into account our fellow linguists‘ achievements in terminology contests, their relevant hands-on experience in the specialist field concerned or a corresponding university degree, feedback collected, other relevant linguistic certifications/distinctions, translation experience, the way they express themselves in e-mails and CVs, and we in particular place small orders for translations with them initially, to get an idea of the sort of skills they have.
After that, our internal quality management guarantees that the colleagues’ work benefits from our guidance at all stages and is checked prior to delivery, so as to be sure that your high expectations are met.
Moreover, when we place a job with a translator or put together a project team (in the case of orders with tight deadlines or those involving more than one source or target language), we take care to ensure that the files are formatted in a way resembling your original files, just as if we had undertaken the translation ourselves.
Selective native speaker principle, focusing on professional aptitude
Where we can choose between two equally suitable subject matter experts, who also have comparable linguistic capabilities in the target language, we will assign the job to the native speaker of the target language.
With this variant, you can also place an order for specialist editing services to be provided by a second native speaker of the target language, who has proven experience and expertise in the respective specialist field. However, our own finalisation of translations that we have outsourced (e.g. monolingual quality control and post-formatting), and in some cases our own editing services (correction by way of text comparison) are in with the price that you pay, as long as we are qualified to do so in the language pair concerned (see "Services" section).
There are occasions when a non-native speaker is actually the one better suited to handle the job at hand, due to their depth of specialisation and/or linguistic capabilities in the target language. We will closely examine the suitability of such linguists to create a text that meets the requirements of the foreign language. This may be in regard to the requirements posed by the type of text concerned or the translator in question may have special skills in achieving the communicative purpose of the source text in the target language and, as a source language speaker, be able produce a highly accurate translation. This is based on the more precise understanding of the text that the speaker of the source language often has, in particular if coupled with the ability to render the meaning in a particularly appropriate way. As a second step, we would then hand the translation over to an editor who specialises in the subject matter, as well as being a native speaker of the target language. The editor’s task would be to check for both accuracy and stylistic appropriateness, in order to create a final text that would be perceived by educated readers as being fluent. Where English or German target texts are concerned, we would do it ourselves, unless we cannot handle the field. In rare cases, where we do not master the source language commissioned, for reasons of quality control we would only be able to handle your order based on both translation and editing by a third party linguist. In general, editing by a third party linguist is not in with the translation fee quoted. However, in cases, where we are in a position to finalise – or even edit - the translated text(s) received ourselves we will provide such a service, but not charge extra for it.
Although we prefer to work with a limited number of languages and specialist fields (to ensure orderly workflows, adequate capacity management and proper quality assurance), should you nonetheless commission us with a translation in a rare language pair or an uncommon specialist field, not forming part of our "official" range, it would be possible to dispense with the native speaker finalisation of target texts where they are only intended for internal use and/or are purely informative in nature, provided that the customer agrees.