executive impact

Nothing lost in translation

11 Comments
By Chris Betros

When big companies get involved in mergers & acquisitions, as well as takeovers, the volume of documents that need to be translated can be enormous. And because several fields are involved, such as legal, financial, technological and so on, very few companies can do translations of consistently high quality in-house.

This is where Elanex comes in. A world-class translation and language-services company with offices in several countries and state-of-the-art translation assistance software, Elanex has access to more than 20,000 skilled translators and can handle jobs in more than 100 languages.

Elanex has developed its own technology platform, including automated text extraction and replacement, server-based translation memory and automated quality review. The result, when combined with technology-powered automated workflow, is the highest quality, most cost-effective translation services and solutions available.

Heading up the operations in Japan is General Manager Robert Gumley. Born in Australia, Gumley first came to Japan in 1974 and has been here on and off since then, working for the Australian Tourist Commission, Austrade, the Australia-Japan Foundation and the South Australian state government. He joined Elanex in 2002 and launched the company in Japan.

What’s happening in the field of translation?

There is a revolution occurring in the way that translation is handled, and it is being driven by continuing globalization. There is a need for a much higher level of quality in translation because a lot of it is the basis of legal contracts, M&As and due diligence. So we see a lot of companies looking to get a lot more value out of translations. For example, they are no longer requiring just two-language translations such as Japanese-English, which has been 95% of the market here. Now, they are requesting translations into 4 or 5 languages.

How do they go about it?

Up until now, if a company was spending several hundred thousand dollars a year in translation, they probably had three or four staff to maintain contact with a suitable number of translators who could get the work done. The problem is they send out the Japanese to be translated and they may end up using someone who isn’t expert in the required field, especially if it involves an exotic language. They often have no idea how accurate the quality of what they received is, and yet that translation may be the basis for a legal contract that could bind that company.

What is Elanex’s strength?

It’s very rare that any company has an internal translator who can maintain a high quality of translation across all fields. Specialization is the name of the game. So the best option is to go to a company that has a very large stable of translators, like Elanex. We have over 20,000 all around the world and handle 104 languages. Built in to our price is not only the translation, but also editing by another bilingual target language native speaker. In other words, what we give you is access to the best translators in the world. Then an editor, who has been certified within our system, will check the translation for accuracy.

Tell us about your translation assistance software.

We have developed software that collects samples of all previously completed translations, aligns the source language with the target language in language units and puts it in a database so that when you get another request from that company, you can compare it with the database of translations that have already been completed. Quite often, this enables us to give a 30% discount because we can recycle previous translations. Of course, we check to make sure that contextually it is OK.

What this leads to is more consistency throughout that company’s translation. For legal contracts, half of a contract can often be reused, which means you don’t need to pay a lawyer to redraft the contract or a translator to retranslate the whole thing again. We can save a company between 30-50% of their translation costs because the client gets translation plus editing. Also, our collective translation memory is open source and we can release it to the client.

What about the time factor?

Our system is much faster than if you were just using freelancers. Working on the assumption that a translator can translate 2,500 words of English into Japanese a day, or 5,000 Japanese characters into English per day, that determines the time required. However, Elanex is able to have from several to hundreds of translators and editors working on the same project. In such cases, we would have a lead translator and editor who develop glossaries and style guides at the start of a job and they are made available to other translators on line as they are working. We can apply that glossary to the translation they have already done to ensure consistency. Since most Japanese companies are very poor at organizing the timing of translation projects, we get many requests for express translations.

How does a translator join your team?

First we get them to fill out a very comprehensive questionnaire about their experience. Before we use someone for the first time, we will probably send them the first page of a sample document to translate. After that, it goes to a certified editor, who has gone through a much more rigorous check procedure before being appointed. The certified editor will check to see if the translator is up to standard. They will be then given a rating.

I should add that we look after our translators and pay them within two weeks of completing a job, unlike the two or three months that many agencies keep them waiting because they don’t pay until the client pays them. If they are very good and can handle areas that are in demand, we can keep some translators fully employed.

How has business been this year so far?

Our sales this year are about 400% up on last year. During a recession, a lot of companies look for more value for money. It forces them to look at their cost structure. Up until now, translation has usually fallen below the internal accounting radar screen; it’s often not noticed as a cost. Generally speaking, outsourcing is much more cost effective and efficient than hiring internal translators and the recession has forced many companies to realize this. Also, as the M&A market has picked up, there have been a lot of opportunities for us. Around 60% of clients are foreign and 40% Japanese companies.

Do Western companies approach translation differently from Japanese companies?

European and American companies have got a much tighter hold on the process than Japanese companies. They know how much they spend on translation, they know what translation assistance software is, they know what discounts you can get. In Japan, it is still common for a manager to drop a document on a secretary’s desk and ask her to have it translated. She’ll call around and find one person who’ll do it for 6 yen a word, or another who offers to do it for 4 yen a word, and then take the cheapest one. Of course, the quality will suffer in such cases.

How big a job can you handle?

We just completed a very large project, $5 million worth of translations in six weeks, as part of a very large M&A between two Japanese global companies. We had to do this as part of due diligence and had 200 translators working on it. We were able to do it because of our translation assistance software and also because of our project management software and the loyalty of our translators.

There was another big finance and legal related job when we were asked to handle the translation for a takeover in the mobile telephone business. We handled about $400,000 worth of translation over a weekend. It took us a day to set up. We started on a Friday and returned the translation to the client on Tuesday morning.

You mentioned earlier that some companies ask you to do translations with very short deadlines. In general, how do you decide what jobs you can take on?

For Elanex, there are three principal deciders in a job. The first is quality of the job. We only take jobs we know we can meet the quality standard by the deadline. Next is the issue of cost. It is more expensive to get express work done as the organization required is much higher. The client’s budget is the third point. So quality is most important, deadline is 2nd and final cost is 3rd. When we are approached with the cost up front by a client who only has a certain budget, more often than not, we’ll take a hit if necessary in the hope that we can get further work from them. But you have to be careful when you set a precedent like that. Long-term contracts and repeat business are what we aim for. Because we maintain a translation memory for our clients, the more a client uses us, the greater the discount.

How do you market Elanex?

Producing quality work is the best way. However, we advertise through the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan, and I do some selected media interviews in which I can explain our background because Elanex is not just another translation company. There are quite a few companies that are selling off-the-shelf translation software packages that are expensive, have quite a steep learning curve and a high dropout rate. With our system, all the technological magic is done on our side. The software is not sold on the open market. It is applied and used by our trained project managers. And they are constantly being trained in our software upgrades. When we did that $5 million translation in 5 weeks, we needed to be able to make adjustments as we were working. We were doing that overnight with a team of software specialists working on the fly.

What do you think of machine translation?

In Japan, there is a lot of aversion to machine translation because the quality is rubbish. The difference between Japanese and English and European languages is so great that it is going to be quite a few years before they can develop machine translation. There will be huge advances made, no doubt. Because we are developing our own software, there is a good chance that we will stay at the forefront. But there will always be a demand for human translators.

What should prospective clients look for before choosing Elanex?

First up, check our website, or call us and one of our reps will come and see you for a personal consultation. Then we can see what you have, explain our system and how you can best present your material to us so we can do it in time.

As general manager, where do you focus your energy?

We’re constantly recruiting translators and staff and training them to use our software. My job is to coordinate all the functions and make sure that our systems are being properly used and handed on by staff, and to make sure that our sales consultants are doing OK. I also like to meet clients.

Where are you based?

Our office is in Shinjuku and I live in Nagano, but I am usually in Tokyo at least two days a week for meetings.

For further information, visit http://www.elanex.com/EN/

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


11 Comments
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Hope that professional translating services like Elanex will wipe this country clean of the unintelligible, pathetic English used by Japanese companies in their advertising. Anyone want some "potato flies" with that burger? Didn`t think so.

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Elanex probably markets mainly to large, global companies that can't afford to have mistakes in contracts and such.

You'll likely still see awkward "potato flies" "flesh fish" "I play a big dream" and the like in everyday advertising here.

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I love poor English. Really makes things fun to read. Cowpiss anyone?

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I love it when I score a basketball and hear 'Nice shoot'

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I love poor English. Really makes things fun to read. Cowpiss anyone?

How can you tell between poor English and a less amusing corruption of another foreign language?

Moderator: All readers, back on topic please.

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How do you market Elanex well, on gaijinpot now they are advertising in the jobs section. Commission only sales people wanted. I guess that is how. Oh yeah, and the quality of their translation work too of course.

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this guy is based in Nagano? sounds like he works out of his resort house in Hakuba.

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wow, one hot translator!

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I remember Robert from the Mickey House. Earnest and enthusiastic guy as I remember...

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Due diligence? M and A? With 20,000 translators.

That spreads the work... and the accountability... and the private information.... all over the world. Sure it is cheap and efficient, but who wants their information to go global?

Sometimes, no... often, keeping a secret is what you want to do before you tell the world about your new idea. Trying to save a few bucks on the translation will not help if someone in India starts buying up all the stock in X tech before you get a chance to tender an offer.

And if all documents are stored on Elanex servers, presumably around the world, and if they can be accessed by at least 20,000 people, is that secure? Does this mean that all of a company's patent applications get to China and India and North Korea before they get to Tokyo?

Well, I understand if this is an advertisement. It describes well how someone might go about lowering costs, but the system does appear to present problems.

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Well there are many forms of English. I went to my ancestral homeland in Ireland and could not understand a word my relatives were speaking. West Coast American english is the easiest to understand. End of discussion.

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