30,000 words a day keeps a missed deadline away!

INTRODUCTION:

An Italian multinational listed on the stock exchange — the global leader in producing closures for drink, food and pharmaceutical containers — came to us for urgent translation of their annual financial statement. The company already operates across five continents, with 29 production sites and a commercial structure present in over 100 countries, but it is continuing to expand in emerging markets. As such, it needed to translate its financial statement into English to ensure it could be shared around the world.

This company has become the market leader in its sector thanks to its ongoing growth and technological development policies. It leads the world in anti-tamper closures and  aluminium closures, and is now designing and producing PET bottles. As a result, the company’s  annual financial statement stretched to over 300 pages — and needed to be translated in just three days.

CUSTOMER OBJECTIVE:

The annual financial statement is one of the most important documents for any company. The document’s translation plays a key role in giving all shareholders and stakeholders an overall picture of the company’s finances, assets and income, particularly when — as in this case — the company is a multinational with production and commercial premises located across five continents.

When a customer has their financial statement translated, the goal is to get a document providing a clear, comprehensive overview of the company’s situation for its international stakeholders. As such, it is vital that the translation remain as faithful to the original as possible. The use of the appropriate specialist terminology thus becomes fundamental to this kind of project. This makes it essential to seek out a professional translation service capable of delivering an impeccable financial statement translation in any language.

CUSTOMER REQUEST:

Given the complexities involved in producing a financial statement and the tight time frames that it was vital to respect, the customer needed the translation in the quickest time possible. The customer’s specific request was for the translation of a financial statement of around 100,000 words, spanning 300 pages, in less than 72 hours.

Before final delivery, all of our translations are checked by our team of eagle-eyed native-language proofreaders. Considering the document’s fundamental importance to the company, the need to deliver an impeccable translation was even more pressing than usual. As such, the customer requested a double proof reading process after the initial translation stage.

Yet while the level of urgency and precision required by the customer would usually result in a more costly translation due to the extra work involved, in this case the client also needed to keep translation costs down to ensure they stuck to their allocated budget.

PROJECT CHALLENGES:

Issues thrown up by tight timescales have now become part and parcel of our industry. More and more often, clients expect immediate solutions and request delivery in a matter of hours. This particular case was especially challenging because it was a new client, so we had none of the “translation memories” that would typically be used to translate this kind of document. Translation memories are databases storing a client’s previous translations and are an important resource for translators, since they can greatly cut down on time and cost.

Another challenge was the need to ensure that the double proofreading process requested by the client could be completed within the overall schedule for translating the financial statement.

SOLUTIONS ADOPTED:

To guarantee quality service within the requested time frame, we opted for a two-phase solution that split delivery into two steps. The translation with the initial check was completed two days after the client’s request, on Friday, while the translation was then re-examined and finalised by our native-language proofreaders during the weekend and delivered the following Monday.

It would have been impossible to deliver such a large volume of translated material in just three days without preparing custom glossaries and personalised client translation memories. As such, we asked the company to share their translated financial statements from the previous two years. This material allowed us to re-use over half of the words to be translated. It meant we could allocate the translation project to just one person, our very own Emily, who is one of the quickest, most precise translators among our pool of English native speakers. Emily’s task was to translate the remaining 50,000 words and review the sections of text recovered from the previous financial statements.

The possibility of using existing translations of the same type of document has a positive effect both in shortening delivery times and significantly cutting costs. It yields a notable volume of pre-translated words or text segments, even if they still require reviewing and reordering. This approach meant we could meet the client’s schedule and budget requirements, reducing the overall cost of the service by 40%.

RESULT:

Simply by sharing two previous financial statements with us, the client was able to deliver a bilingual financial statement that had been proofread twice within the specified time, and get a significant discount on the total service cost. Our quick,personalised financial translation service delivers guaranteed quality and — in this case —fully satisfied all of the client’s requirements. Sure enough, the client recognised that we’d gone above and beyond the call of duty, awarding us extremely positive feedback and cementing a close professional relationship.