Translation & Marriage
Posted in April 13th, 2008 by Cecilia GomesHow can a bride-to-be, who schedules her very “big day” sometimes one year early, arrive late at her own wedding? All of them have good reasons to justify the delay, and they usually blame the hairdresser, the make-up artist, the dress, the limo driver – anything.
It doesn’t matter that the date is set with some 300 days in advance; if you don’t have proper planning and tight supervision to make sure the schedule is followed, the bride will probably have a lot of people waiting for her.
But what’s translation got to do with all this?
Corporate life works the same way. The R&D department decides that a product is ready and sets a date to launch it. If this schedule is not carefully followed though, every deadline will be missed and when you realize, the delivery date (which seemed so reasonable…) will be impossible to meet.
It is fine if you can reschedule the date to launch the product, but this is not usually the case. It has to be strictly followed and, to make it happen the only solution is to shorten the timeframes in between.
Translation is generally the last step of the process and each time a deadline is missed, there is less time to translate. The result? The work that could be impeccably done by a focused team of translators and reviewers will now require a team with twice as many people. These will have to work it out to meet the deadline required by the client, and the balance between quality, price and turnaround will be seriously compromised.
Dear client, the next time you decide to reduce the previously established translation deadline, think about the bride. Can you imagine if she had to go through the beauty marathon on her wedding day with 2 make-up artists (one for each side of her face), 3 hairdressers, 5 limo drivers and so on? The bride certainly doesn’t want that and neither does your product. When you give us the time necessary to complete the work with the quality you deserve, your product (and the bride!) appreciate it.
PS: No, I did not arrive late for my wedding. I was right on time but had to wait for half an hour inside the car! The priest had missed the deadline… 
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