I remember one of our Management meetings when I worked at Ccaps. We discussed the theme “Always Keep Your Eyes Open” (loosely translated from the original Portuguese “Desconfiar Sempre”).
A week later, I received an e-mail from one of Ccaps major clients and had all but automatically pressed the “Reply All” button when I saw that the client had addressed the e-mail to “Prezados.” I stopped to think for a moment and realized that the e-mail had most likely been sent to Ccaps and four of its toughest competitors (my assumption was based on a prior conversation with the client, who had advised me that all new translation projects would be sent to five different translation agencies). Yikes!
Therefore, in this case it probably wouldn’t be wise to send a reply to everyone, as our competitors certainly would not need to know our prices. Much to the contrary. This experience made me realize that these lessons that we learn in the “classroom,” so to speak, are really quite useful to our daily professional lives. The importance of keeping our eyes open applies even when it comes to those exceptions to the rule lurking out there.
Of course, my experience was an isolated case and applied specifically to my work with the national clients. Nevertheless, the concept applies to other procedures: running a spell check, verifying the word count in a log, confirming the delivery date, etc.
Just to generate some discussion, have any of you had a similar experience?
Sarah Hyde
Sarah moved from Seattle to Rio in 2002 and one year later was working for Ccaps. As a Project Manager, she worked here until she got pregnant of her first son, Matheus, at the end of 2006. Today, she is a freelance translator highly required by her clients, son and hubby Pedro.
