Specialised, among other fields, in translation and localisation services, EC Innovations participates in the growth strategy of renowned multinational corporations, facilitating and promoting communication on a global scale. With 17 years of experience, numbers don’t lie: 14 offices strategically located around the world, more than 350 full-time employees, more than 3000 linguists and technical experts, in addition to localisation support in more than 60 languages and 260 locations. As a supplier of suppliers, EC Innovations needs to resort to language service providers who are capable of meeting its clients’ needs. With resources to work in various areas in over 60 languages, EC Innovations has built up a healthy, enriching partnership with SMARTIDIOM, making it a strong ally where Portuguese is concerned and, in this way, allowing the company’s clients to grow and overcome hurdles worldwide.
One of the projects EC Innovations presented to SMARTIDIOM consisted of a revision/review of a project from English to Portuguese in the financial area. The project was quite extensive, involving hundreds of thousands of words, and was divided into various groups, each one subject to different due dates, with a short final deadline for the completion of the work. The demands were clear: the person doing the revision/review had to be native, residing in Portugal, with studies in the financial area and experienced in translations in this field. Of course, this also meant that the reviewer had to be available for a project of this dimension. Once all these requirements were met, with the reviewer’s CV approved by EC Innovations, we had to define the way in which the project would be handled. The reviewer had to fill out a report with amendments and report the most significant issues with regard to style and terminology. The report would serve to improve the translation process that was still ongoing. The final review would then be subject to a careful analysis by the client and the reviewer would have to be able to justify any problem reported.
Once all of the project’s conditions were defined, SMARTIDIOM’s database of external collaborators let it select a service provider who met the demands and good communication between parties then allowed the adjustment of minor discrepancies in the delivery schedule of the various batches that made up the final project. The same good communication also enabled the resolution of unforeseen events that kept emerging throughout the project, particularly in terms of the glossary’s terminology (that was so complex that it had over twenty different versions). What should have streamlined the reviewer’s work seemed to actually duplicate it at an early stage, thus jeopardising the agreed deadlines. To settle this issue without unpleasant setbacks, SMARTIDIOM was always available to establish the necessary communication between the service provider and the client. Moreover, it supplied an added value to the resolution of the problem, with the creation of a terminology base that helped identify the inconsistencies in the glossary. In this way, the reviewer’s work was greatly simplified. Finally, the project went through an internal quality control phase, which enabled the reinforcement of the final version’s consistency.
Described by EC Innovations as one of the most complex projects they had ever worked on, “with all the possible setbacks and then some”, this was definitely considered as a challenging project. The parties concerned, Reviewer-SMARTIDIOM-EC Innovations-End client and, occasionally, the Translator, were all parts of a quintet with different instruments, but tuned to the same melody: to obtain a high-quality final project within the stipulated time frame. The project was delivered before the deadline and no issues were raised. EC Innovations entrusted one of its more complex projects to SMARTIDIOM and, judging by the recognition of “professionalism”, expectations weren’t defrauded.
Katalin Varga, Managing Director
Founded in 2012, SMARTIDIOM offers innovative multilingual services, helping global organisations and brands to grow and achieve international success. Our solutions include technical translation, technical writing, website and software localisation, software and hardware testing, copywriting, transcreation (creative translation for marketing and advertising), subtitling, interpreting, narration and audio/video transcription. Actively present in 25 countries, SMARTIDIOM partners with clients from a wide variety of industries, including Marketing and Advertising, IT and Software, Telecommunications, Construction, Energy and the Environment.