|
|
Tips
for Using Professional Language Services |
|
Interpreting Tips
When booking an interpreter for your meeting, please
consider the following:
-The more information you provide us about your meeting
and your company, the better we will be able to serve
you. Please be prepared to submit any materials about
your company and/or the scheduled meeting in advance
for the interpreter's reference.
-Interpreting rates vary according to the nature, duration
and location of the job, so please fill out the Quote
Request form as completely as possible for the most
accurate quote.
-Interpreting assignments are billed according to full-day
and half-day rates. "Half-day" is any assignment
that takes up to 4 hours. "Full-day" is any
assignment that takes more than 4 hours and up to 8
hours. Assignments that require an interpreter for longer
than 8 hours per day will incur a surcharge for those
hours beyond the 8-hour mark.
-If the right interpreter for your assignment is not
available locally for your required dates, you will
be responsible for an out-of-town interpreter's travel,
lodging, per diem and loss of income expenses. Don't
worry --these charges will appear on your quote, so
you will be well aware of these before you confirm the
job.
("Loss of income" expense refers to travel
time that essentially makes the interpreter unavailable
to take other potential assignments. For example, if
your job in Nashville ends at 1:00 pm and the interpreter
has to fly back home to Orlando, by the time he or she
gets back to Orlando it will most likely be 5:00 or
6:00 pm. Even though your job was only a "half-day"
job, it took the interpreter the whole day, including
travel time. Therefore you would be billed for a whole
day on that day. Similarly, if your job begins on Wednesday
morning at 8:00, and therefore the interpreter has to
fly or drive in by Tuesday night, you will be billed
for a half-day on Tuesday. This is because even though
the actual interpreting does not begin until Wednesday,
the interpreter is essentially spending half of Tuesday
to get to the job site-this is time that cannot be used
for any other assignment.)
- Professional interpreting is an extremely demanding
mental activity, so please be sure to schedule regular
breaks for long meetings! Your interpreter is not a
machine, and he or she will be able to provide you with
the best possible service if you allow time to mentally
recharge. You will find that everyone in the meeting
will benefit from this as well.
-When using a consecutive interpreter for a meeting,
please remember to pause every one to two sentences!
It is very difficult to interpret long, rambling monologues,
and your message will be conveyed more effectively if
you break your thoughts into succinct segments of one
to two sentences at a time. As you go along, you and
your interpreter will develop a comfortable cadence-it
is just important to try to establish that rhythm in
the beginning. |
|
Translation
Tips
When submitting a document for a translation quote,
please consider the following:
-Translation fees are based on English word counts.
If you have a document in English and you need it translated
into Japanese, you can get a word count in most desktop
applications by clicking on Properties (or, in a Word
document, click Tools - Word count). For documents in
Japanese that need to be translated into English, we
will estimate the expected completed English word count
to the best of our ability, but please understand that
your final invoice will reflect the actual word count
upon project completion.
-Translation turnaround time and fees also depend on
the nature of the document. Please email us the document
(or at least a portion of the document) so that we can
give you the most accurate quote possible.
-Translation turnaround time and fees are also affected
by the final format required. When submitting information
for a quote, please indicate whether you need a simple
Word document, or text set into a graphic application
such as Quark or PageMaker, and so on.
-Good translation is a time-consuming process, so please
allow as much time as possible for the project. Of course
we try our best to be quick and efficient as well, but
we will not sacrifice quality for speed. For example,
if you spent a whole month painstakingly creating just
the right materials for your English presentation, please
do not expect the Japanese version to be translated
in 24 hours and reflect the same quality and finesse.
Your foreign language materials deserve the same attention
to detail that you poured into the original English
version! While it will usually not take us a whole month
to do this, it may take a week or two. It also helps
if you can prepare us in advance by letting us know
about the project before it is completed in English-this
kind of a heads-up can help us be prepared to hit the
ground running as soon as it comes in! |
|
|
