Choosing the right Language Service Provider (LSP) can seem a daunting task with the myriad of options available to an organization looking to continue reaching their multilingual, multicultural audience. However, your choice of LSP is key in your development of content that will reach all of your audiences.

A compatible and reliable LSP can also save you time and money, but the cheapest and fastest provider may still not be the best choice. You should look for an LSP that can save you time and money while ensuring a high degree of quality in the content they produce for your organization.

Understand LSPs Experience and Area of Expertise

Though there are many options for LSPs, there are two important background questions you should explore with any potential translation partner: their past experience and their area(s) of expertise. Like any service, it’s crucial to know how experienced the provider is as this can give you an idea of how reliable they are and the quality of their products.

Knowing how long an LSP has been providing their services will help you understand how consistent their turnaround times are or how refined their project management processes are. Also looking into the specific areas in which the company has experience can help you gauge if they will be a good fit for your needs.

For example, identifying an LSPs key customers or past experience in your industry can give you piece of mind that they will be able to deliver content that isn’t just translated well, but optimized for your subject matter.

Confirm the Languages and Services Provided

Beyond just the subject matter than an LSP is familiar with, it’s important to check what services and languages the company supports. Ask prospective providers or check their website to confirm they support the services you need, whether it be voice-over and captioning translation, interpretation, localization, or Post-translation Desktop Publishing (DTP) .

And it almost goes without saying that you should confirm the LSP you’re considering supports the language and locale for which your company is producing content. Not only should you confirm they support the language and locale, but ensure they have experience with them.

Translation Workflows and Processes

Every translation provider will have their own process and technical setup to handle terminology management and translation workflows. It is good to confirm if the LSP uses their own proprietary solution or if they are flexible to adapt to your preferred solution.

Knowing if an LSP uses Machine Translation and Translation Memory or if they only work with human translations can be helpful for understanding your long-term relationship with the LSP. Choosing the right LSP and continuing to use them for future projects can save you vast amounts of time and money since tools like Translation Memory allow the provider to leverage previous translations to expedite translation and ensure accuracy and consistency. Not to mention, the longer you have a relationship with your provider, the better they will be able to anticipate and accommodate your needs.

Equally important in the translation workflow and process is the LSPs quality assurance process. As you review your choices, be sure to confirm the QA process of each LSP to ensure they are compliant with ISO standards, and manage Localization Quality Assurance (LQA) issues.

Some LSPs will provide a clear scoring system to help you understand what qualifies for a free revision and what will incur an additional charge for post-translation reverts. This can save you the hassle and tension of making these decisions for each of your translation projects.

The Value of Vetting LSPs

There are a variety of factors that go into choosing an LSP that will be a good match for the services your organization needs. Not only do you need to find a provider who services the language or locale and subject matter that you are looking for, but you also must find an LSP whose processes and tools align with the needs of your company.

Once you’ve found the LSP that best fits your needs, establishing a long-term relationship with them for all of your future translation needs will pay dividends. The rapport you build with the LSP will save you time and money on future projects and increase the consistency of quality materials the provider produces for you.