Translations: Agency or Freelance?
When you want to translate a text in a professional way , you must necessarily turn to a professional.
At this point, however, a first legitimate doubt could arise: better to rely on an agency or a single freelance?
Let’s find out in this guide, in which you will see the typical characteristics of these two choices, the advantages and the limits, all to get to a conscious choice.
- Relying on a freelance: what advantages
- Relying on an agency: what advantages
- How to choose one or the other
Relying on a freelance: what advantages
Freelance is a professional who, by definition, works alone.
Generally he works from home, where he has a studio, but he can move freely wherever he wants.
This of course is an aspect that concerns him, but in some way he can also enter the collaborative relationship if he chooses to rely on his translation servants.
All that matters is that the translation service is professional .
Among the undeniable advantages of choosing this figure there are several.
The first, connected to the discussion just made, is to establish a personal relationship .
Freelance, precisely because it can move independently, could reach the client who is unable to go to the agency often. Even the client could dedicate an office space for the translator, thus having the possibility of a closer comparison, especially in the last stages of the translation.
The second advantage is to avoid too many passes . If you rely on an agency, every time you want to talk to the translator, you will first have to go through the structure for which you work, with the risk of wasting time and important concepts that could be referred badly.
Talking face to face with the freelance means explaining exactly what you want.
The third advantage is that of being able to collaborate later , if the work has been satisfactory.
Do not underestimate the fact that (especially for law firms) the fact that only a person reads important documents, from the point of view of privacy, protects the client more.
Finally, relating to a single freelance allows you to have a lower final price.
This will certainly not depend on the fact that a freelance costs less, far from it!
A good professional who can make a difference must be paid in the appropriate way. However, there will be no commission that is necessarily due to the agency, and therefore the freelance will be able to make a price advantageous for both parties.
Moreover, relying on an agency can be convenient, and in some cases necessary. Let’s see why.
Relying on an agency: what advantages
When you go to a translation agency, you can count on a pool of professionals specialized in the services requested.
An example of this speech is that of Content Marketing Suite .
Here then is the first intuitive advantage of contacting an agency: diversification .
If you only have one product to translate, as a novel might be, then freelancing would be the ideal choice.
On the other hand, if you have several things to translate, which are distinct from each other, you will need to use specialized translators. A single freelance may not know everything and it would be good to be wary of it if he presented himself as a wholesaler, while an agency will use different translators (one more practical than manuals, one more practical than legal documents, one more practical than advertisements and so on ).
Another advantage of relying on an agency is the amount of material to be translated .
For example, if you have to launch a brand in a short time and the material to be translated is a lot, the agency is the best choice.
A site, catalogs, advertisements, SEO campaigns, are many things that an agency could divide among the various consultants.
If a single freelance were to take care of everything, it would necessarily take much longer.
Another advantage, which is linked to the previous one, is that in the agency you would be followed by your own consultant regardless of the translator who is at work at the time.
Typically the agency has teams that can work on a project ensuring its timeliness.
However, the customer could not relate to each of the team (for reasons of time but also of choice). Here then the team leader could coordinate the team’s work and update the client in a fluid way.
Another undeniable advantage of relying on an agency is understood when you want to translate, for example, a multilingual site.
It is impossible, and even in this case, it would be good to keep away from it, that a single freelance knows more than one language perfectly.
In the agency there are specialized translators each in their own language .
So, commissioning a multilingual freelance site would mean finding one for each language.
Instead, the agency would do the same job simultaneously.
How to choose one or the other
Ultimately then how to choose one or the other service?
It depends on what you want and the means you have to get it.
Better to choose a freelance if you have a single product to translate very personal, like a novel or a simple site set up as a diary.
Better to choose an agency if you have a lot of material to translate that requires different skills.
In conclusion therefore, it can be said that a freelance is fine if there are no particular urgencies while the agency is preferred because in case of problems with a translator, he can replace the professional with another consultant and deliver the job at the agreed deadline.