When sourcing a reliable supplier of professional Maltese translation services, a decision-maker in a vendor management team of an LSP (language service provider) or MLV (multi-language vendor), often faces the question: “Why hire a professional translation agency rather than a freelancer?” While it is fine to work with freelancers for the more common languages – such as French, Spanish and German – when it comes to hiring a translator for the Maltese language, a focused translation agency offers some definite pluses.
Freelancer Translators vs Translation Agency: What’s the difference?
A freelance translator will be a self-employed individual offering independent translation services working on different parts of the translation process.
A translation agency will incorporate a team of language professionals working together to cover parts of or the entire translation process.
Here are 9 reasons why hiring a translation agency is better for Maltese translations
1. One strong relationship versus many weak ones
A focused Maltese translation agency reduces the concerns of an LSP’s vendor management team in onboarding, negotiating and managing its suppliers. It can focus on one entity in order to obtain a finished product. One strong relationship with one reliable supplier is more effective and efficient than loose relationships with many vendors competing for jobs in a niche language with low demand. Having many suppliers competing for a few Maltese projects per year would get the job done for an LSP – but how can an LSP ever build a strong supplier relationship when it comes to the Maltese language in this way? By building a strong relationship with one focused team, an LSP can be guaranteed that any queries and last-minute issues are resolved in a timely manner. Such a tight-knit relationship is also valuable when a project is urgent, critical, and requires going the extra mile.
2. Greater capacity and availability
Overall, an agency is better equipped to deal with large projects, tight deadlines, and different time zones. An individual will naturally have limited capacity and availability compared to a team – there’s only so much one can do! Consider also that most freelancers do Maltese translations only part-time due to a lower demand when compared to other languages, reducing their availability even further. A committed team would also make ways to handle projects during busy periods, weekends, summer holidays, and bank holidays which is not easy to achieve with many Maltese freelance translators working on a part-time basis.
3. Experience and quality assurance
An agency can guarantee that a client will receive only top-quality translations. Professional translators working in an agency gain experience and expertise that can only come through large volumes, day in day out. High competition for a relatively low-demand niche language such as Maltese negates individual translators especially those working on a part-time basis of such opportunity. An agency processes millions of Maltese words per year for a wide variety of clients and the knowledge that is built over time by the different team members is very strong. Even when a Maltese translation agency gets help from freelancers in periods of peak demand, their deliverable is quality controlled by its team of in-house professionals.
4. Ability to handle all stages to deliver a finished product
A Maltese translation agency can rope in multiple language professionals for a project, which in turn reduces the management burden on the LSP. The agency can provide a completed deliverable, as well as the intermediate deliverables for each step of the process that may include: translation, editing/revision, proofreading, review, LQA, LSO, linguistic check, etc.; a process that an individual cannot complete alone. The LSP can also enjoy full transparency, with the provision of names and CVs of the professionals involved in every deliverable.
5. Better access to expert consultants
At times, highly specialised projects would require technical input from local domain experts who are not language professionals. An agency can invest in this kind of consultancy from an ever-expanding network of domain experts, adding value to the entire team’s skill set for the long-term. A professional translation agency will have domain experts available on demand for specialised translations; no cutting corners or making the wrong assumptions due to lack of time or financial resources. A Maltese translation agency is made up of team members each with his/her own network including the management team, making the available network of experts much wider when compared to the limited network of one individual translator.
6. Knowledge sharing and investment in language resources
An agency can invest non-billable time in producing resources and testing cutting-edge tools that increase the consistency and quality of its professional translation services. It can develop termbases, best practices and guidelines based on years of experience, many different content types and clients. This is key for a niche language like Maltese for which resources are very limited and which lacks basic resources like a high-quality spellchecker. Such investment in knowledge-sharing and language resources ultimately increases the quality and efficiency of the team and the value proposition of an agency towards the client.
7. Native Maltese project managers
An agency can employ native Maltese project managers to support any project when translating into Maltese. The understanding of the Maltese language is crucial for helping an LSP adapting language-generic instructions and guidelines for Maltese. Maltese project managers also add value as they help the client with understanding certain local notions that might not be in the scope of the linguistic task. The advantage of an agency here is in the availability of time and resources to provide this non-billable service. A Maltese project manager also takes care of reaching out to local technical experts when needed, so that the translators can stay focused on their work.
8. Experience in specialised translations
It is virtually impossible to find a Maltese translator who is exclusively focused on one very niche specialisation (e.g. dentistry field or radiotherapy field). The market for Maltese translations is simply not large enough to allow for such specialisations. However, an agency can pool the collective knowledge and experience of its different team members, together with the language resources built over time, and occasional help from external local consultants, to work on specialised content and deliver high-quality translations in various domains. This, along with other factors, allows us to deliver high-quality translations in the medical and pharmaceutical domain.
9. Competitive pricing and great value for money
An agency rate is surprisingly competitive when compared to the rate of a Maltese freelancer. A freelancer must factor in non-billable hours in marketing and administration, hardware costs, license fees and accounting fees. Meanwhile, a focused translation agency can scale some of these overheads over a bigger operation. Moreover, over time, an agency builds a pool of resources and knowledge that helps its team work more efficiently, and in turn, serving clients better and in a more cost-effective way. The minor difference in cost that there might be between a freelancer and a focused Maltese translation agency is certainly offset by a better value proposition as illustrated above.
As a professional translation agency focused on Maltese translations, Pristineworks is at the forefront when it comes to reliability and quality. Here’s a single close relationship that offers friendly support and professionalism for all your Maltese language needs. All this and more is why many LSPs worldwide choose Pristineworks as their Maltese language partner.
