Customer satisfaction – an adapted/adaptable survey questionnaire

 

[4 people with things to say]

In such a volatile market for freelancers, including translators, and large businesses alike, it is vital to retain existing customers and learn why customers do not return. The BBC TV program, Four in a Bed, which features four different B&B operators checking each other’s place out, asks a specific set of questions to sound out, for better or worse, the customer experience, rating them with a score ranging from one to ten. The participants do not always agree with or appreciate the feedback, both written and oral, but clearly learn from the experience in terms of improving their product. The same set of questions, with appropriate changes, could also be useful for other service providers. I will relate the original questions to the translation business but most providers can adapt them.

4 in the Bed question: How were the hosts?

Translator customer question: How was the communication with the translator?

Explanation: People prefer to do business with people that are pleasant and professional and tend not to return to those that are indifferent or amateurish. In translation, most of the communication is written, i.e., customers and service providers don’t physically meet or even talk to each other. Thus, the tone, content and timeliness of the email or WhatsApp chats create the relationship. Think before you press send.

 

4 in the Bed question: How clean was the room?

Translator customer question: How accurate in terms of errors was the translation?

Explanation: Translation buyers expect translators to pay attention to detail. A clean translation should have no spelling, name or number errors and visually resemble the original document. Multiple post-delivery correspondence is a bad omen for future business with the buyer. Clearly, “critical” error is a subjective matter and may, in some cases, involve mistaken judgment by the buyer. The lesson for the translator is allow and take the time to do proper QA.

 

4 in the Bed question: How were the facilities?

Translator customer question: Could the translator provide all the required services?

Explanation: Translation often involves more than production of a document and may include certification, notarization, delivery or even translation into other languages. The question is whether the translator managed the whole process or dropped the bag on the customer. People are willing to pay for convenience.

 

4 in the Bed question: How did you sleep?

Translator customer question: Did the translated document meet your needs?

Explanation: Excellence is not always required. Translation buyers choose to hire translators because of a specific need. If the person used the document without any issues, the translation was successful. If not, the purchase was a waste of money. It may be that customer did not know or failed to provide the actual requirements but such explanations only identify the source of the problem and do not eliminate the issue. Translators must attain the actual requirements before starting.

 

4 in the Bed question: How was the breakfast?

Translator question: Did the translator meet my special needs?

Explanation: From the program, it is clear that many Brits are rather particular about the runniness of their poached eggs and/or the quality and cooking of their sausages. Similarly, translation buyers can be rather particular about delivery format, paging, color issues, phrasing and terminology, among other factors. A translator cannot please all customers but at least should try to ascertain these special demands and attempt to satisfy them.

 

4 in the Bed question: Would you stay here again?

Translator question: Would you use my services again and/or recommend me to a friend?

Explanation: Many people are quite critical by nature but that does not mean that they don’t appreciate good service. Service providers create customer loyally through the manner in which they handle issues. Regardless of any problems that arose, the essential issue is whether that buyer would use your services again and/or recommend your services to a friend or colleague. On the other side, every dissatisfied customer is a double loss for the same reason. Clearly, in situations where, for whatever reason, the buyer chose an inappropriate service provider, a negative answer is not necessarily an indictment of the translator. However, a consistent positive answer to this question is the key to long-term success.

 

4 in the Bed question: How much would you pay for the room?

Translator question: Did you receive fair value for your money?

Explanation: At first glance, this question seems irrelevant and even dangerous for translators. After all, many customers neither know nor can attain competing rates nor does the translator generally wish them to find out. On the other hand, the likelihood of a translator retaining a new customer is highly linked to the sense of value. Regardless of the objective reality, a sense of a reasonable price creates satisfaction while a feeling of overpaying leads to dissatisfaction. On a positive note, responses to this question can provide an objective basis for a translator to raise or lower rates or make other changes.

This series of questions can help all freelancers discover the strengths and weaknesses of their business. It takes courage to pose the questions and strength to accept the answers but these responses may surprise us in a positive way and inspire us to improve. I hope you can adeptly adapt and adopt the basic questionnaire and grow your business.

Back and forth – the positive challenge of translation types

 

[Tug of war*]

Achievable challenges make for interesting work. Fundamentally, constant routine tasks are rather dulling. This week, my brain experienced the pleasure of performing two curiously different translation tasks, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. I had accepted two week-long translations orders with similar deadlines. One was a Russian to English translation of medical questionnaires while the others was a Hebrew to English translation of a consulting contract and its appendices. The challenge was not the languages but the type of translations. The first was a back translation while the second was a forward translation.

To clarify, back translation is the process, required in many medical projects to be conducted in many languages, where the content of the proposed translation is confirmed by having the translation rendered back into a text in the original language, generally English. The producing company and contracting agency wish to confirm the content is identical to the original. In practice, the back translator must produce a text that reflects the word choice and essential meaning of the target language as well as the syntactical correctness. Consequently, the key elements are ensuring that the correct word was used and that the sentence structure reflects the intended meaning. In the case of Russian to English, this is more complicated as Russian syntax is so different from English. For example, “to me is wanted” is a weaker form of “I want”, not an absurd passive. Therefore, the back translator must thoroughly understand each word and structure and express them in the target language to the level of correctness of the source text. As a result, the resulting sentence often sounds completely unnatural and awkward, even non-sensical, in order to reflect those same characteristics of the source. That artificiality is not considered poor quality as long as the back translation completely corresponds to the content and correctness of the text.

On the other hand, forward technical translation aims to produce a seamless, i.e., native sounding, text whose content is identical to the original but form is localized for the target language and audience. The translator must fully understand the meaning, both explicit and implicit, of the text and recreate it in another language. This process involves transcreation by nature as vocabulary is not universal i.e., each language has unique words as well as specific definitions for common words, and structure, i.e., the natural manner of expressing an idea varies. Extreme loyalty to the word choice and syntax of the original text will generally result in an unsatisfactory translation to one degree or another. The ultimate test here is not only whether the content is identical but also if the text sounds natural. Therefore, the choice of words and syntax are largely at the discretion of the translator as long as the first two conditions are met.

The challenge I faced this week was far more than switching languages. It involved changing approaches. I began the morning carefully checking each term regarding which I had any doubt of its meaning, often placing English equivalent in a “clunky” manner in an English sentence, and then comparing the original and back translation to make sure I was accurate no matter how unnatural it sounded. In the afternoon, I had to focus on the English and strive to produce a natural equivalent of the sentence to be translated. carefully considering how much freedom I had taken. I was far more concerned about the choices of the English version than applying the Hebrew structure. I have to admit that this change of thinking did not occur instantaneously each day but required a little effort and reminding of myself during the first few sentences that I was working on a different project. While both tasks were technically translation, they were in a certain sense quite different.

At the end of each day, I felt quite tired but satisfied. On the one hand, it apparently takes additional mental effort to change approaches. On the other hand, I found it fascinating to gain a deeper awareness of the differences of the two types of translations as it is rare that I work on two large projects at the same time. (Being male, I find it difficult to  focus on more than one task at a time.) I enjoyed the contrast between the projects. It felt that I was working in two completely different worlds. In work, variety is the spice of life especially if it expands your understanding.

* Pictures captions allow the blind to fully access the Internet.

Picture credit: Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/dehaasbe-24609490/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=6947572">Benoît DE HAAS</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=6947572">Pixabay</a>