We’re back with Part II of our series on the pros and cons of different types of translation providers. We kicked off the series talking about freelance translators as an option. Today we’re moving on and discussing translation agencies. We want to remind you again that all options (freelance, agency, and LSP) are good ones. Whichever you finally decide to go with depends on your situation and the project you need translated.
Translation Agencies
Translation agencies are made up of a team of translators. In general, members are specialized in different fields . They divide up the work to be able to take on as many projects as possible. This is a great option when you’ve got a larger volume of work than a freelancer can assume. They can generally cover the whole spectrum of translations, although some agencies are devoted to one type in particular, such as audiovisual translation.
Another huge benefit of working with translation agencies is that they offer a variety of services in addition to translation:
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Translation + Proofreading
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Layout Design
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Proofreading Only
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Monolingual Proofreading
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Localization
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Transcreation
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etc.
Translation agencies are a good way to go if you don’t know any translators, if you don't have time to look for any, or if you don’t know how to go about choosing one.
The work agencies do implies certain administration costs, but also guarantees full availability and a wider range of services. All of this means that translation agencies’ rates are usually higher than those of freelance translators. However, prices can vary greatly from one agency to another.
Although agencies can cover more language pairs and specializations than a freelance translator, they still are not quite on the same level as a language service provider (LSP), something we’ll be talking about in Part III of this series.