6 Step Translation Protocol

Recently, one of our non-profit clients, United Way for Southeastern Michigan, approached us with a unique translation request. We have been working with them for nearly 4 years now, and all of their previous requests had been pretty straightforward falling within our normal translation workflow where the text was translated and later imported into Adobe InDesign for typesetting and design purposes.

All of United Way’s requests had fallen within our standard translation workflow, as described below:

Document translation workflow

Moreover, all of the previous requests have been primarily for English to Spanish and English to Arabic with occasional sprinkles of English to Bengali language pairs.

But this time they needed something unique that they had never requested before. They needed us to translate surveys from English to Arabic using the “Translating and Validating ecSI 2.0 for Use in Language other than English” methodology that was developed by The Ellyn Satter Institute.

The Ellyn Satter Institute “helps both the public and professionals discover the joy and practicality of eating and feeding based on the Satter eating competence and feeding dynamics models.”

This particular translation methodology (Translating and Validating ecSI 2.0 for Use in Language other than English) calls for 9 to 10 unique translators for the translation workflow. The normal translation workflow, as shown above, generally uses 2 to 3 translators at most.

You might be wondering, “why so many translators”?

Well to answer that, ecSI 2.0 translation workflow is a very engaging process. There is considerable amount of work involved in this specific translation workflow. Consider the following:

  1. The documents that are provided are translated twice by 2 distinct/unique translators
  2. Adjudication takes place by a 3rd unique translator
  3. Four (4) new and unique translators (different than the ones who did the original translations) are then brought on board to provide 4 distinct/unique feedbacks on the adjudicated translation
  4. Adjudicated translation is then updated by a new translator based on the 4 feedbacks
  5. Finally, a 9th translator is brought on board to “back-translate” from target language to source language

This comprehensive workflow can be seen in the following chart:

ecSI 6 step translation protocol

As you can see from the rather intense workflow above, the overall project demanded a significant amount of services to be provided.

Furthermore, the role of the project manager is much more involved in this workflow because the projects had to be coordinated with 9 to 10 translators as opposed to 2 to 3 translators. On average, the PM has to spend about 250% to 350% more time managing a project of this nature.

The increase in the workload was very new, but fortunately, our PM was able to weather the storm and to do so with great success.

This was the first time EPIC Translations performed projects with this workflow, and we are pleased to announce that the client was very satisfied with the results. We have once again proven that our dedication to accomplish the projects that are given to us will be achieved and with great success.

Our level of adaptability coupled with our dedication to providing the absolute best services is the work ethic that we strive to continue to improve, and we are most appreciative of being given the opportunity to try something different.

We have taken the liberty to paste the feedback from the client:

We really appreciate the coordination and work to get these translations completed”.

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