Did you set ISO accreditation as an essential criteria to finalise a Translation Services Company for your translation projects? Just read this!
Recently, we had participated in an "Expression of Interest" advertised by an MNC for translation of its HR training manuals in multiple languages. Their questionnaire (shortlisting process) contained questions like staff strength, branch offices, quality (ISO) accreditation, and we were negative in all the three counts.
As expected, an email from the potential client indicated that our EOI appn. was rejected, as we fell behind their expectations and are incompetent to handle their voluminous project.
I am disappointed, because translation agencies, generally employ in-house translators for a short period on contractual basis. To think that big players only can handle big-volumes and small players can handle small-jobs itself is a gross misunderstanding. Besides, we had to bear the brunt of lacking an ISO accreditation.
The rejection started disturbing me a lot. I was telling myself that I would not leave room for such rejection, once again. I was giving it a serious thought of getting ISO17100:2015 for my company.
During the google search of our competitor websites to find out how many of them are having ISO accreditation, my eyes got stuck on a spelling mistake in a particular website. "Translation" was mentioned as "Transalation". That agency has all three ISO accreditations, ISO9001:2008, ISO17100 & ISO27001 and perhaps doing great business at global level. If the client happens to see this post, his perspective may change. Let me hope so!
During the google search of our competitor websites to find out how many of them are having ISO accreditation, my eyes got stuck on a spelling mistake in a particular website. "Translation" was mentioned as "Transalation". That agency has all three ISO accreditations, ISO9001:2008, ISO17100 & ISO27001 and perhaps doing great business at global level. If the client happens to see this post, his perspective may change. Let me hope so!
