KENAX Standards of Quality and Cooperation

This website was created to help our translators and various human resource employees understand the requirements of our cooperation.

To many, these standards may be obvious, but we have found that many others do not share the same insight (or experience). Therefore, we recommend that you read these instructions carefully and in full, even though some parts may seem obvious.

For all jobs concerning the translation process (translation, proofread, vetting) shown below, make special note that you are all working together as a team to deliver a quality product on time. Any link in this chain that falls behind will create additional pressure on subsequent links in the process. The translating industry is NOT tolerant for breaches of deadlines and we have lost many good customers because of this. So we must emphasise this to all links in this process, and use only those people who we can rely on to fulfil their deadlines.

If any of you are having a problem, do not hide it but communicate with us. We have a lot of experience and resources at our disposal, and it is within our interest to help you accomplish the quality product that we want to deliver, on time, to our customer.

If some instructions are not clear, we can rewrite them. If you zip through a project without reading the project's instructions carefully, and end up doing something wrong, or if you keep writing us endless emails asking something we have already answered, you will be charged for our time, or for having to fix something because you did not read the instructions properly. The instructions below are general and should already be known by a professional and seasoned translator or proofreader. If you lack this experience, we suggest you read the below text.
When emailing with us, proofread your email so that everything is clear for the project managers and so that time is not wasted.
 

Instructions to Translators
Instructions to Proofreaders
Instructions for all other Jobs

What you can expect from us
Useful Links

• unless instructed otherwise, a translation should always look like the original document it is translated from. If translating into a Word file (always preferable), here you will find instructions how to format in Word.
  You may compare translating to going to a restaurant or buying a stereo in a shop. Presentation is important in impressing a customer. Imagine being served your fine cuisine on a wooden table without a plate. Or handed over the counter a stereo without packaging and the wires dangling, perhaps a scratch on the stereo. Sure, the stereo may still work and the food may still taste the same, but who would want to ever frequent let alone return to such an establishment.?
  For the same reason translation is more than just text but also the presentation of the text (all professional translators should know how to accomplish this and it is not practical for someone else to do this for you). If a word is bold in the original, it should be bold in the translation as well. The instructions how to format in Word above should reveal many shortcut keys you may use while formatting to speed up this process to the point that the time required to accomplish it is almost negligible.
  Not only is this important so that the customer knows what translation refers to what text in the original (hence positioning of the text on the page is also important), but it impresses it overall. An impressed customer can be a repeat customer – more work for us, and more work for you.
• This is the standard. But sometimes there are exceptions to the rule, usually in the form of INSTRUCTIONS for particular projects. These instructions are not written by the customer or ourselves for fun, but they are meant to be followed. So you are expected to familiarise yourself fully with the requirements and instructions for each project before commencing. If you will be found not to be following the instructions, you will be required to repair your work at your own expense. If this results in the work being delivered late, a fine may be imposed as well.
• Respect the deadlines. This is one of the most important requirements in translating and late deadlines are never tolerated by the customer. After the translation, there is often a proofread, followed by a vetting stage (to check that no translation has been overlooked and that the formatting and instructions have been followed properly), followed by a finalisation stage back to the translator if something has been found missing. So any delays can delay final delivery of the entire translation. Plan your time so that you are finished ahead of the deadline. Events can always occur to delay your delivery, so give yourself some room for such unforeseen circumstances. And leave ample room to proofread and spell check your own work. If you are falling behind, inform us well in advance so that we can find someone to help you. (Of course, it is much better if you are able to plan your time and fulfil your original promise.) And if you are running out of time or into problems, do NOT compromise quality but rather inform your problems to us so that we can try to come up with a solution.
• Proofread your translation after yourself. This is another must, as first drafts are often littered with silly mistakes and do not look professional at all. Read your work after you are complete, make consistent your use of terminology (refer below for tips on how to accomplish this), and polish up the grammar and style so that it reads like an original creation and not a translation. It should not feel like a translation and should definitely be as far away from a word-to-word/machine translation as possible (unless, once again, instructed otherwise by the customer).
  This part is almost the most difficult, as it requires much greater attention and focus. You are no longer translating so much words and phrases but you must make sure you understand what you are reading and that it makes sense.
• Spell check your document. There are many programs available for this (we can help you if you do not have support for this) and it is absolutely unacceptable and unprofessional in the translating industry to accept spelling mistakes in your translation.
• If you are having difficulty with terminology issues, ask us so that we can look for specialists to help you. Of course, it would be better not to accept work which is beyond your ability, but sometimes you may run into the occasional terminology with which you need help. Do not just guess and hope that no one notices. Either we may notice, or worse, the customer. If you try to iron over these difficult points without pointing them out to us, we will have much more difficulty trusting you with translations in the future. Let’s work together!
• The style of the translation should always correspond to the text. If the text is a newspaper article, then a journalistic style should be used. If the text is a business letter or some marketing material, then the appropriate style should be used.
  The translation, inevitably, should have the right meaning, but should also reflect the tone of the original. Hence, if the translation is of an angry business letter demanding payment, then the final translation should express the same tone (with appropriate taste, of course). It may happen though that certain points cannot be translated well considering the differing customs and cultures of the respective languages. We always strive to focus more on the language being translated into rather than the language being translated from. If you feel some major changes should be made to the text, it would be good for you to contact us so that we could consult the issue(s) with the customer.
• Translating Tips.
  When you translate your first draft, it is good practice to mark any uncertain areas or terminology with a character, such as "<". Marking areas totally not clear to you not only saves time, in that you need not stop and contemplate on areas you are not absolutely certain of, but it will improve the final quality of your translation in that you will be able to address these areas more closely once you have completed the translation and when you will have a clearer idea and better feel concerning the entire translation. Areas still uncertain after the second or third self-edit should be brought to our attention so that we could refer the matter to one of our specialists. If, on the other hand, you do not address these issues and we find severe problems with the translation, we will have it corrected by a qualified translator, at your expense.
  These special markings may also be used to make comments for yourself, such as " <[change previous terminology to...] ", when you have, for example, decided on more appropriate terminology at some later point in a translation and hence will want to go back and change or update the previous terminology you were using once you complete the translation (the search and replace function can also aid you in this matter).
• Tips on translating over Word documents:
  Sometimes you may receive an image file (such as .tiff or .pdf) to translate, in which case you would create a Word file from scratch and type your translation into that, positioning the text and formatting it to reflect the original. However, other times you would receive a file you can open in Word to translate over top of. Below are some tips how you can effectively do this.

• create a second file (save as) so that you have a copy of the original
• try to maintain the formatting exactly as the original file
• to do this, place the cursor at the beginning of a paragraph or line you want to translate, press ENTER, the left cursor and begin translating. This should maintain the same formatting as the paragraph you are translating. Once you have translated that paragraph, you can delete the original paragraph or line you were translating.
• in Word, if you make a mistake, you can always refer to the original, select the paragraph of which you want to copy its formatting (also select the backward P mark at the end of the paragraph), press CTRL SHIFT C, select the paragraph in the final translation file where you want to paste the formatting and press CTRL SHIFT V.

• if there is a table of contents in the file or any fields (they should turn grey whenever you place the cursor within them), these can be update at the very end of the translation by simply selecting the entire document (CTRL A when you have the cursor in the document somewhere) and then by pressing F9.

• OCR - sometimes when translating from an image file, such as .pdf, there may be a lot of tables and graphs in the original document, making it difficult to recreate it all in a blank Word file. For this purpose we can OCR the document for you, which scans it and converts it into Word, creating all the tables, duplicating the graphs and transcribing all the numbers in the table for you, so that you can focus on translation only and not on a lot of formatting. Usually we would offer this to you if the documentation warranted it, but sometimes we might overlook or forget this, so feel free to ask us for this if you think it will help you with the translation.

You can find other and more detailed tips on translating at our translation tips page.

Depending on the source and target languages, it may often be difficult for a translator to not be influenced by the original text and write the translation in a smooth and freely flowing manner. This is where the proofreader becomes effective and who can take a fresh look at the final product from the perspective of the target language and help bring the final product closer to an ideal. This is made more difficult if the quality of the translation (which may be influenced by the quality of the translator or if the original document is not good) is poor, so your feedback concerning this matter is always important to us. If something seems strange or not quite understandable, rather than guess what the original document actually meant and change the meaning, it is often advisable to put comments in the translation in < > brackets and inform us of the problem. Either we will take a look at it or send it back to the translator for further review. Your work is an important step towards finding inconsistencies, taking a fresh and different look at the translation, and in polishing it up overall to produce a truly quality product.
For those proofreaders who prefer to charge by the hour instead of by the word, we know how long things generally take, and we often send your proofread with changes shown back to the translator for their opinion. We can also ask the opinion of other qualified translators, so it does not make sense to make lots of unnecessary changes. The important point is to comb through the translation to look for errors, polish the style, and make sure the final quality is something we can be proud of. You are not expected to compare the entire translation against the original, but you can refer to the original if something seems odd in the translation. After you, the vettor will be responsible for comparing the translation against the original to make sure nothing is missing and that the formatting is correct.
For those who prefer to charge by the hour as opposed to by the word, please read our comments concerning this in the section below on Instructions for All Other Jobs.

Instructions for all other jobs are similar to the above. Essentially, you must respect deadlines. If you are falling behind, inform us well in advance so that we can try to find someone to help you. Pace yourself and manage your time so that you can produce a quality product. If you commit yourself to a task and deadline but then find some other more interesting or better paying work, you can expect to never receive work from us again. We cannot provide a quality service to our clients based on people with these types of work ethics. In such cases, you may think of a suitable excuse why you could not accomplish something, but we will always log such excuses and eventually decide on the above. Of course, unanticipated circumstances do occasionally occur, and we can be forgiving and helpful, but we generally have a good idea how often such circumstances occur. Therefore, we suggest that you just do honest and ethical work, based on which we can provide a quality service to our clients and in turn guarantee you more work in the future.
For those who will be charging by the hour and not by piece work or actual projects, as with the proofreading above, our agreeing to such price terms is not the issuance of a blank cheque. We know how long tasks should take, so if you take your time, work in less efficient ways and even inflate your hours so as to cash in as much as possible from the get go (as some people have done in the past), not only will we not necessarily honour your initial charges, but it will set you on a bad footing with us. The beginning of our cooperation is understood as a trial period and not a binding contract for whatever invoice you choose to send us. The purpose of such cooperation is to find people who are productive, efficient and honourable. This is the rock on which we can build our services and offer something competitive and substantial to our customers. Those employees who fulfill these conditions will be assigned the most work.

What you can expect from us:

For payment and other related matters, please refer to our translators information pages.

Sometimes large projects, or if we have a lot of work, can tax our resources, but generally we always try to be supportive and helpful. A translator is expected to use the internet and other available resources to help them with terminology and other issues, but we can also scour our database to look for experts in particular fields, if you need help with something. Or we can help you with formatting issues, such as can be found on our translation tips pages, or help you with your computer, with specific issues or refer you to our computer tips pages. We are a team and we should work together to produce the best possible product for the customer and ensure ourselves a steady stream of work.