Habla Blog

By Martha Galindo 

Our Value Proposition 

One of the most time-tested axioms of sales is to sell the solution, not the service.  In our business of providing translation the advice reminds us that it is not what we do or how we do it that interests our clients but rather the solutions or end results our service provides.  Galindo Publicidad’s clients want the message they originate in one language to be heard and clearly understood in other languages.  That message can be advertising or a training manual; it can be essential safety instruction or an orientation program for new employees.  Whatever the message it must reach the reader or listener in his or her native language with the same impact, accuracy and clarity of meaning that it has for its counterpart audience in its original language. 

The early adapters to artificial intelligence software correctly perceived that language translation was a natural application for such programs.  And, indeed, such software enables a translator to handle large amounts of translation more quickly than otherwise. But software alone, no matter how sophisticated, is only the first rough filter.  Anyone who has read bad translations understands how easy it is to garble clarity, generate inaccuracy and turn a message from a positive to a negative impact.  This generally happens when the act of translation is perceived as a simple substitution of words and phrases from one language to another.  That is not the way language works – words, phrases, usage, jargon, social status, syntax and semantics, cultural and ethnic variations all require of the translator a deep familiarity with the intended audience and all the nuances of language specific to that audience.  That is the “more” at Translationsandmore.com. 

It is vital to keep that “more” in mind when selecting a translation service.  When comparing prices, for instance, what are you comparing?  The price of a software program that works on a word substitution and standardized grammar will not provide the same end product that a skilled native speaker operating in a living, evolving culture will deliver.   The software program alone will deliver a solution that sounds like a translation, at best a partial solution that will require interpretation by the reader or listener, a solution that lacks subtlety and thus accuracy.  A GPI translator, on the other hand, will provide a true solution, one that takes into account the meaning intended by the maker of the message in its original language, that takes into account the cultural context of both message sender and receiver, that reflects an expertise that knows when a phrase is simply not appropriate – not because of the words themselves but because of the arrangement or cultural context within which the phrase is to be used. 

Obviously we are not comparing apples to apples.  On the one hand the message is canned and culturally insensitive with all the nuance of an automaton; on the other it is the result of a human being, skilled in language and culture and sensitive to all the subtlety and richness of human communication.  The canned translation represents your company as a stilted, foreign, culturally inept organization.  Look for the translation makes you sound like a neighbor. 

So when you choose a translation service keep in mind the result you are trying to achieve.  And when you compare prices remember that comparison on a cost-per-word basis does not distinguish between the translation-in-a-can approach and the real translation by a skilled human translator.  You are not buying words you are buying meaning.  When you keep that end result in mind you will not be led astray by false economies and you will be getting the result you want and expect not mere words that appear to convey meaning but that merely add noise.  Fortunately you get to choose.

Martha E. Galindo, President and CEO of Galindo Publicidad, Inc.

A multilingual translations agency, selected twice as

a Florida 100 company. Author of “How Do You Say…?”

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