The power of translation: when quality matters more than price
TranslationIn this short post I would like to share a personal experience I’ve recently had as a customer and explain how powerful a good quality translation can be.
Last week I had been searching on the web for a specific product, which I could find at an affordable price, not very surprisingly, only in China. I had been viewing different service providers and their prices. I was pretty desperate when I entered their website through e-Bay or similar online platforms. They were all translated with Google Translate (or by someone delivering even a worse quality than it, I promise!). The images were very promising, but I couldn’t figure out what the text was supposed to say. I didn’t have a clue about the specifics of the product I wanted to buy and, consequently, I could not trust that provider at all.
After a long and hopeless search, yesterday I accidentally came across with another provider, thanks to the banner ads Google puts everywhere I go (it seems to me it does it better than translating!). The pictures were as promising as the others, but this provider had a very professional website, which was perfectly translated into English, Spanish, German and had a great Italian version (because it was “made in Italy”!). For the first time in this long process, I had the impression to be dealing with a professional and trustworthy provider, who cared about me and made some efforts to look reliable.
Maybe I am just a crazy language extremist (I admit that being a translator I am a little bit sensitive with regards to translation quality!), but I ended up paying, with a big smile on my face, approximately 200 € from this professional provider rather than from the other 50-70% cheaper ones.
The morale of this short trivial story is the following: more often than you might think, quality matters more than price and that some critical customers might (be so crazy to) buy your product and pay even 70% more for it (compared to what your competitors charge) just because you look more professional thanks to a good quality translation. Translation can have a huge power, for better or for worse. Don’t forget it!
As always, any comment and similar personal experiences are more than welcome!
Alessandra 🙂