What To Look for In Language Service Providers?

In this age of globalization, businesses are striving to get into the international marketplace to increase their customer base and enhance profit ratios. No matter what your company size and which products you are selling, you can expand internationally to maximize the revenue. However, getting into foreign markets, especially with high competition, is not easy at all. Language service providers can help you smartly get away with your software localization task.

Professional localization services enable your global expansion and help your brand resonate with foreign audiences. For this purpose, you have to contact a language service provider, who will take care of your content translations and modify your content to the international market needs.

There are many things you have to consider while choosing the right language service provider for you. In this article, we’ll talk about how you can find your perfect LSP.

Below mentioned points should be kept in mind when you are looking for an LSP.

How to Find the Right Language Service Provider?

Extensive Experience

It is imperative to choose a service provider who is well experienced in the translation industry. The qualification and certifications of your translator also matter a lot. While choosing your LSP, make sure your translation team is well-qualified and has fair experience in the field. It is even better if your translation team has special certifications in language skills. For localizing software, you should be hiring someone who understands the cultural, linguistics, and technical requirements of your project, and it is only possible if they are experienced.

Technical Capabilities

Software localization is not just about content translation, but there is so much more to it. To smartly manage the non-linguistic assets of your product, you should hire someone with good technical skills. For instance, the development team of your LSP should know how to deal with Unicode. Remember that you are going to take your business to the global marketplace, Unicode is something you should consider.

If you are working with TMS, it is important for your LSP to be familiar with your translation tools and use them effectively. It would save your time and energy in the long run.

Customers Feedback

This is probably the best way to know your LSP. Seeing their previous work and reviewing testimonials can give you an idea about the credibility of your service provider. You can check their social media pages to see how satisfied their customers are with their services. Customers’ comments say it all about the company’s trustworthiness. You can also contact their previous customers to get feedback about LSP’s services, and if there are any issues, they are facing later on working with the LSP.

Communication Support

How your LSP communicates with you has a huge impact on your localization project’s success. So, you must ensure that your service provider encourages good communication and collaboration between the localization team and clients. What mediums of communication do they prefer using also matters? You must inquire with your service provider about how they like to communicate with their clients.  

Whether they prefer phone calls, emails, or if they have some other medium to communicate with clients. The language service providers who promote effective communication with their clients and are likely to deliver desired outcomes faster.

Quality Standards

The reason why you are hiring LSP, rather than going for open-source translations, is quality. At the end of the day, the quality of your translated content matters the most to make your place in the foreign marketplace. Once again, for high-quality translations, you must ensure that qualified translators are handling your project. Moreover, you should ask your service provider about the quality assurance tools that they use to maintain the quality of their translations.

It is important for you to know about the quality assurance process that LSP would follow to edit and proofread your content, making sure that everything is in context.

Pricing

You can choose the top LSP, but budget is something you can’t ignore. It would be a big challenge to find a service provider, who supports all tools and technologies you require to fulfill your localization needs, within budget. Although there are many affordable options also available online, you have to do extensive research to find a budget-friendly service provider to meet business expansion needs.

Final Words!

Summing up the discussion, we can say that LSP capabilities have an immense impact on your overall business localization strategy. You have to make sure that you are choosing the right partners, and for this, you should consider all of the above-mentioned points. Hiring an LSP with a well-experienced team, smart communication support, good market reputation, effective quality assurance process, and budget-friendly packages are essential to making your global business expansion plan successful.