Wintranslation has one of the largest offerings of Canada’s Indigenous language translations. We work closely with our translators and have great relationships. Often, they are our friends on Facebook. So how do we make our translators’ and clients’ life easier?

A knowledgeable project manager can help clients choose a dialect

Many languages have dialect variations. For example, one of the most widely spoken Indigenous languages in Canada is Cree. There are many variations of Cree such as Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and East Cree (James Bay Cree). Inuktitut also has many variations such as Iqaluit/South Baffin dialect, or Nunavik dialect. An experienced project manager can help determine what dialect a client needs by asking where the target audience is for the document.

Azaëlle Elliott-Bouchard is a project manager at wintranslation who handles most of the Indigenous translation projects. A computer-savvy project manager can make the translators’ lives easier.

Many excellent translators do not like document formatting. Some have limited experience, especially with PowerPoint or Word features such as footnotes and comments. One of our best Ojicree translators loves working with us because we convert all documents into a bilingual file with a two-column table for source and translation using a translation tool such as MemoQ. All the translator has to worry about is the text in the table rather than fighting with footnotes and comments throughout the document.

Arranging flexible payments

An end client such as a government agency may only pay by cheque and 45 days from the date of invoicing. But we have more options since we are in the business of paying many different translators located in different locations. Possible payment options could be direct deposit, e-transfer, wire transfer, PayPal etc. We may also be willing to pay faster than 45 days to attract qualified translators.

A project manager can help ensure quality

Even though not all project managers are fluent in all the languages they manage, they can detect errors such as un-translated text, or text that shouldn’t have been translated, any missing captions etc. They are a good line of defence before the translation is delivered to the client.

Providing additional backups

Sometimes for various reasons, a translator may back out of a project or not deliver. Thankfully, we usually have more than one translator on the roster for any given language and can mitigate the risk by re-assigning the project to a different translator. This saves clients scrambling for a replacement.

Whether you are a government agency looking into translation or a translator looking for assignments, we are here to be of service to you and would love to hear from you!! Check out more details about our Indigenous offerings and give us a call at 613 686 1278!