Objective:

The core objective of our venture into Consulting is to learn, share the learning and increase the overall competency level of the circle of association we would be creating. Another more concrete objective is to monetize our business journey in an age which leaves very little old foundations untouched.

Introduction:

We have started to venture into the domain of consulting, not decided unilaterally as it generally happens. As we grew, we started getting significant number of queries regarding Language and localization business from professionals as well as aspirants. The nature, level, type and scope of these queries were very diverse and highly varied in character. For last two years, we have received approximately 20,000 such input and communicated with individuals who sent them. In parallel, our team was taught, not always very nicely by the most effective teacher of any business: market.

As we sat on a big database of such queries, we thought of classifying them so as to bring some order so that we may manage this corpus of queries. Roughly, we found that these ‘input’ can be classified broadly into the following classes:

1. Professional: Standard applications from Freelance Linguists along with their CV’s. Being professional, their input has been easiest to manage.

2. Aspirant: People who earn their living in different profession but trying to ‘diversify’ into this area either for their inherent interest and love for language or as a means to earn additional income or both.

3. Interest-Surfers: These come from people who have been submitting CV’s for various jobs through different portals and thanks to Google, they somehow find the ‘Freelancer’ page and submit their CV’s detailing the languages they know etc. These come mostly from very young people in their early twenties.

4 Language A is my native – let’s do it: This is the most difficult set of input which starts like this - Hi, I speak Hindi and would be interested to do translation. I have excellent fluency in English. May be true. But this kind of attitude is quite similar to the attitude when young men and women in India who has been told and they think that they have good looks and they can surely consider modeling as career. After all, both looks and native language are kind of gifts! Both needed very little conscious efforts on our part to acquire them!

One obvious common factor that relates to all is that all of them find their information in Internet. Another less obvious fact is that more and more young people in this country are trying to figure out various alternate careers. Finally, most of them were hungry to get informed, to learn, to know what this business is all about while we have continued the dialogue with them.

This dialogue constituted the first step of our consulting as well as its motivation and the rationale of making a business plan.

Basic Sketch of the Market Framework:

Our services are focused on the domain of pan-Indian languages. Our services are of two types: Linguists and Agencies who hire the services of a linguist. The market can be divided into two broad classes: domestic (pan-Indian) and export market. Both the markets can be characterized by two basic modes:

Other <> IL: From other language to Indian languages, done by a linguist based in India.

Other < > Other: From any language to any language, done by a linguist based in India.

Came Internet and this simple model became complex. Using virtually the zero-cost transport medium of Internet, there are other possible modes where an Indian agency gets a French > Hindi project done by a French linguist based in India, gets it proofread by a native French speaker (based in France ) and delivers to a domestic client in India. The cycle can be modeled in reverse as well. Globalization, in this way has provided multiple paths, inner sub-loops and all this is possible because of the zero cost transport medium of Internet and the nature of business itself, i.e. we are actually delivering not atoms (i.e. goods) but text which was the first entity that was first made into bits of data!

Having said about the nature of the business, three core issues need to be discussed: a) Competition – why me? b) Capital Movement, i.e. to pay and get paid c) Law of the Land and the law beyond the Land. Each of them needs little explanation:

1. Competition: Management thinker Porter has informed us that there is rivalry among suppliers. Freelances are the suppliers. Agencies are those entities that manage those suppliers and provide convenience to the end-client. Agencies charge a premium for this convenience provided. As projects become more and more complex and multi-lingual, the issue of convenience supersedes other factors and that is the reason why agencies need to differentiate more and more from their rivals by their project management skills. Hence, strategy of an Agency is to make exit cost higher and higher for the client. There are three kinds of competition a) Competition between linguists and linguists b) competition between agency and agency and c) competition between agency and linguists. The first two is easy to understand but the third kind of competition is a novel kind and is driven by wireless and anytime anywhere broadband, cheaper computing power, more and more outsource models, Language Portals and Google. Just like a photographer today can provide all the services a studio provides, a freelancer to a large extent can provide an end-product which is indistinguishable as from an agency.

2. Money Movement: We are not talking about money but the movement of it. The more mobile money is, the more risky it becomes in terms of value as shaped by forex volatility. Just like IT companies in India today find Rupee appreciation as a margin-eater, same holds for Linguists and Agencies whose main revenue come from US / Dollar currency market. Moreover, there are various options of sending and receiving money today. The critical issue is to integrate and optimize these options to deliver core objectives.

3. Legal Issues: Few people tend to believe that language business is something like substituting a set of symbols by another. One way, only in the operational way this is true, albeit mechanistically. But this business is finally business of conveying meaning and meaning has never been unanimous – neither in business, nor in Courtroom and nor in religious seminaries. Hence, legal issues are always there, our being unaware of the fact may be the reason that the domains we are dealing with are inconsequential or we are highly lucky!

Services: For Linguists

We provide services for linguists to face the challenges for the following issues:

1. Five Story Model – This tells how five of our linguists became successful in their trade. Figure it out on what combination you fall.

2. The ingredients of a linguist - Core Competence

3. Why you? – Differentiator

4. Where are you? – Marketing and Access

5. Are you a professional? – Punctuality and Availability- Confidentiality

6. How to get paid, manage funds - Fund Manager

7. Traits that none knows fully and none can express ! Intuition? Creativity ?

Services: Agencies

An agency providing language services, in classical way of looking is a trading agency. The agency sources ‘commodity’ from a linguist and sells to ‘immediate client’. This client can be another agency or the end-client. This chain can be quite long and there may be many entities in between. Now, an agency, either old or new has to face the continuous impact of the following questions:

1. Where are those linguists / resources that have the best mix of Quality and Cost? We will call this as QC factor. Please note that the relation between Quality and Cost is not always completely linear, i.e. It is not always correct to presume that higher the cost, better the quality or vice versa. There are many hidden, practical, real-life experience.

We help you in choosing a linguist based on our point-based Quality Model called ?WQM-10

?WQM-10 – Experience based, Forward Looking, Market Tested Quality Assurance Model

Quality, like any product or service is a mixture of many tangible and intangibles. Same in this case as well. I would rather say that Quality in this business is all the more complex and nuanced. Our Quality Model, called LQM-10 or 10 point Language Quality Model is a weighed average of the following factors

1. Linguistic Quality (LQ), i.e. whether the end product / service satisfies all language related conditions. But this is also not very easily measurable. Linguists, like experts of any field differ in their opinion.

2. Timing Quality (TQ): This is a factor which is quite underestimated. It does matter little if a translation is delivered much after the deadline. A high LQ might fail in overall Quality if TQ is poor.

3. Format Quality (FQ): Formatting is important for almost all projects and for some, format is the most important issue.

4. Post-Delivery Quality (PDQ): Like any product or service, after sales service or maintenance is needed here. It is a nightmare for a client if the agency / linguist is not available after delivery as the more the product moves towards the end client, less and less is the turn around time needed to make it ready to deploy.

5. Availability Quality (AQ) : Just like a doctor, how much competent and qualified is not available at the right time, i.e. when a patient needs him tends to lose reputation and business, a linguist or an agency whose availability is not high, is reflecting a poor quality, even before the job has started.

6. Updating Quality (UQ) : Researches in service sector have shown that in most of the cases, customers value an update on the delivery related details of a project (time, format, progress) more than the actual delivery itself. (Imagine: If you could have been told beforehand how long it will take for you to reach the billing counter or the desk clerk. The idea of putting countdown timers in traffic points has its root in this behavioural pattern of ours regarding waiting for something )

This can be explained in another way: The project you are going to deliver to your immediate client might be sent to somebody upstream. Hence the Project Manager handling your project can plan / manage much better if you have some mechanism of periodic update. This information flow keeps everybody in the chain in a better comfort level.

Finally, any change in your communication methods needs to be immediately updated. Your communication is your lifeline. Remember Nokia, world’s largest manufacturer of communication device: Jeevan ki Dor.

7. Presentation Quality (PQ) : An area quite overlooked by most of us. Just like packing a piece of anything by certain type of paper and ribbon gives the object the hallowed and lovely title of ‘gift’, hence presentation is very very important while you are delivering a finished product.

Certain simple and common practice to present properly

1. Retain filename of the source and add subscript to tell in advance what the project number is and what language to what language
2. Write a cover letter telling what is there.
3. Do the same in the Subject line and end with – delivery, - report, - clarification, - comment
4. In case of multiple passing of file, write version 2.0, 2.1, 3.0 in the filename
5. Provide a short glossary or note if you think that would help. You need to understand that it may so happen that the text you are delivering is not understand anyone during its upstream level, except perhaps by the end-client!

8. Comfort Quality (IQ) : Many a times, clients complain of lack of comfort. It might have nothing to do with your work or presentation or anything. You need to understand and be sympathetic with it. If a client is not comfortable with zip file or ftp, don’t try to shove it or shrug your shoulder – My God ! What is this!

Explain the issue and try to solve it rather then getting confrontational. An example: A client of ours went berserk telling us for three days that she did not receive the file. We sent the file some five times in the mail and then onto her ftp site. Still she came back with the complaint that she is not getting the file. At the stage when we were losing our mind as well, we found out that she had some problem in logging into her ftp site (might have forgotten password, we are not sure!) and her email server rejects all attachments more than 10 mb silently!

Please remember the cliché but very shrewd advice from a man hailing from a Gujrati business family – Nobody has won an argument against the customer. The full name of the Gujarti gentleman is M.K Gandhi.

9 Recording Quality (RQ): An easy thing in the surface in the days of all database management software etc, but there are potential cases hidden. Examples? Plenty : Wrong count of words, Invoicing to be done on source or target words, Invoice without Purchase order reference, Wrong Jib Number, Wrong dates, Sending an Invoice after a time when everybody but you might have forgotten the project, Addressee not found.

10 Ethical Quality (EQ) : The last one but the critical one. The moment a client gives you a project, he transfers something invisible but the motive power of everything in the world: trust. Honour that trust. This includes confidentiality (you are not supposed to share the details, may be on a arrest warrant or a criminal record you are working on), non-solicitation (don’t try to get projects from your client’s client just because you have that email id in the forwarded mail) and integrity (give that extra hour for making the project as faithful, as perfect to you).

A true linguist or a lover of language business has to have some grain of artistic temper. Michelangelo while painting the Sistin Chapel (he worked 16 years hanging like a bat while he was painting the ceiling. At some stage, someone asked him to finish off some details less rigorously as this is too high from the visual field. The artist replied – ‘That’s quite true. But you forget, God will see! )

SERVICES: Linguists and Agencies

We can do an elaborate and customized Quality Audit of your processes based on the ?WQM-10 for your organization. You can see our Case Studies for few Projects where we describe how feedback from end-user can drastically improve quality and relevance of a Language Project.

4. Where are the best clients and how to start / reinforce a relationship with them?

There is no simple rule to define a best client. It is quite relative. A best client for one agency may not be best for you. Hence, there needs to be a fit between your service offerings and the requirements of client. Since there is no simple rule or formula, experience is the best teacher. Roughly, we would like to define a best client like this: (as seen from an agency angle)

1. There is a good fit. More explanation
2. The client has a structured way of working.
3. The client provides all project related information.
4. The client pays regularly and consistently so.
5. The client is the part of a learning organization
6. The client respects language and linguists
7. The client follows certain quality norms
8. The vibes!

Consulting Team:

Since we are very few agencies that is managed by linguists only, our whole consulting input is based on our own experience plus shared experience of others.

We have structured that in being in the Age of Participation, knowledge or expertise cannot be considered residing inside some fixed bracket – be it a cover of a book or a brochure.

You can contact our Founder and Chief Wordsmith Pritam at wordsmith.bengal@gmail.com