The Third Kind of Client
mar 8 2024We are a Brazilian translation agency specialized in translations targeting Brazil and Latin America. In other articles I have mentioned we have these two kinds of clients:
First kind: Companies that actually produce and sell products and services to consumers (software applications, hardware products, machines, financial operations, contracts, etc.).
These are the final clients in the translation industry;
Second kind: Multilingual translation agencies, who are hired by the final clients to translate their documents and products into many languages, and who outsource each language to a specialized agency like ours.
. . .
We receive work from clients of both types. Besides that, there is a third kind: marketing agencies and communication agencies, which I will present with two examples:
Example 1: For a long time we provided NVIDIA with translations into Portuguese and Spanish.
One day, they informed us that Sing, a Brazilian communication agency, would also contact us for translation services. This agency then started working with us, also sending us NVIDIA materials. A few years later, NVIDIA unified all of its translation activity into a multilingual agency, ending our direct partnership with them. However, Sing has been working with us to this day, sending us the translation services they need for various of their clients.
Example 2: Since 2008 we have provided translations for Sandisk, a manufacturer of memory devices, recently acquired by Western Digital.
A few years ago, Sandisk informed us that the Mexican agency Porter Novelli would contact us. Since then, this Mexican agency sends us Sandisk press releases for translation.
. . .
This is the third kind of clients for translation agencies: marketing and communication agencies.
And is this a good kind of client?
Yes. It is an excellent kind of client. What they want is the best possible quality, which matches our main value, which is to provide quality above all. Furthermore, these agencies always work with extremely short turnaround times for very important work. For example, they can receive on Friday the press releases for a business fair that will start on Sunday, that is, everything has to be translated in two days.
With that kind of schedule, they can’t take any risks. Thus, once they learn a service provider offers quality and reliability, they tend to stick with that provider, becoming extremely loyal clients.
The demand for high quality within short turnaround times is another factor that has kept our company solid in the market for almost 40 years.
Marcos Chiquetto is an engineer, Physics teacher, translator, and writer. He is the director of LatinLanguages, a Brazilian translation agency specialized in providing multilingual companies with translation into Portuguese and Spanish.
