A ship’s Captain, seeing that his First Officer was drunk, wrote in his log: “The First Officer was drunk today”. Upset at this, the First Officer retaliated by writing in his own log: “The Captain was not drunk today”, thereby implying that the Captain was drunk every other day.

Managing the flow of information between an organisation and its audience (spin doctoring) can result in the reader drawing the wrong conclusions.  Sometimes, headlines can hide detail which, if known, undermines the significance of the underlying message.

For example, if your translation partner announces, “We are ISO 9001:2008 certified and EN 15038[i] certified and we use qualified Project Managers only”, what does this mean?

Immediately, there are 3 qualifying questions that should be asked:

Q1.          List the offices and departments that have been excluded and included within the ISO 9001:2008 and EN 15038:2006 certification, giving reasons

Q2.          Confirm the name of the third-party audit company(ies) that carried out the accreditations

Q3.          Confirm the training received from an externally recognised Project Management organisation

You would want to see the following answers for these questions:

R1.          “All offices and departments have been included”

R2.          The name of the formal auditor, i.e. the short-cut of self-certification has not been taken

R3.          Project Management Institute (PMI) Project Management Professional (PMP) training has been received by all our Project Team

From the responses received, you can determine the extent of investment being made by your translation partner in you.  If their answers are incomplete, it is reasonable for you to ask your translation partner why they have chosen to avoid external measures of their quality system and of their personnel.

So, what of eTeams...

In addition to ISO 9001:2008, eTeams has now achieved EN15038:2006 certification. Our Project Managers are trained to the rigorous requirements of the PMI and the PMP. So, in summary, our responses are:

R1.          All offices and departments have been included

R2.          Auditing was performed by ISO Competitive Edge Limited

R3.          The Project Management Institute Project Management Programme training has been received by all Project Managers

'eTeams – translations you can trust'