So you need Hindi Telugu translation services. Your requirement may be urgent or with reasonable deadlines. Now all you have to do is hire someone who has the language pair skills that you require. You want to leave no stone unturned; you want to explore all your possibilities to get the best translation services. And the moment you get on Google and/or other search engines, you are bombarded with many search results. You are spoilt for choice. You can either choose a freelance translator or a translation agency.

Now, you are in a fix whether to hire a translation agency or hire a professional English<>Hindi<>Telugu freelancer translator. Probably a thousand question going in your mind.

Should I hire a freelance translator? Can I trust her/him with my project?

Or should I play it safe? Better I hire a translation agency?

Whether you would like to work with translation agencies or freelance translators…it all depends on your business, your translation needs and your preferences.

That’s why I ask you read this blog post first before you make your decision.

You see the translation industry is a huge industry and it is getting bigger and bigger with each passing day and it is profitable industry at that. And it is important that you understand the deciding factors that you need to consider.

Through this blog post, it will help you decide whether you should hire a freelance translator or should you go for a translation agency.

And depends on the translation requirement you have.

Before I start talking about whom should you choose, I’d like to make it clear that I will be discussing from the freelancer’s perspective and I’d also like to admit that I have nothing against translation agencies. I work with translation agencies too; most of the time but the best of them and I have had no issues with them.

So, whom should you choose? Agencies or freelancers?

Costs

When compared to an agency, a freelance English<>Hindi<>Telugu translator will charge you less. She/he will be definitely cheaper than the agency. You don’t have to pay any other fees except for the per word/hour charges which might include and/or editing/proofreading. When it comes to an agency it certainly doesn’t come cheap. You need to pay them project management fees, overhead fees and sometimes charge you extra for translation + editing or proofreading.

Transparency

Have you ever observed when an agency says they work with thousands of translators; that they have in-house translators working for the? Well, they don’t. They just try to make themselves look like big companies. The truth is many of these agencies very rarely have any in-house translators working for them. They actually work with freelancers. The moment a client approaches them with a project, they scramble and jet off emails to freelance translators who have the necessary skills and work in that particular language pairs. How do I know?  I regularly receive such mails from agencies citing urgent replies. However, at the end of the day, they choose either freelanance translators who come dirt cheap or newbies who’ll happily do it for free or hire people who can ‘speak’ that language irrespective whether they know about translation or not.

But when it comes to freelance translators, I can say without a shadow of doubt that freelance translators are true to their word. When they say, that they are one woman/one man company, they mean it. And when they say they work in a particular language pair(s), they truly mean that. They won’t accept other language pair projects they do not work in. and if they ever get other language pairs translation requests (one in which they do not work), they quite honestly let it be known to that client. How do I know about this? I frequently get clients’ requests for other language pairs. I dutifully inform them that I do not work in those languages but I will happily refer someone from my network. Most of the time I do refer someone from my network and the clients are happy. It’s a win-win situation. I get to maintain my integrity and my ethics and the client is happy with my references and the outcome.

Availability

The above image says it all.

Didn’t understand?

Ok, let me ask you this simple question. Let’s say it’s after 8-9 PM (it’s not office hours, right?) and you have an urgent translation requirement, say, English<>Hindi<>Telugu.  And you are desperately looking for a translator or a translation agency who can take up your project. But who would be available at that hour? Who will take your calls? Who but a translator? It is a known fact that translation agencies have a fixed office hours and anything after 6 PM will not be attended by any employee of any agency. While a translation agency has fixed office hours, freelance translator on the other hand can attend your 8 PM phone call and often work till late night.

Communications

How and what you need to communicate can be tricky and complex. It’s like Chinese Whispers/Telephone Game gone wrong. As mentioned above, it all depends on availability. Let’s say, you might want to give a message. Hiring a freelance translator will work to your advantage as you get to work with the translator directly and they will be within reach if you have any questions or concerns even if it is one or two phone calls or a few messages.

But that won’t be the case with agencies. They are intermediaries between you and the translator. You might want to clarify a few things with the translator whom the agency has outsourced the work to. And you want to talk to their translator or send a mail but it might so happen that the message might never reach them, or the message might be conveyed entirely wrong. That can be frustrating. It can also mean that your project will end up as a catastrophe.

Quality and Consistency

When you seek out either a freelance translator or a translation agency, you expect nothing but the best. You don’t want to compromise on the quality of the translations; the flow, the meaningfulness, well unless you are okay with Google Translate or want to get it done for cheap irrespective of the quality.

If you decide to go ahead with a freelance translator, you can be assured that the quality of the translations will be thorough and spot on and the translations will be consistent throughout. Since you will be dealing with just one translator, there is zero scope for errors.