What About Service Levels & Consumer Labels?

It is said language professionals are fueled by coffee. Have you entered a specialty coffee store lately? At one of my favorite coffee shops, you pick your fuel by region, aroma, acidity, body, and roast.  But before arriving within reach of the consumer, the coffee beans are sold by cents/lb or USD/metric ton at the commodities exchange. That will depend a lot on origin and grade. “Grade?”—you ask? Yes, the old-fashioned grade.

Coffee beans fall into five different grades, depending on the imperfections (of which there are three types) and the number of imperfections found in the batch.

Unless you are a true coffee afficionado or trade in the commodities exchange, you may never hear of coffee beans’ grades and imperfections.

Enough about coffee. What does that have to do with translation, or interpreting, for that matter? The fact is that information in our profession is also compartmentalized.

The client does not know the details of the production process the translation service provider—whether a company or a freelance professional—uses.

The client should feel confident that his requirements were met and that end-users will get what was paid for.

For example, some user manuals are very hard to read.  Knowing the  final document is the result of straight forward machine translation without  validation by a professional translator or if it did go through the scrutiny of a professional translator may have a calming effect. I love consumer labels!

In my favorite coffee shop, I can choose to have a latte made with coffee from Brazil, with high aroma, low acidity, full body, and a medium roast, I do not hear about coffee imperfections or coffee grades. But, the coffee shop (the bulk buyer) knows all about them, and I am glad they allow me to enjoy exactly what I expect. That is the service level I am paying for.

We invite you to read more about service levels and consumer labels here.