High-precision guesswork for high-precision products! Does that reflect your company’s philosophy? If it does, you may want to think again.
I’m sure you must be very proud of your products. A lot of effort and energy went into engineering your initial ideas into the state-of-the-art applications and solutions they are now. And already they bolstered your reputation and helped you win the trust of your customers at home.
So why would you undermine that trust with less than trustworthy, unreliable, and potentially dangerous technical documents? Your products, and of course your customers, deserve better.
Technical writing may miss the mark sometimes. A good translator will notice. Before your clients do. Or your clients’ lawyers.
Competition is tough. Even on the market for your high- precision products. But if you absolutely have to cut corners, make sure you cut the right ones.
Your engineers may be doing a terrific job – developing and engineering, that is. Not every engineer is a natural born writer, though. That is perfectly okay, if you have at least one other pair of critical eyes that will pay attention even to minor details. And very often this pair of eyes belongs to your technical translator.
You’d rather have your translator ask questions than your customers. Then again, you’re lucky if your customers still ask. They might as well look for answers elsewhere.
If your translator spots any inconsistencies, incoherencies, or glaring mistakes, he will flag them and ask you for clarification. Not because he is out of his depth, but because he cares about the quality of your documentation at least as much as you do. And because he does not want you to lose that hard-won trust you established with your customers.
Building trust is hard work. Ruining it all takes little more than a rush job.
