Linguistic Consulting – the Gain & Share program

The Gain & Share linguistic consulting program became a separate service of Neotech thanks to our success in:

studying and adopting the best experience from world practice;
adapting technology, solutions, and instrumentation from western operators to Russian conditions;
developing unique technology and solutions;
systemizing accumulated experience and expertise and creating a unique knowledge base;
creating our own system of professional training and continuing education;
forming a system of expertise continuity among company associates.

This took over 20 years. Today we can state with complete confidence that we have created a competence center to which our customers turn ever more frequently. Gain & Share is a full-scale program, comprising a number of aspects.

The majority of enquiries we receive are from customer companies that have their own translation services. They have striven to implement the best of what we have attained over the years – and we help them:

in evaluating their staff specialists’ qualifications;
in developing methods for continuing these specialists’ education;
in preparing recommendations for their target employment in various aspects of translation;
in selecting technical tools capable of optimizing work specifically related to translation.

The finale of this consulting service comprises our recommendations for the organization structure of the contemporary translation department, and how to effectively manage it using the preexisting corporate information system or after selection and adaptation of open commercial systems according to company needs.

Naturally, the Gain & Share program is not limited to auditing and translation service consultation. It is a “one-of-a-kind”, customized product, where our service is molded to the particular needs of the particular customer.

The program isn’t just for customers. One trait of today’s Russian market is that the demand for quality translation has moved into the fast lane. This primarily concerns the oil-and-gas industry, automobile production, and information technology. However, despite the fact that today Neotech is probably the largest Russian player in the translation services market for CIS countries and the Baltic states, even with our experience, our resource base, and our technologies there are a number of projects we can’t organize with the expected quality and deadlines on our own. With these we present the customer with two project scenarios, which are essentially the incarnation of the second focus of the Gain & Share consulting program.

First scenario: we are one of the translation service suppliers in realizing the full-scale project. Customers with the experience and necessary resources go with a procedure where they independently manage partners and document flow, project glossaries and translation bases. Our consulting constituent in this case is limited to recommendations on expedient choices of inclusions in the pool of additional partners.

Simultaneously, during talks we always offer a second scenario. Objectively evaluating our abilities and understanding that we can successfully accomplish 1/4 to 1/5 of a project, we propose acting as a coordinating company for all outsourcing companies on the project; i.e., we develop requirements for suppliers, conduct a rigorous supplier selection, and include them in the translation business process. What do we run up against in these situations? Frequently, suppliers that do very well at the testing stage are not always ready to reconstruct their internal business processes and quickly and efficiently assimilate the technologies needed for the project, particular when under time constraints. Then the Gain & Share program focus begins to take shape, centered as it is on players in the translation market: we share our accumulated experience and technologies with our project partners – other linguistic service companies. We’re not afraid to consult and train translation companies and niche agencies that we engage in the pool. In sharing our expertise with others, we make our market stronger and more professional – tomorrow it will be an easier place for us to work.

The third Gain & Share constituent is directed towards individual executors. The Russian translation market and training system proved unprepared for such a sharp increase in the number of large-scale projects. In order to aid this process of preparing a resource base, we directed a part of the Gain & Share program towards young specialists – students who have chosen the translation as their primary profession and young translators already embarked on this challenging path. They possess knowledge, ambition, a desire to work, and excellent linguistic knowledge; the only thing they lack is experience and certain specific skills. In the context of the Gain & Share program we approached the preparation of young specialists with the realities and specifics of the contemporary translation market in mind. For this, trainings were developed on the particulars of translation and editing and the application of various translation tools, primarily Translation Memory-class systems. In contrast to the first two focuses, this part of the program is conducted on a non-commercial basis. This is no deterrent for us, however; after all, we’re not only helping young and future specialists, but ourselves as well, by preparing valuable resources for Neotech. Recent successful projects include seminars conducted jointly with the Lomonosov MGU Graduate School of Translation and the Astrakhan State University, and traveling seminars in the Republic of Kazakhstan.