The Guardians of Linguistic Assets

I had an urgent call from a client recently, who asked: “Michael, can you please help us out? Do you happen to still have the German - Spanish translations you did for us in 2008, the such and such project? We need them ASAP!”
“No problem”, was my response.
I did a full text search in our Translation Management System and immediately located the project with its corresponding metadata. As it was a project from 2008, the files were no longer on our file server but had already been migrated to DVD. Our IT team retrieved the project folder with all of its subfolders from our dataset of past projects and 15 minutes later, I delivered the files to our client: the originals, the translation and the translation memory in TMX format, just in case that was also needed.
Linguistic asset management and safekeeping is a value-added service that many certified language service providers are able to offer, but which they almost never promote explicitly to their clients. It is just another of many value-added services that are all included in the per word translation price. As an ISO and UNE 15038 certified translation company, STAR Servicios Lingüísticos keeps your linguistic assets safe for you by protecting them with the help of a redundant file server system, backing them up daily and storing them in TMX format just in case you need them again, as was the case in this example.
In accordance with our quality management system, we keep the original files, updates of the originals that may be sent to us during the project and the data in all of the different stages of the service creation process. Originals, preprocessed originals for import into our CAT system, the files that are sent with the translation kit, the translations, the files we send to the proofreaders, the files we receive back, the files after sign-off and finally, the files we deliver to the client.
Such detailed procedures are a prerequisite for transparency and traceability and are an important part of linguistic asset management. Another key issue is the structured storage of your linguistic assets (including both translation memories and terminological dictionaries), so that they can be reused intelligently. This intelligent reuse means to leverage new translations against your translation memory and also, with the help of the dictionaries, the application of your corporate terminology across your projects. This not only reduces translation costs, but also guarantees linguistic consistency and is vital for international branding.
So the next time you purchase translations by the word and you wonder why one provider is dearer than the other, ask the providers about their linguistic asset management and safekeeping protocols.