Improving Quality Nuggets: Rule 6

This one rule in a multipart series. Please see the intro article for the full list of rules.

Rule 6: Know and define the quality you expect to get from subcontractors

One project I was on in Tokyo to implement a core banking at a Japanese Bank. 90% of the people involved with the project could either speak English or Japanese whereas 10% of the members were bilingual. We continuously ran 2 bilingual workshops tracks for workstreams. This consumed 6 interpreters continuously. We also had an additional interpreter for our more relaxed evening meetings that occurred to discuss the findings and progress resulting from the workshops.

I had requested the procurement of the 7 interpreters from a team member who told me he was utilizing the same vendor that did our company’s marketing events. This vendor had an excellent reputation. He assured me that I wouldn’t be disappointed. However, I would join the meetings from time to time and I would listen to both the English and the Japanese translation. I kept hearing things that were translated incorrectly. I wondered how this could be, so I requested for a meeting to be arranged with the interpreter services company.

I was surprised to learn at this meeting that there we 4 levels of quality for interpreters. The ones which I was accustomed to hearing at Marketing events were either A or B. However, the person from my team had only asked for C-level interpreters and we were getting what we paid for. It is ironic that even the level of the interpreter was lost in the translation. We had to work out some compromise and made a good cheat sheet for the English-to-Japanese word for certain Japanese banking terms.

My lesson from this was not to ever underestimate how the quality of the interpreters will affect the experience on a large project. Even in an all-English scenario the quality of communication is extremely important to achieve overall quality and efficiency of the project.

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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely mine. They do not necessarily reflect the view of any of my employers nor relating to their business or policies.