East-West Concepts, Inc. - About our services

What do we translate?
How do we do it?
What don't we translate?
What's in the translation?
What about confidentiality?
If your translation needs to be published
The languages we handle
Deadlines and timing
Related services
Interpreting
Logistics and strategy
Our background

What do we translate?

An almost endless variety of subjects from and into one-hundred fifty languages.

Some examples include: corporate surveys, training materials, annual reports, business proposals, contracts, feasibility studies, technical manuals, promotional materials, corporate newsletters for multinational companies, research papers, business records, legal documents, genealogical research data, ads, product labels, MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets), etc.

How do we do it?

We do it with the help of over two-thousand professional translators who work around the clock and are located all over the world. We use the Information Superhighway as one of our communication tools.

A typical example:

The European Headquarters of Pepsi Cola in England wanted to measure their employees' satisfaction in five Eastern European Countries.
The English survey was sent to Pepsi's registered translation supplier in New Zealand.
The supplier contracted East-West Concepts, Inc. in the United States to do the translation and editing.
We assigned the job to our translators in Ljubljana, Skopje, Budapest, Poznan and Minsk.
The translated material was edited and proofread in North Carolina, Hawaii, California and Arizona and delivered to the end user through its supplier.

The job went twice around the world before it was delivered, but it was possible to complete it efficiently, because of the Internet and because we have qualified translators in every time zone.

When it comes to a specialized subject like SHORADs for the NATO forces, the correlation between endometriosis and backaches, pet food production in Poland or environmental remediation of contaminated facilities in the Ukraine, we will find the expert among our associates, who not only speak the language, but know the system too.

What don't we translate?

We will not translate any material that promotes or advertises tobacco products, material related to the illegal use or manufacturing of drugs, material which facilitates illegal activities and pornographic material (unless ordered by law enforcement agencies).

We also will not translate materials, for which we have no qualified translators who are thoroughly familiar with the subject in the source and target languages.

What's in the translation?

What do we do when we receive a translation order by fax?

First, we count the pages manually and compare the result with the information on the cover sheet to make sure that we received all the pages. There is nothing more frustrating than noticing ten minutes before delivery that two pages were stuck together in the transmission and neither the translator, nor the editor noticed it.
Next, we check the received material for legibility, ambiguity, completeness and for acronyms and abbreviations.
Then we notify the client with a query form to request clarification of ambiguities and to obtain extension of acronyms and abbreviations.
Meanwhile, we prepare detailed instructions and forward the job to the translator so it can be started.
When the translation is complete, it is forwarded to an editor who has more than 15 years of editing experience and who is thoroughly familiar with the subject matter.
The editor's findings will be implemented in the translation, which subsequently will be re-checked by a proofreader for grammatical correctness, spelling, punctuation and style.
The proofreader's corrections will be implemented in the translation.
The last step is the final check by the project manager to assure that the translation is complete and is in accordance with the client's requirements.
Finally, the job is delivered as per the client's requested mode of delivery.

What about confidentiality?

The simplest way to guarantee it is to handle every translation job confidential.

While maintaining confidentiality is part of our agreement with our translators, in individual cases we do require them to sign a Confidentiality and Non-Disclosure Agreement. Some government agencies require a different level of security clearance from our translators. We do keep track of them separately.

If you want the translation published

Unless your desktop publisher is familiar with the orthographic rules of the target language, is skilled at troubleshooting the problems related to multilingual computing and knows the hyphenation and capitalization rules of the target language, we will suggest that they leave it to the experts.

Our desktop publishers keep many orthographic dictionaries of the different languages and have at their disposal an exhaustive collection of foreign fonts ready to meet the special requirements.

Since they speak the target language or they work together with a team of editors with whom they can consult, they won't lose valuable time.

Our multilingual desktop publishers will make sure that your company's carefully nurtured image will be presented well to the target audience.

They even go one step further. They may suggest that you change your logo or slogan when trying to enter a new market in a foreign country. Your favorite logo may call for trouble in an area where the standards and conventions are different. You will benefit from their knowledge and suggestions.

Whether your next desktop publishing task is in QuarkXPress, Pagemaker, PowerPoint or Persuasion; whether the output you require is lino, film, slides or overhead transparencies, you can be assured that our multilingual desktop publishing experts will produce a finished product that you will be proud to use.

The languages we handle

We do not translate all languages because there are over two-thousand languages spoken on Earth, and we know that no company can handle all of them. We, however, have decided to specialize in the hundred and forty languages listed on our front page. We prefer to cultivate what we know and provide excellent translations in our specialized field, adding new languages after we established a strong translation basis for these.

Nevertheless, if your project also involves languages that we currently don't handle, we can coordinate it with networking translation companies who also adhere to the high standards of the American Translators Association.

Remember, if you want to sell your product in Madagascar, it will sell better in Malagasy. The same is true when you buy a Japanese car. You'd think twice if the maintenance manuals were published in Japanese only.

Deadlines and timing

Time is a critical factor in almost every operation, but it must not replace quality.

If you know that it took one month for you to prepare the user's manual for the computer peripheral that you sell in the United States, please don't anticipate that a perfect translation into Burmese or Urdu can be handled in four hours.

Translation is more than stringing words together. It is an art that requires care, thoroughness and refining. The "artist" must have the time to create a work that will produce the desired effect.

When it comes to standard documents like birth certificates, certificates of incorporation, business cards and the like, we can, in most cases, deliver same-day or next-day translations.

Related services

Sometimes you may need professional editing of a translation prepared by your company's employee or by in-country representative. Perhaps you need a back-translation of an existing translation. This is a useful step when marketing a new product. You can decrease your liability and reduce the risk of having to reprint the translation that contains an error which may jeopardize your business.

Maybe you are thinking of advertising a new product in a foreign country under its existing trade name. You may want to check the trade name for negative connotations prior to launching the product abroad. It is easier to change a trade name than to reverse a negative first impression formed by the public.

This too, is where East-West Concepts, Inc. can help you.

Interpreting

While your Hungarian facilities engineer may be a terrific engineer who also speaks Hungarian, he still may not be the right person to interpret at the next contract negotiations with the Hungarian Power Utilities Company.

We would like to provide you with a professional interpreter. Unlike your engineer, he may not be able to fix your generator, but as a professional interpreter, he will be able to get the message across, and make your next business meeting a success.

If you require interpreting abroad, we can help too. Our network of interpreters spans the globe. Whether you are training a new middle management team in Estonia or require simultaneous interpreting in Addis Abeba, we will be able to help.

Logistics and strategy

Our name says it best. We are strategically located between the East and the West.

In today's world, a translation company's location does not matter too much. Our location, however, may be advantageous to you when it comes to getting your project done on time. You may be on your way home from work while the translator who will work on your project is just waking up in Armenia or the Maldives. Similarly, the orders from our clients in Australia will be assigned to translators in a time zone that allows them to start fresh in the morning.

Timing and logistics are part of our success.

Our background

East-West Concepts, Inc. was started in 1989 by the president of our corporation, Mr. János Samu, who has been in the translation business since 1966.

He has worked as a translator, editor, interpreter and consultant linguist for more than thirty years in Hungary, Germany and the United States. He holds the title of Hungarian Language Chair at the American Translators Association, but he still personally oversees the operations of East-West Concepts, Inc.

At East-West Concepts we use over 2000 professional translators and interpreters; we have translated over five million words, and are going strong.

Let East-West Concepts, Inc. make you proud
of your foreign language communication!

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