Ulytan CEO’s 4-step international standard strategy for translation
According to Mr. Pham Manh Tan, the international standard translation process must go through 4 steps, including: document analysis, translation, editing/proofreading, and quality control.
Pham Manh Tan, Director of Ulytan Investment and Trading Co., Ltd., believes that Vietnam’s translation industry has many development opportunities as the economy increasingly expands trade with countries around the world.
However, the industry’s revenue and the capacity of businesses operating in the field have not yet developed to their full potential.
According to him, the potential annual revenue for translation in Vietnam is about $500 million to $1 billion. However, currently, the actual figure only stops at $100 million. Furthermore, the industry’s market share is largely in the hands of “foreign” enterprises.
Foreign companies dominate because they strictly adhere to international translation procedures. In contrast, it is quite common for domestic companies to add or omit meaning from the text compared to the original version.
Mr. Pham Manh Tan is the Director of Ulytan Investment and Trading Co., Ltd.
In addition, the lack of professional investment and a limited understanding of different national cultures often leads to incorrect translations or the failure to convey the spirit of the source language—common pitfalls for domestic translation units.
“Therefore, customers choose foreign translation agencies, even though their prices are higher than those of Vietnamese translation companies,” the Ulytan CEO shared.
As someone who has closely followed the translation industry since the 2000s, Mr. Tan believes that the problem largely lies in the development strategy of domestic businesses. He himself even went bankrupt due to a misjudgement of the market when he first started his career.
In 2007, after a long period of living and working in Russia, he returned to Vietnam to establish a translation company.
He recalled that at the time, he was confident in his business experience and invested all his capital into the company. However, shortly after becoming operational, the company continuously faced losses. A year later, the business went bankrupt.
Mr. Tan with experts and translation specialists at Ulytan.
“I invested in infrastructure and equipment, but I did not focus on quality—the core issue of the industry. The translation product is quite specific; if you translate incorrectly, the consequences can be very serious. It could break an economic contract worth billions of VND, or a customer could be denied a visa just because of a translation error…,” Mr. Tan shared.
The industry’s product requires a high degree of accuracy. In addition to conveying the source language into a new language form, it also relates to the culture of each country. Therefore, if a translation agency does not have high professional expertise and a deep understanding of the characteristics of the source language and culture, it will be difficult to produce an accurate translation.
Learning from his failure, the young CEO gained experience and started rebuilding Ulytan Investment and Trading Co., Ltd. He focused 100% on translation quality. The majority of the profits earned were used by the company’s leadership to invite leading industry experts and native speakers for training and quality control.
According to Mr. Tan, the international standard translation process must go through 4 steps: document analysis, translation, editing/proofreading, and checking/quality control.
- First, when proceeding with translation, the classification department will categorize the documents and records into specific areas. This is accompanied by notes on customer requests to develop a specific timeline.
- Second, to ensure timely progress, the translation stage will not be handled by a single person but will be assigned to a number of groups. This depends on the length of the document and the deadline provided by the customer.
Mr. Tan participated in the CEO – “Key to Success” program on VTV1 (The program is produced by Vietnam Television in collaboration with HoangGiaMediaGroup and Novaland Group).
- Third, after the translation is complete, the editing specialists will synthesize, review all errors, and then correct them. Because each translation team has a different writing style, the editor is responsible for bringing it all into a single, consistent style that is as close as possible to the original text.
- And finally, professors and native speakers will perform the final check. This step helps to detect, remedy any oversights, and make corrections before the finished version is handed over to the client.
Because the translation process is very strict, in reality, very few domestic businesses meet all four steps, or they omit some stages to minimize costs.
Recently, Mr. Tan shared about the importance of investing in quality within translation at Ulytan on the “CEO – Key to Success” program on VTV1.
Experts evaluate that after 10 years of investing in product quality and building brand reputation, Ulytan is gradually asserting its position in the market. If domestic translation businesses all adopt this shift in mindset, the Vietnamese translation industry will gradually regain market share from foreign companies.
