Once you've solidified your expectations, you can start looking for the right company to help you with your foreign translation needs. Aside from your list from above, other factors you'll want to consider include:
- Pricing. Does the translation company have hidden fees? You may not know until you send in that first job, but you can also ask up front. Get a guaranteed estimate, or look for a translation company with flat pricing and clear add-ons.
- Timing. How long will it take the company to complete your project? Granted, different-sized projects of varying complexity won't be turned around within the same time frame. But you should know exactly when you'll receive your translation. Find out if rush services are available and how much extra they cost. You never know when you'll have an emergency translation job.
- Quality. Does the service use machine translation? If you've ever tried doing your own translation with free software or translation engines, you know this can go very wrong. Granted, these companies sometimes have a human translator to check the machine-generated content, but not always.