Truly international!

Most clients can plan ahead a bit, but sometimes an opportunity comes up and everything becomes mega-urgent!

Recently we had a call from a top flight PR agency. It was late on a Tuesday afternoon and they had an opportunity to pitch for a tender – in Tunisia. That meant that everything they used in their pitch presentations had to be in French.

The deadline was Friday, which left two working days and their estimate was around 6,000 words across various PowerPoint presentations. They were still putting it all together and advised that the earliest the first documents would get to us was Wednesday evening, with some more on Thursday evening.

With a bit of luck and a following wind we would just about squeak in to meet their deadline. Our UK project manager set to work and identified four translators to enable the deadline to be met by sharing the work out.

By Thursday evening our translators were working on the first 2000 words – but the day was coming to an end and the remaining two-thirds of the work didn’t arrive until very late on Thursday. Without working all night (not a good idea as tired people make mistakes!) there seemed to be no way to meet the deadline.

BUT – we also have a project manager and translators in Australia – who were just starting their working day. The UK team handed over the project and while they slept, the Australian team started work.

When our UK project manager arrived in the office on Friday morning the project had been completed by the Australian team and the agency had all their material, translated into French, and the agency were able to meet their tender submission deadline.

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