StrakerTranslations.com

Writing Straker Translations Reviews: What It Involves

More and more our visitors started asking us whether we have Straker Translations reviews available on our site. Our review team never tested this company, so after a brief discussion, we decided to focus our attention on it. The preliminary research revealed that it is a large corporate translation service based in New Zealand. We checked the existing reviews about it, its physical location, the range of services it supplies, and the qualifications of Straker’s employees. Reading the reviews left by other clients, we established that many of them have had negative experiences with this agency, just as translators who worked here. Also, despite having offices in the United States, Straker is not registered with the BBB.

From the moment Expert Review Team visited their site, they felt skeptical, not because of the intense negativity that is present on various review platforms. One of the first lines of text that greeted us included the following sentence: “As we have always been driven by technology and cloud-based since day 1, we are fully equipped to be working remotely.” The number of issues here is frankly alarming because if the company cannot proofread its main page properly, how can it provide quality language services? So, after conducting general investigation, we also made our own order. This Straker Translations review will be based upon our experience as well as information we gained from other sources.

Services Offered

The company offers both machine and human translation services. It also covers a huge range of other kinds of linguistic work, from website localization to personal and specialized translation, audio interpretation, and more. Among rarer options, you could order technical manual translation services, video adaptation, as well as CMS translation for both WordPress and Magento. About 120 languages are covered, which is an impressive number. Such diversity improved our impression, and it grew even more positive when we discovered that Straker has been operating for 21 years. It takes true professionalism to stay in the business for so long, so we can assume that at least at some point, this agency showed itself from the best side and built a significant network of clients. For the purposes of this review, our experts also placed an order and asked Straker to translate a 10-page business document from English into French. Our deadline was 2 weeks, which is more than enough for a good company to complete the task properly.

Prices

Anyone considering using Strakertranslations should be aware that getting a precise price quote requires giving personal information as well as uploading required files. This could be problematic if you hold confidential documents that you don’t want to share with other people, particularly the ones you might not end up hiring. To be fair, though, most companies have the same conditions, and unlike them, Straker offers detailed info about its general costs. When a site has a table reflecting translation cost per word, it’s a solid plus since it saves time for the customers. We appreciated this fact, so evaluated it positively, but prices seemed to be high. Our project costed 15 cents for one word. This is quite higher than average, so we could only hope that the quality would be worth it.

Quality of Straker Translation

Many other customers indicated presence of serious issues with quality of their orders. Unfortunately, this was our experience. We got our document right by the deadline, which pleased the team, but there were several key errors that significantly changed meaning of text itself. Some other discrepancies between original and translated version were also there: several phrases were twisted, some made up, and two were missing entirely.

As a result, content had obvious holes in it. We asked for revision and expressed our dissatisfaction, listing all issues we’ve found. Our request was accepted, but after we got revised file back, we could immediately say that only the most superficial mistakes had been corrected. We wondered what kind of QA team could possibly miss something so glaringly obvious. Plenty of Straker Translation reviews mentioned similar issues, so we can confirm that it seems like a pattern, not an exception. Overall, we were very disappointed with the received quality.

Pros & Cons in Straker Translations Review

We realize that there are a lot of things to consider when choosing which service to use. To make it easier for you, we’ve created a brief list of pros and cons we have identified after our experience with this company.

Pros:

• Informative site. Strakertranslations.com has a rather solid layout. Design is a little cluttered, but numerous vital sections are presented under comprehensive titles. If you are interested in prices, types of services, or other facts, you’ll be able to instantly find all information.
• A Variety of Services Offered. Straker specializes in many diverse services, from text to video and audio translations as well as localization. You are very likely to find what you want here.
• Online Customer Service is Polite And Helpful. All our questions were answered quickly and accurately. Even when dealing with our complaints, operators remained attentive and compassionate.
• Document Delivered on Time. Our deadline was maintained.

Cons:

• Poor Quality Translation. Straker translations are flawed. There were too many issues with a varying level of seriousness, from simple grammar errors to problems with accuracy.
• Prices Significantly Inflated. If you want to have a business document translated, you will likely encounter much lower prices elsewhere. Here, they are too high, and unfortunately, they don’t correspond to provided services’ level.
• Lack of Efficient Quality Control. Unprofessional workers can slip through the scrutiny of even the greatest firms of significant size. It happens, and if we’re talking about online work, it’s even more understandable. But after the customers voice their dissatisfaction and request a revision, it means that something is wrong, and a good quality control team must take action, watching the revision closely. This didn’t happen in our case, so basically, we paid the money yet were left with an inadequate translation that we wouldn’t have been able to send anywhere if we really needed it.

Summary

To conclude our review of Straker Translations, our expectations weren’t met. Support team was great, but quality of the order was deficient, even though we gave the translators enough time to complete the work. If you’re interested in finding best translation services, we recommend checking some other companies we’ve written reviews on. Straker simply doesn’t provide the type of quality that justifies the prices that they charge. Our order was badly handled. That, in combination with the inflated prices, mediocre reviews, and failure to revise document properly, has led to our negative opinion.

There are good sides to this service, too, but the cons outweigh the pros at the moment, so it’s clear that even if Straker was effective once, this is no longer the case. If you have opposite opinion, feel free to share it with us — when we get several requests like this, our team might conduct our review anew.