Translation - Fédération des caisses Desjardins

Case Study
Cogitco Meets Clients' Needs Under Tightened Deadline

A quote from client:

"Thanks to the entire Cogitco team for another busy week. Your presence and your work are definite factors in the success of many projects at the Fédération!"
François Bilodeau, C. Tr.
Linguistic Services, Fédération des caisses Desjardins du Québec (FCDQ)

Background

Desjardins Group is an integrated financial cooperative with over 5 million members. Cogitco Inc. is a major translation provider to Desjardins Group, supplying 500,000 words annually for this integrated financial cooperative's needs. Since 1989, Cogitco has been among Desjardins' preferred providers for institutional translation services for:

• Reports
• Brochures
• Publications
• Web site content
• Advertising
• Employee manuals
• Administrative documents
• Letters
• Systems documentation

Over several years, Cogitco has been mandated to provide corporate translation services for Desjardins' Social Responsibility Report.

The Social Responsibility Report has evolved from a short chapter in the Annual Report to a 40-page booklet, inserted in several of Canada's major newspapers at the time of the Group's AGM in March. Desjardins Group itself has evolved over the years from an operation mainly focused on Québec markets to a cross-Canadian organization that is sensitive to the excellence of its translations not only in terms of accuracy but also in terms of the quality of English required for markets outside Québec.

The Problem

The Social Responsibility Report had grown from a few thousand words to about 10,000 words annually. The completed document would normally be received by Cogitco in mid-January for delivery by the end of February. In January 2006, Desjardins indicated that there would be a small increase in words, to about 15,000. The deadline was not expected to change.

When the team at Cogitco received the documents and assessed the word count, it was found that the complete text had 31,000 words to translate. With its existing in-house expertise, Cogitco was ready to meet the unexpected challenge to produce a high-quality corporate translation within the expected timeframe.

Things rapidly changed again when Cogitco was informed that, due to constraints involving the printing of the document, said high-quality, revised and corrected document was required in just one week.

The Solution

Meeting short deadlines for major projects is not new to the team at Cogitco.

Using experience gained from translating a 60,000-word document for a collective bargaining unit in just 36 hours, Cogitco executed a precise strategy which included dividing the document amongst its:

• Experienced team of in-house translators
• Proficient revisers
• Qualified outside freelancers

The in-house team undertook to translate 10,000 words as well as manage, revise and correct the remainder of the project.

While most of the production for Desjardins on a daily basis is done by in-house staff, Cogitco had taken care over the years to train a number of freelance partners to be able to handle some of the very specific and complex notions and terminology used by Desjardins, through its targeted mentoring program for freelancers. This is what enabled Cogitco to call upon a dedicated team to successfully meet this challenge within such a short deadline.

The Result

Cogitco management combined with an excellent use of team resources resulted in the on-time delivery of a superb, high-quality promotional document in sophisticated English that Desjardins was proud to present to audiences throughout Canada.