We have failed, often.

And that’s precisely why you should trust Power of Babel with your language needs.

Because all those failures are the reason that today we know how to get it right.

There was the first time we did Arabic, back in 2012. I knew nothing about this difficult language, with its many dialects and impenetrable (to me) alphabet. The end-client rejected our work, and I had no idea who was right – the client or the people I’d hired. So I found an Arabic expert I could trust, who helped me build my own team. Now we work in Arabic nearly every week, and there are no more rejections.

There was a time we subcontracted a large transcription-translation job to a dodgy translation agency that promised the world but delivered word salad. Panicked, I tried again… and this time I found the right person. He worked over the holidays, and got the job done. Now we don’t subcontract to agencies. We hire professionals directly, and check their work diligently.

There was the time we had someone record a 60-minute narration for a video course on parenting, and the client’s response was “it sounds like a flight attendant giving safety instructions.” And the time that our guy in Rio forgot the audio files at the studio he’d hired, which promptly closed for Carnival.

There was the Punjabi Captions Incident, about which the less said the better.

Today, we still screw up sometimes, just like everybody else. When it happens, we own it, and we fix it. Most importantly, we make sure we learn from our mistakes.

After 12 years in this business, I could probably write a book about our failures. Each one of them taught me something important.

But I have to say, success is a lot more fun. And for my amazing team today, a lot more common.

Want to discuss how to make your dubbing or translation project a success? Tell us about it, and we’ll provide free quote.