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By Volkan Güvenç, Founder — Alafranga Language Solutions
A client once sent us a message at 11pm on a Friday. The deadline had moved — again. The document scope had expanded. The budget had not.
We had two options. Treat it as a scope dispute and invoice accordingly. Or understand what was actually happening: a product launch under pressure, a team stretched thin, a manager trying to hold everything together across three time zones.
We chose to understand it first.
That is what empathy means in translation work. Not sentiment. Not discounts. Just the habit of asking why before asking how much.
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▮What clients are actually managing
Most of our clients are not primarily thinking about translation. They are thinking about a conference that has to run in four languages simultaneously, a film that has to clear broadcast standards by Monday, a regulatory submission with a fixed filing date.
Translation is one piece of a much larger operation — and it is usually the piece that arrives late in the process, under time pressure, with constraints that were not fully visible at the briefing stage.
Understanding that context changes how you respond.
▮A conference in two cities
When Umweltbundesamt — the Environment Agency Austria — engaged us for conference interpretation across Vienna and Skopje, the logistical complexity was not in the languages. It was in the coordination. Interpreters working across two cities simultaneously, in English, French, and Russian, for a multi-day event with a schedule that shifted as the agenda evolved.
The work required more than linguistic competence. It required understanding what the client was trying to achieve — a functional, professional conference — and building the interpretation service around that objective, not around a standard service description.
When something changed, we adapted. Not because it was in the contract. Because we understood why it mattered.