Exceeding expectations

Once, I told about my experience as a volunteer: I explained the need, in emergencies, to keep the focus, serenity, and, sometimes, the need to work near to exhaustion.

Well, there are a few moments like that in everyday life.

This one, which I will tell you about, was an actual race against time and ended with the two people involved in the translation – me and a tireless colleague – completely exhausted. I’ll tell you what happened.

In Public Sector tenders, there are several stages of analysis of the processes. As the contracting authority analyzes the submitted documents, the suppliers move on to the next step. If they don’t fulfill the requirements, the Contractor will exclude them from the process.

In International tenders situations, the process can be pretty complex for a foreign company, as Translations need. The Contractor previously defined which translated documents must be certified, but this request can also occur during one of the selection phases. When this situation occurs, the review process is interrupted, and the company has a deadline to submit the requested document.

In this specific situation, the bidding company already passed several stages and was ranked in 1st place regarding the other bidders. The scenario looked very positive, but the Contractor decided to ask for a certified 90 pages document with Hague apostille stamp. We had to deliver the translation in person in 48 hours.

Even those who do not translate will understand that we thought it was humanly impossible to reach this goal.

We would have to do the translation, go to the lawyer to certify 90 pages, and go to Court to request the Apostille. For the Apostille, the Court needs 48 hours. Not to mention the delivery of the documents, in person, at a destination 700 km away.

We overcame this challenge with focus, self-control, and diplomacy with all those who had to intervene in this bureaucratic process, and we met the deadline.

The truth is that thanks to brilliant teamwork and thanks to a superhuman effort of the translators, the company won a project worth 1 million euros.

Want to know more about certified translations? Want to know what the Hague Apostille is?