So we have a client, let's say it's a software company in China, and they have their own end client, let's say it's a car company in Italy. The car company hired the Chinese software company to make an in-vehicle software suite, for example the stuff for the touchscreen, the in-vehicle features, etc.
The software company designed the UI in English. However, they are a Chinese company, so their English is not great. But the Italians don't know that, so they looked over the completed English version of the software, and didn't notice that there were a bunch of errors in the terminology or phrasing (eg. "setup" instead of "settings", "bored" instead of "board", "no signal transmitted" instead of "no signal detected" etc.). Instead, the Italian car company said, "Okay, now translate this English version of the software into 32 different languages!"
So the software company came to us, the translation company, and said, "Translate the strings from this software into 32 different languages. Due to confidentiality reasons, we can only give you a list of strings, we can't show you screenshots or tell you anything more about how the software works."
So we got 32 different translators from almost as many countries to do the translations. And then the software company sent the translations over to the Italians, so naturally the Italians took a look at the Italian version of the software, and they were all like, "This Italian version is shit! WTF are you guys doing?" So the Chinese software company came to us and said, "Our Italian clients said the Italian translation is shit! What are we paying you for?"
And we're all like, "Considering the limitations and demands you placed on us, we actually think we did very well..." Ha ha no, I kid, there's no chance we could say that. Instead what we said was "Okay, we're dispatching our most senior and most awesome English editor to meet with you guys to clarify what the English is meant to be saying."
So that's what I'm going to be doing next week, it seems. And since I actually wasn't involved in this case at all at first, it looks like I'm also going to need a crash course in software development, in-vehicle software suites, and possibly Italian.