Here's the irony: the Indian agency got the job done by a translator in Scotland.
Bangalore August 4: The translation from English to Gaelic, of the annual report of Scotland’s Parliament – 40 pages long -- has been outsourced to a Bangalore-based firm. The Scottish edition of Britain’s largest selling daily newspaper, The Sun, in a report on Tuesday says, sending the job to India, saved Format Design, the UK firm which has the contract to do all the translation work for Holyrood -- home of the Scottish Parliament -- some forty percent of the cost.
The un-named Bangalore entity offered to do it for 6 pence a word and this cost Format Design pounds sterling 740 instead of 1200 for the 12,000 plus word report.
Former minister for Gaelic Peter Peacock has been quoted as branding the episode “bizarre” by another Scotland based newspaper, The Herald. But what prevented more Scots getting their kilts in a twist about Indians snatching the food from the mouths of Gaelic translators, was the real irony: the Bangalore firm used one of its free lance translators, who just happened to be based -- where else – in Scotland. So the pristine quality of Scottish Gaelic has been preserved in Holyrood’s official record -- but bouncing the job from Edinburgh, to Bangalore and back, has saved British taxpayers some 800 quid -- so canny Scots aren’t complaining.
Which may not be the case with nearly 100 British workers who might be affected when all National Rail Enquiry calls in the UK --are handled from India. Ventura, the British firm which shares the work with a Mumbai based call centre ( thought to be IBM Global Services) has said it will source the voice service entirely from India by December 2009. They claim the level of customer satisfaction with calls taken in India or Britain is about the same – and they hope to make big savings by shunting the work entirely to India.
Moving in the opposite direction, BT ( the telecom giant) has said it is bringing some 2000 call centre seats back to Britian from India
Link to The Sun story: http://www.thesun.co.uk/scotsol/homepage/news/2570056/Gaelic-translation-job-is-outsourced-from-Scotland-to-India.html
Link to follow up, Wednesday, in Aberdeen Press and Journal: http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/1339014?UserKey=