Sometimes doing nothing is the most expensive solution of all.

A leading foreign bank (among the top 5 in its country) sends translated materials to  account-holders only if they live outside the bank's country.  US and UK residents receive English documentation automatically, but English-speaking citizens in the bank’s home country cannot receive translations – even though these translations already exist in the bank’s files.

Why this policy?  For this bank, they made an unfortunate decision:  it is too complex and costly to distribute multiple translations.  They assume multiple e‑mailings are required, and that requires staff time, language-preference databases and multiple distribution tasks. So instead, they choose not to communicate in the customer's own language.  

Is this Customer Service?  Immigrant depositors are sent documents they cannot understand.  Would you put your funds in such an institution?

Consumer Translations demonstrates that such decisions are  unnecessary when translation distribution has a low cost – both financially and in staff resources.  We even confirmed it with the Office of the President of this bank.  Depositors have a right to understand the status of their funds.  And consumers in general should be able to communicate with the businesses they frequent.

But this won’t come about until the entire translation cycle is convenient to the communicator.  That is what Consumer Translations developed and provides.  Both communicators and end-readers will benefit from this revolutionary solution to an old – but unrecognized – problem.

The worst problems are the ones we don’t realize we have.  The traditional way of distributing translations was once an example of this principle, but now it has been solved.