Why is translation a “peculiar service”?

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First of all, we’ll look at why translation is a “peculiar” service or activity. According to Kotler, a renowned marketing expert, a service is “any act or performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.  Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product”. Translation is a “peculiar service” for two reasons.

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1. It may have “tangible elements" such as, for example, the printed copy of a translated document.  In addition, as translation is a service provided mainly through the Internet, it has “visible” elements, such as the digital version of the translation.  These visible elements make translation service a little more tangible than most services, but on many occasions it never becomes completely tangible, given that the translated document never ends up being printed, but is published digitally instead.
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2. The transfer of intellectual property rights is implied when translation services are rendered (except in some cases of literary translation).  Intellectual property in translations is a matter to be explored on another occasion, but I mention it here so we can understand that translation is a "peculiar service" with its own special characteristics, and that therefore, quality management of translation has its own complexities.  This doesn’t mean it's an unapproachable task, but that it is necessary to study the nature of translation services in depth before attempting to be successful in efforts to manage translation quality.

Source:

1. Kotler, Philip y Keller, Kevin Lane. Dirección de Marketing. Prentice Hall, 2006.