If you care about the quality of the translations that are done for your business, in this article you will find some basic tips to help you achieve your goal. Whether your company’s translations are done in-house via a translation service, outsourced to a translation agency, or to a freelance translator, there are some things you can do to help these professionals translate under the best possible conditions. So as you will be able to read the translation you can have the best deal.
Don’t give in to temptation: use professional translation services
You may have an acquaintance or loved one who has a good command of English, Spanish, German or any other foreign language, and who is tempted to learn a little pocket money while you save. This can also be valid within your company, where a native speaker of a foreign language can take care of translations. If the technicality of the document to be translated is lower and that it is intended for internal use, without tarnishing the image of your company, then these resources could effectively allow you to reduce costs.
Don’t give in to temptation: use professional translation services
The translation is an activity that can be really complex and require specialized professionals to reach an acceptable level of quality. Anyone who has read a contract or a medical report, even with university knowledge, has generally had difficulty understanding the entire text. Now imagine that this document is not written in your mother tongue and that you have to translate it. In short, knowing the language is not enough to provide a quality translation; you must have a high level of language proficiency, have knowledge of the subject and know where and how to look for information.
If you care about the quality of your company’s translations, you should start by ensuring that your company’s internal resources are trained and experienced in translation. If you do not have internal resources, do not hesitate to call upon professionals, whether they are translation agencies or freelance translators. If you opt for a freelance translator and want to separate the wheat from the chaff, this article may interest you.
Explain the context and references if there are any
It is not uncommon for a client to send us a sentence to translate, just like that. However, words can have very different meanings depending on the context in which they are used, and it is a good habit to explain where and how a sentence or document that we are going to translate will be used. Sometimes the context goes without saying and there is no need to specify it. But at other times, it seems obvious to us because it is our domain, but is far from being clear for the translator.
Explain the context and references if there are any
A typical case where translators work half-blind is that of translating databases or Excel files whose content is extracted from a product catalog or a computer program. In this case, the expression a picture is worth a thousand words perfectly illustrate the situation. The possibility of having the product image or the screen of the software that we translate avoids many potential errors due to the lack of context.