Looking for a professional translation provider who can fulfill your translation requirements is just the beginning, entrusting your translation job can be a somewhat nerve-wracking experience. This is because if you are getting content translated there are high chances that you are yourself not familiar with the target language. This creates a difficult situation for you as you have to completely trust your translation service provider to do an authentic job.
But then taking a complete backseat when it comes to translation jobs that bear considerable importance like say marketing materials that are targeted to a foreign speaking populace can be very tough. But there are ways to ensure an accurate translation even if you don’t understand the target language at all and do not have any other way than your translation provider’s word that you have got the best translation.
Try to get a native translator for your job. More specifically the translation provider should be a native speaker of the target language. Generally this ensures authentic translation though there are of course very good translation providers who may not be working with their mother language as the target language.
The translation provider should not only be qualified in the languages involved in your translation project, but also be familiar with the subject or domain of your content. The content to be translated might be technical in nature, it be a legal or a medical document. In such cases you need to locate a professional translation provider with knowledge of the languages, as well as the subject area of the required translation.
Check out whether your translation provider is associated with a professional translation association. While in itself this does not guarantee anything, one can assume that a translator who makes the effort to be a part of such organization would be someone who is serious about his work and career. Moreover such organizations promote, as well as encourage professional development of their members.
Briefings are a very important part of any translation project. Make sure that you brief your translators in detail about your intentions for, and expectations from the translation. And also provide all required materials like glossaries and the like to your translation provider which would help him/her in producing high quality translations. Furthermore, be accessible to your professional translation provider and also be ready to clarify any queries that might arise in the course of your translation project.
Twitter is becoming increasingly influential around the world. Though it started out as an amusing social tool which individuals used to keep in touch with friends and family members, Twitter has grown by leaps and bounds and is now being increasingly used by various business enterprises and other organizations to stay in touch with their customers/users and keep them updated about the latest developments.
A company might have hundreds and thousands of ‘followers’. If you are such a company and have an international presence just imagine how helpful it would be to get your ‘tweets’ translated to the languages of your customers who might not be familiar with the primary language that your company uses, for example English.
You can make use of online twitter translation services like Twitrans which offer machine translations of your ‘tweets’. But before you go ahead with it remember that machine translation however sophisticated it might be is prone to producing errors. This is especially true of marketing translations which frequently involve creative content that does not lend itself well to machine translation as the intended subtleties are frequently lost in translation.
So the bottom line is use Twitter to market your products and services, and get a professional twitter translation provider to have your tweets translated for foreign language speakers.
Effective branding is dependent upon conveying the brand values of an organization on a consistent basis. Your professional translation provider should make the extra effort of getting familiar with your company, brand, services and/or products. However even if your translation provider takes the initiative to know your company better, it is you who can help him/her achieve a proper understanding. Providing the following to your professional translation expert would help you do just that.
Information about your company and branding
Provide your marketing translation provider with information about your company’s objective and values as well as its structure. An idea about the USP of the company would also be very useful.
Marketing materials
Marketing materials would include advertisements, leaflets, brochures, product guides and published materials like press releases. They would help a translator get the feel of the brands’ persona.
Terminology
Most industries and even companies use specific terminology for their products and processes among others. Providing the marketing translation provider with a glossary of such technical terms would help them do the work faster and also ensure accuracy.
Company Style Guide
If your company follows a corporate style guide then do make it available to your marketing translation provider. It would go a long way in helping the translation provider produce translations that are in sync with your company’s established style.
Business card translation can throw up peculiar problems, which if you are not experienced in the field can create a lot of hassles for you and your clients. However you can use the following tips as sign posts to manage such problems effectively-
- Names are a delicate area in translation. Always make it a point to discuss with your client how he/she wants the name to be translated. A frequently used technique is transliteration where names are translated following the pronunciation. But then some clients might not be ready to go for this approach, so a discussion is always advisable.
- Somewhat similar concerns go into the translation of company names. Sometimes companies have already established names for their foreign subsidiaries that may or may not be the same as their original names. If you are doing say, English to Japanese, or Chinese business card translation, consult with the company about the characters it wants to use. Tag lines should also be translated following a similar approach.
- Number formatting is yet another area which can differ according to client preferences, as well as target language requirements.
- Finally you should also clarify with your translation client about the format of the translated card.
“Syzygy” and “Rhythm” are supposed to be the longest English words that do not contain vowels. Please feel free to add to the list 
“Translators live off the differences between languages, all the while working toward eliminating them.”
Edmond Cary
Language translation is complex work and one needs to get it done from a suitably qualified translation provider. A bungled language translation can land you in great trouble. Here are a bunch of tips which would help you understand the requirements of the language translation process so that you are able to locate the best translation provider for your job
- Language translation requires a deep understanding and high level of expertise in the involved language pairs. So just knowing, and being conversant in a couple of languages, doesn’t make someone a good translator between those languages. Languages are like living entities with unique personalities and they tend to grow, evolve, as well as wither out and die.
- Translating from one language into another takes a lot more than simply converting words in the source language into that of the target language. Every language has unique grammar and style, set of idioms which cannot be translated literally for they would lose their intended meaning. For example in English we tend to use the term “back burner” frequently. But try translating it literally into another language and the meaning will be entirely different from the one intended.
- Many people are scared of entrusting translation jobs to online translation providers. This might be because they fear being hoodwinked or saddled with a bad translation job. I agree, that such fraudulent and incompetent translation providers do exist, but then they are not only limited to the virtual world of the Internet. You can also find them in offline services as well.
- The solution to this is going through the website of reputed translation providers and looking for client testimonials and review. Incompetent or fly by night operators would not generally take the pains to build a well designed and organized website. A genuine translation provider would also give you contact details like official address among other things. Furthermore, professional translation providers would have the required safety measures in place as well.
All said and done first get a clear idea of the specific requirements of your language translation job. Then go about looking for a suitable professional translation provider. Make a shortlist of a few good ones and then carry out a background check before settling down for one.
Today both translation buyers and providers have a much easier time. For the former, it is significantly easier to get high quality translations and for the latter worrying about where the next project will come from is less of an issue. I believe that most of the advantages that the language translation industry has now is due to the Internet.
Firstly, it is due to the fact that the Internet has made communication so much easier than ever before that people from vastly different parts of the world can get in touch with each other in an instant. The Internet has also boosted growth of multinational businesses. Now we have so many big and small companies doing business in foreign countries which do not speak their native language.
Moreover people are increasingly migrating to foreign countries in search of a better future. So we have a significant Chinese and Spanish population in cities like New York. All this has led to considerable and increasing requirement for language translation.
The Internet has also made getting language translation very easy, with translation companies as well as freelance translators offering their services online. Work gets done faster and rates are lower online. Furthermore, online a translation buyer can easily get professional translation providers suiting their specific requirement (for example native, in-country translators) easily.
The present age is good on translation buyers. There are many more qualified people working as professional language translators than ever before. No matter what kind of language translation you require and between which languages, most probably you will be able to locate a translation company or professional freelance translator who provides the required services.
However the profusion of translation services adds to the confusion and I have frequently clients looking for language translations but having no specific idea of how to go about it. The following checklist is my attempt to clear this confusion –
- Know thy source document. Getting your document translated is not only about transforming the source language to the target language. There are other elements that play a significant role in determining the quality of your translated document. You should have a good idea about these elements in order to give a concrete briefing to your translation provider. It would take you a long way in ensuring the quality and accuracy of your translation.
- You should have a solid idea about how the translated document is going to be used and who will be the target reader(s). For example a document to be used for online marketing would be written in a significantly different style than that which is going to be used by, say health care services providers or in court. Moreover certain documents require certification or specific formatting. All such issues need to be discussed with the translation provider.
- The required language pair or source-target languages of your document. Not all translation agencies/independent translators provide services in all types of language pairs. Narrowing down your search to your required language pair(s) would make it significantly easier.
- Type of the document or the area in which it deals. The content of translation documents can span a variety of subject like legal, medical, engineering, information technology, business, technical. Here too freelance translators, as well as translation agencies tend to specialize in a few chosen areas. So once again narrowing down your search by topic or subject area would help you locate the right translation provider easily.
I don’t know how common this is but I personally love doing literary translations. A delightful translation project for me is one that involves translating a book which is by one of my favorite authors or an area which am interested in. Then translation is not work but play for me. This inclination of mine probably arises from the fact that I just love reading and just about every nook and cranny of my house is stuffed with books. Moreover even though my work involves sitting alone and tapping away at my keyboard for several hours every day, I prefer to relax by curling down with a book.
Recently I was reading about Agatha Christie (an old favorite :-)) when I was reminded that she was among the most translated authors ever. I did know that earlier but coming to the piece of information again led me to Google around a bit and I found some interesting information.
According to the Guinness World Records, the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard is the most translated author with his works of fiction and non-fiction being translated into as many as 65 languages. Earlier it was Sidney Sheldon whose books had been translated to over 50 languages. Furthermore, the mind-bogglingly bestselling Harry Potter series is supposed to have been translated in over 60 languages. This also makes J.K. Rowling a strong contender for the title of world’s most translated sometime in future. How I wish I could be one of those lucky translation providers working for one of these best seller producing factories.
