Business Translation is no Amateur Job

One devastating error a business can make when shopping for services for business translation is attempting to dodge payment of fair wages for their project. This may involve offering the project to a bilingual employee interested in earning extra money, or buying translation software programs. Still worse, is the use of freeware (free software) for important business translation requirements. These bad decisions lead to the pit falls of relying on automated and/or non-professional interpreters and translators.

The Qualifications Of A Translator

To really depict the almost inevitable consequences of not hiring persons qualified to do professional business translation, a real world example will serve. A national provider of medical insurance policies in the United States committed two of the aforementioned mistakes in responding to the business translation needs of their Spanish speaking customers. One of the bilingual customer care agents was asked to do the job of translating pamphlets, notices, and correspondence in English, into Spanish. The agreement, like most informal ones, provided for no specific deadlines. In the meanwhile, the company's Spanish speaking beneficiaries went without high quality service in their language. Hoping to remedy this, management resorted to the team of bilingual customer service agents to work on the project as a group. This collective effort only turned out to be more disorganized and haphazard due to the divergent dialects and educational backgrounds of the team's members. Arguments over vocabulary resulted in strained relations on the team and, eventually, interrupted the project and the company's promise to serve their non-English speaking clients in the translation of printed materials. None of these failures and stumbling blocks would have happened had the company realized up front, the need for professional services to assume their business translation needs.

The Limitations Of Robotic Translations

The computer is amazing for rapidly carrying out many difficult jobs--business translation doesn't figure among them. Why is this? Anyone who has ever tried translation software programs, know of its inability to understand natural language. This is mostly due to the existence of 'idioms'. Idiomatic phrases are set by usage, and meaning is not literally determined by the words used. For example, in English, when quoting another person, people will often say, "and then she went...." employing the verb 'to go' instead of the verb 'to say'. Imagine the senseless translation that software would come up with in this case; moreover, visualize the problem a company would have by relying on software for business translation.

Determining The Need

Commercial managers should analyze each business translation project on a separate basis. In general, a bilingual employee is not the prime choice for an intense job. Large projects can also interfere with his daily obligations. But, relatively small jobs may be completed smoothly by an employee, and has the benefit of inside influence. Remember, the employee should have the educational background required to render grammatically correct translations and know the dialect of the consumers targeted.

Machine rendered translations should be avoided for vital business translation needs. Software programs simply can't handle serious jobs.

Armando Riquier is a freelance translator working with Tectrad, an agency dealing in translations between English, French and other key languages of legal, financial and corporate documents. Discover how Tectrad's business translation services can provide you with the high degree of professionalism you need when communicating to your foreign clients.