Why Is Professional Translation Important?
We no longer live in a closed world. The Internet opens up the possibility for everyone to connect to each other in a lot of ways. But this increased communication didn’t come along with increased understandability. The language barriers prevent us all from conveying the ideas and thoughts in our head. This leads to confusion, miscommunication, and a lot of other problems.
In casual conversations, we don’t need a Professional Translation service. There’s this one interesting fact about the translation industry: anyone can enter it if they know more than one language. It is not something too hard to do. You only need to understand what the sentence, or speech, in the source language means, and then re-express it in the target language.
However, when the language barriers appear in a more serious situation, we need someone with real expertise. There is a lot of things that an amateur can’t properly translate. If we hire an inexperienced, unprofessional translator/interpreter to do the work, the result can be disastrous. There have been a lot of marketing blunders caused by mistranslation and improper interpretation.
We need Professional Translation Service for important documents
In business, it’s crucial to present yourself as professional and reliable. It creates a sense of trustworthiness and assurance in the customers and business partners working with you. Being able to communicate effectively is a big part of that.
When a business reaches the global phase, it has to partner up with major players around the world, and the need to present yourself as a professional is even more necessary. Successfully conveying your ideas, visions, and thoughts to your business partners and customers beyond all language barriers is not a simple task. Because business means money, we need to make sure that we find a professional translation service for it. We need professionals to do things professionally.
How do you tell the representatives of a local business that you want to partner up with them?
What can you do to present your value proposition to the local investors, the potential business partners, and the customers?
How do you know that your customers understand what your products are? How do you communicate with them effectively when they speak a language and live in a culture that is completely different from you?
If you own an eCommerce store and you want to expand globally, you need to make sure that your foreign customers know what you mean. They will immediately leave your website if they can’t understand the language. How do you capture the high potential customer base?
We need Professional Translation Service to lower the risks involved
These are all scenarios when a normal translator can’t meet the expectations. Business translation goes side by side with its reputation. One single mistake is enough to cause tons of trouble to the company, and it will a lot of time and effort to fix.
Misuse of words, terms, or using the wrong synonym of the word, can also make the document lose its professionalism and seriousness. There are tons of synonyms in a language, and each of them has a slight different meaning. These subtle nuances have to be handled properly. The amateur, inexperienced, and untrained translator usually doesn’t have enough linguistic skill to handle that.
In highly technical industries, such as engineering, chemicals, or biology, a Professional Translation service is even more necessary. These industries have complex concepts that only people in the field can understand. A slight change in the wording already creates a brand new concept.
Technical terminologies have a completely different meaning from its daily, casual use. Without previous exposure to these terminologies, the translator won’t be able to understand what it means. Googling the terms may help, but it doesn’t work all the time, and the room for error is huge.
In highly sensitive industries, such as Law, or Pharmaceutical, a mistranslation can totally cause death and injury. Handing the text to someone who can’t distinguish the concepts can be the start of a disaster. The risks associated with mistranslation is so high that it is better to find a Professional Translator, who charged higher, but can minimize the risks they have to face. The time, effort and money required to fix translation mistakes is just too much, and not worth it.
We need Professional Translation Service to retain Artistic Values in Literary Works
In Literature, the translation process can sometimes be the make-or-break of the book. Literature is the highest use of language: to express deep ideas, thoughts and tell well-structured, compelling stories. The translators need to have as strong literacy skills as the writers themselves. Without good translation, a lot of the artistic value can be lost.
Using the wrong style and wrong words can make the story lose its essence, and it is no longer as valuable as the original writing. It can be hard to retain the original feel of the book though. But if done right, the book will be able to reach a much wider audience and become a global success for both the author and translator.
In Poetry translation, the task is even harder. Wordplay is not uncommon, and conveying both the meaning and the wordplay in the translated version is incredibly hard. It’s almost impossible to do so unless the source and target language has a lot of similarities.
This video from Vox is a perfect explanation for why we need the right translator for the right book.
We need Professional Translation Service to handle huge workload and keep costs down
Finding a reliable, professional translation service to use is not easy. It takes a lot of consideration because no one wants to hand their important documents to the amateurs. Usually businesses hire in-house translators to help them with their language demands.
However, when their business scales and the translation volume rises beyond their capacity, they need a quick, cost-effective solution. In this case, outsourcing the translation work to agencies is a wise decision. They can provide businesses with high-quality translation service, while keeping their costs always at a reasonable level.
The language barriers will always be there. It is not a bad thing. After all, it exists because there are a lot of cultures in the world, and we should strive to keep them. But practically speaking, we still need to find a way to understand each other. When dealing with important language demands, or high volume of work, you should find a Language Service Provider that can handle your work with professionalism and reliability.
