5 Translation Options for Businesses – Which One is Best for You?

Many people who need or are using translation services use the following translator types:

1. University Language Student

I would like to start with what is perceived as the least expensive choice, having a language student from the local university help you out. While this seems like a good economical choice, while helping students get some experience, I caution you highly in this arena. Often times students do not have a full practical working knowledge of the language (are not natives) and lack the subject matter expertise to do a translation justice. I have heard many stories from my clients about how they started out using this service and ended up having to have their documents re-translated and even having some legal implications due to mistranslations.

2. Staff member who is bi-lingual

Choosing a current bi-lingual employee to translate, also seems like a very economical choice. However, maybe not. If the employee was hired to provide engineering expertise or for other positions, that is their speciality. Just because someone is bi-lingual does not mean the are good writers or translators. The art of translation takes practice and a certain way with words to convey messages clearly and appropriately in another language. They were hired to do their job or expertise not as translators. In addition, often these folks are paid very well for their expertise and using them to translate brings down their productivity since they don’t usually practice this art, they are not as fast and accurate so your cost actually goes up by using these readily accessible resources.

3. Language Instructor/Friend

Many of my clients have used bi-lingual friends or their foreign language instructors to help translate documents and have been very disappointed with the results. Often times these people are doing a favor so the turn around time and quality checks are very slow and non-existent. While the perceived cost seems low, the actually working cost is usually high due to timing, quality and process issues. These people typically do not have the experience to translate documents. Their expertise is usually in either grammar or their job as opposed to the job of translation.

4. Independent Translators

This option may be perfect for your organization if you have the ability to test and check the quality of a translator with an in-country reviewer. Finding a “good” one can be challenging as just about anyone in the world can hang a shingle, create a website and call themselves a translator. There are several college, university, and certificate programs that a translator should have. In addition, practice. Years of experience does help with a translator mastering their craft. But not always. Not all translators can translate all materials and often only specialize in one language. This may cause you to have several different translators in one language to handle all your document needs or a bank of translators to handle all the languages you need. On top of that, they all need to be tested, reviewed and managed. They all require different payment options, live all over the world and often times their spoken English skills are left to be desired, so communicating your needs could be a very frustrating task. Due to their global locations, they all work in different time zones, and rarely have another set of eyes to review their translations to proof and edit. Very few translators can work in several desktop publishing software programs like InDesign, FrameMaker, and many others. They usually only work with the Microsoft suite of products like Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc.

5. Translation Agency

While this last option may seem a bit more expensive than the others, it is the most thorough and the best bet for quality translations. An agency does a lot of the work for you to test the translators, look at their subject matter expertise, native tongue proficiency, deals with them in their native languages and in their specific time zones. They usually have a very detailed quality process that includes proofreading and desktop publishing services and a final editing step. They have several years of experience and a very vast net of qualified translators. However, not ALL agencies are the same. There are good ones and bad ones. There are no guarantees here. But the odds are with you if you do your due diligence and do your research before hiring the translation agency.

So which translation option is right for you and your organization?