A Close Look at Spanish Translation Services in the USA and Around the World

Spanish Business Translation
Spanish translation services are an important piece of doing business for companies in nearly every sector and industry. In addition to being a native tongue for tens of millions of people, Spanish is incredibly common as a second language, meaning there are Spanish-speaking markets worldwide.

Here’s how you can take advantage of the increased reach that business Spanish translation services can give to your company.

The Spanish Language Across the World

Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world; it ranks third behind Mandarin Chinese and English and is the official language of 21 countries.

It comes from the romance language family and has roots dating back to the 13th century. With over 470 million Spanish speakers globally spread across the globe, if you’re not engaging in Spanish business translation, you’re leaving money on the table by not speaking to a large sector of your potential audience.

The popularity of the language also means there’s an abundance of native Spanish translators who speak Spanish as their first language.

Spanish in the United States

Companies based in and operating solely in the US also need Spanish translation services – even if they don’t realize it. While Spanish is not an official language of the United States, it is the most widely spoken non-English language. In fact, the US has the second-largest population of Spanish speakers in the world! (Spain doesn’t even reach the top two.)

This makes the United States a hub of business, activity, and consumers using the Spanish language, so companies need to consider whether Spanish translation services should be in their marketing plan. If you’re not translating existing marketing, educational, business, or other materials into Spanish, you might exclude a large part of your target audience.

Bilingual brands in the US (those that engage in English-to-Spanish translation services) expand their reach and increase their audience size and buying power through the simple act of Spanish translation. Professional Spanish translation services act as a bridge between companies and new consumers.

You don’t have to go all in on translation services for every piece of your existing material – you can invest your money in a smaller Spanish translation project and track the returns. Try translating your next email marketing campaign or providing a website translation for a high-traffic web page with professional Spanish translators.

Why You Need Professional Spanish Translators

Most Spanish people prefer to read, write, consume media, and communicate using their mother tongue. 79% of Spanish speakers (external link no follow another window) surveyed in a 2017 Facebook survey felt brands should use bilingual communications, and over half felt that doing so shows value and respect to the Hispanic community. People don’t want to engage with or support brands they don’t respect.

Like other global languages, Spanish is not a monolith. Regional dialects differ from one area of the world to another, within Spain and throughout the world, particularly in Latin America. The difference between American and British English is similar to that between European Spanish and Latin American Spanish.
All that dissimilarity requires that a professional Spanish translator will go a step further than translating, using localization and adaptation to the culture and elements used by the consumers of the translated content. That is the reason why a translation company has a large team of native Spanish translators, each specialized in the Spanish spoken in their country.

Many dialects of Spanish are spoken throughout Central and Latin America, each slightly different than their neighbors. These changes occur because Spanish mixed with other languages in each region and was influenced by culture and history. While there is overlap between some European and Latin American Spanish words, they are distinct from one another. There are also dialects within Spanish spoken throughout Latin America– Mexican Spanish is different from Peruvian Spanish, which are different from Spanish spoken in Texas or Florida.

Within your Spanish Translation project, you must also plan for text expansion when working on English-to-Spanish translation. Spanish is an expressive language; Spanish text can expand up to 25% over its English source in translation. This text expansion can greatly impact the layout and design of web pages, manuals, brochures, and presentations, so you must add time for a final review after the typesetting and reformatting are completed.

Sectors That Need Spanish Translation Services

Education

As mentioned above, Spanish is the US’s second most widely spoken language. Translation services for educational content are often required to aid communication between parents and schools. Also, many immigrants bring educational content that needs certified English translation services to continue their education in this country.

Education is also an industry where Spanish interpretation services are important. Many bilingual children are kids of Spanish-speaking parents. If the parents have a language barrier when communicating with the school, this can cause frustration and missed messages, generating problems. Providing Spanish interpreters for parent/ teacher meetings, conferences, or public presentations can help overcome the language barrier and facilitate better communication between the schools and parents.

Government

Departments of government must be able to communicate with every person in their jurisdiction, and to effectively reach a multi-lingual audience, translation services are needed.

To ensure equitable services are provided for everyone, government organizations overcome the language barrier using Spanish translation services. Translated materials increase understanding of information and encourage civic engagement.

Legal

Many legal documents require Spanish translation services. Whether your company is expanding into a new country, filling out required paperwork, and needs Spanish-to-English translation, or you need a Spanish-to-English translation of an immigration document like a birth certificate, the legal industry requires precise translations.

There is no room for error in dealing with foreign official documents and the law; inaccurate translations can lead to delays, fees, and complications. Legal cases contain both specialized language and documents, such as financial transactions. These complex documents need to be translated by someone who understands and has experience in the legal field. Subject matter expertise is a crucial part of a successful professional Spanish translator.

Human Resources

From the start of the hiring process to letting employees go, every stage of Human Resources requires paperwork. Onboarding forms, employee memos, schedules, and off-boarding forms all must be available to Hispanic audiences. If your company has a diverse workforce, you need Spanish translation services for your Handbooks and manual to ensure understanding among all your employee and promote inclusion.

Tourism

Traveling to a new place requires a lot of research. This research is easier if it is done in a person’s native tongue. Without offering a translated version of tourism marketing materials, people cannot learn about new places or plan a trip there.

Translated brochures, websites, and other vacation planning materials give people information and make them feel welcome. English to Spanish translation services for tourism materials can encourage people to visit the US, explore the natural beauty, and support local businesses – which is a win/ win for everyone.

The Importance of Professional Spanish Translation Services

With a rise in computer-assisted translation technology like Google Translate, it can be easy for a company to want to outsource this task to the cheapest option possible. But Google Translate (and other similar-level tools) cannot produce linguistically accurate, culturally sensitive translations in the same way as professional human translators.

Free internet translations are not high-quality translations- they’re awkward, grammatically incorrect, or downright inaccurate. If a Spanish teacher can tell when students use Google Translate, you better believe native Spanish speakers can tell when a company is too. And those errors show a lack of interest from the brand using them.

Working with a professional translation company means you never have to worry about the quality of your Spanish translations in any industry. With native Spanish speakers as your translator, you can rest assured that you’ll get high-quality, accurate translations that go a step beyond and localize for each of your demographics.

Localization is the key piece of working with a professional translator with your selected translation company. Spanish is a complex language with formal and informal pronouns, regional slang, and a unique sentence structure. Not only do Spanish translators need native fluency and subject matter expertise, but they also need the skills and knowledge to produce Spanish localization.

Working with a professional translation agency and Spanish translators also means reaching into the parts and pieces of your business that you may not consider for translations, like the keywords for webpages, metadata, special code for appropriate fonts, code for language signaling, and more.

The expert eye of the specialists brings even small Spanish translation projects the benefit from the expertise of professional Spanish translators.

Where to Start with Spanish Translation Services

Spanish document translations

This broad category can include a wide variety of documents, from legal paperwork and HR documents to instruction manuals, time off forms, and more. Start with documents in a set process, like hiring or onboarding, and expand from there. This can also include government documents like passports and birth certificates needing a certified translation.

Spanish website translation

In today’s digital age, everything a customer wants to know can be found in a few keystrokes. But if that critical information isn’t available in their language, then customers may skip right over it, ignore it, and leave without what they needed. But this can be fixed with English to Spanish translation. Translating your existing web pages into Spanish can increase the page’s traffic, engagement, and conversion rate.

Spanish medical translation

Language impediments in medicine are among the biggest barriers to providing care faced by doctors, nurses, and patients. Medical diagnosis, procedures, and treatments are complex and often require terms not used daily. Without providing Spanish translation services for medical documents or Spanish interpretation services for virtual or in-person visits, patients may leave with confusion instead of clarity, delaying treatment, or improperly dosing medications. Accuracy is paramount for medical translations.

Ready to take the next step in taking advantage of Spanish translations for your business with native Spanish translators? Whether you need English-to-Spanish translations, Spanish-to-English, or certified Spanish translation services, a language services company has the expertise, professional multilingual team, and tools to manage every part and piece of your project.

At JR Language, we go the extra mile to exceed your expectations at affordable prices and convenient time frames, keeping you informed every step of the way. Contact us for a translation or interpretation services quote today— we’d love to hear about your multilingual communication needs. Spanish translation services are an important piece of doing business for companies in nearly every sector and industry.

Scroll to Top