Imagine you’re pitching a new client. You’ve spent weeks getting all of the materials ready and rehearsing your pitch. It’s taken time, money, and precious energy to get here. But when you walk into the room to present, you find that half of your audience speaks Spanish as their first language – and the company before you just provided materials in English and Spanish.
Language translation services are a necessity in today’s business world, we are in a world where different languages come to the negotiation table. Whether you work in one country or in international markets, overcoming language barriers and providing clear communication is a basic task of business for organizations, government and companies. In a time where business is only bound by ambition, not state lines or country borders, the language barrier should not be a hurdle to doing business or providing customer support.
What are Language Translation Services?
Language translation services are a wide scope of responsibilities along every phase of the translation process. They include translating source material into target languages, proofreading, editing, transcreation, and localization. This is done for any document or online material available, from non-compete contracts, HR, and legal documents to marketing materials like brochures and online content such as websites and video subtitling.
Language services are important for a wide variety of reasons
Bridge the language gap. Quality translation services provide two parties from different languages with the ability to communicate clearly and exchange ideas, strengthening relationships and expanding social networks while overcoming cultural barriers. Offering different languages improves your customer support process.
- Increase your business reach. A staggering amount of consumers will refuse to interact with a brand that doesn’t speak their language. If you’re a B2C brand, it’s imperative you speak the same language as each of your target audiences, or you’re missing out on a big portion of your potential audience. The same is true for B2B businesses. In a world with so much competition, translation services can be a differentiator.
- Cost efficiency. If you’re a business doing high volumes of translation, targeting multiple languages, or embarking on a big translation project, you want to ensure you can get it done within budget. Language service providers like JR Language are experienced in working with companies of all sizes, budgets, and timelines. An experience translation company will bring a host of solutions from machine and human translation to the use of specialized technology like translation memory, multilingual glossary management and project management systems.
- Market research. Entering a new market requires a deep understanding of who your audience is there. Conducting market research is crucial, but that research will usually be in the language of the country you’re looking to enter. The culture and nuances of the language are crucial elements to understand and reach your new audience. Partnering with a professional translation company will help your company position your brand, products and services.
How are Translation Services Different from Interpretation Services?
Translation services deal with written materials, while interpretation deals with oral materials, or spoken words. Interpretation services are for live or recorded events, such as team meetings, new employee training, quarterly meetings, or instructional videos. Even if you don’t need materials translated, you may need interpretation services for multilingual teams or ASL interpretation for the deaf community.
What are the Benefits of Professional Translation Services?
While you could certainly plug your materials into Google translate and use the results, you would find them lacking. Machine translation is not yet able to produce linguistically and grammatically accurate results that resonate with your audience without thorough proofreading and editing by a human translator.
And you could certainly ask a team member who is conversational in Spanish to translate your website material, but the end result would lack the fluency and nuance you want. Conversational ability in a language is not the same level of competency as native professional human translator.
Working with Professional translators have many benefits, including:
- Experience. Speaking more than one language is not enough to become a professional translator. An individual must be fluent in multiple languages, understanding not just the words themselves, but also the grammar, colloquialisms, slang, syntax, and cultural influence. Years of experience in the craft adds to the translation quality.
- Accuracy. Professional translators are not just conversational in another language, they are fluent in both the source and target language, giving them a deep understanding of the syntax, grammar, slang terms, and other idiosyncrasies found in languages. Additionally, professional translators have an established editing and proofreading process, so your documents are always accurate – guaranteed. Linguistic accuracy is just one of the necessary qualifications.
- Turnaround time. Professional translators are, of course, professional dedicated full time to that craft, they use translation tools to support their work and have knowledge of the industry they work on. Translation and localization services are what they do for a living, and they’re steeped in the process. So, they can plan on their output and plan a project efficiently. This experience makes them efficient at what they do, meaning your documents and translated content will be turned around quickly without sacrificing accuracy.
- Subject matter expertise. Not only do professional translators have a fluent understanding of multiple languages; but when you work with a translation company, you also get a translator who has subject matter expertise, which is fundamental for the translation quality since they will use the appropriate terms for your translated content. Whether you’re working in the medical, scientific, or legal industry, you can trust that your translator understands your industry and the jargon that comes with it.
- Cultural competency. Every language is influenced by culture, and even countries that speak the same language as the US and the UK have linguistic differences thanks to cultural differences (like biro versus pen). A translator understands the culture of the audience of the target language, and translates text with that culture in mind, tweaking or changing things as needed to allow the original intent to remain in a translated text that will resonate with your audience.
- Reputation. A translation mistake is costly and embarrassing, in many ways. It costs your business something you cannot pay to get back – its reputation. Who can forget when KFC displayed an ad in China that asked customers to eat their fingers? Google Translate may be faster, but it isn’t more accurate than human translation.
- Localization. Translation is a word-for-word substitution in documents in adherence to the target language’s grammatical structure. While translating, it is important to localize to the audience that will use the translated document. Localizing your translation goes a step further, taking into consideration the locale language, culture, slang, and syntactical idiosyncrasies within a given language. The end result is a translation that reads as if it was always written in the target language while retaining the original message. So, in Spanish Translation you localize to Spanish for Mexico or Spanish to be used in Spain.
Does My Business Need Professional Translation?
Having translated materials is a must in today’s business world. There is no better way to increase your reach, begin a relationship, or facilitate communication than by speaking (or writing) in people’s native language. While English has become the global default for business language, that doesn’t mean you don’t need translation services. Even more so, having translated materials readily available in people’s first language reflects well on your company, showing consideration, empathy, and a solid work ethic.
Many people speak some English as a second language, but that doesn’t mean they can read it. People have a preference for their native language, and it’s often easier for them to read and digest than in English. It shows consideration for your client, current or potential. It also reduces any frustrations or miscommunications caused by trying to read English as a second language, particularly in technical documents. All in all, translation services improve your customer support process.
In our globalized world, a company needs a variety of elements in their multilingual content, from website, documents, brochure, videos, training material, mobile apps and social media posts translated. Working with the right language translation service company makes all of your translation and interpretation needs simple so you can expand your reach and create messaging that resonates with every target audience. Even if you don’t know where to start, the professionalism and experience of a language service provider can illuminate the path that leads you to global growth. At JR Language Translation Services, we work with companies worldwide to go the extra mile to exceed your expectations at affordable prices. Contact us for a translation or interpretation services quote today— we’d love to hear from you.
