Leave it to the experts. Some activities we like to do ourselves, like mowing the grass, but other activities, like doing surgery, we should definitely leave to the experts, not novices. Translation can be one of those activities, especially when the content to be translated is some specialized topic. That’s why at IVANNOVATION we focus on finding subject matter expert linguists to provide expert translation services.
Expert Translation Services
For translators to effectively translate content, they must understand the content. Therefore for specialized content, you must find specialized translators—translators who clearly understand the topic and are able to discuss it intelligently in two or more languages.
Translation services consumers make a grave mistake when they hire an unqualified translator to translate technical documentation. The best outcome of hiring an unqualified translator is to get clumsy, word-for-word translations that may not make sense in the target language. The worst outcome is to receive clumsy (or maybe extremely polished) translations that convey the opposite meaning than intended.
A painfully unfortunate case of this may have been the time 47 knee replacement surgery patients in Germany had their artificial knee joints installed incorrectly due to a translation error in the knee joint instruction guide.
Care to have a knee replacement surgery twice?
Since expertise is so important, specialized foreign translation services have been our focus since 1998. We provide expert translation services to various industries, which include complex and technical fields. We we focus on helping companies in the fields of construction, engineering, law, manufacturing, web development, and software.
Use Native Language Speakers as Translators
The language service consumer should insist on finding not only industry experts but also language experts to do translation work. Currently, we have more than 350 translators who are experts in more than 35 different languages, and we have them translate only into their native language.
A client who needs a French translation, for example, will be assigned a translator living in France. This is because we believe that our clients should have the most accurate translations possible. Canadian French or French spoken anywhere other than France may vary in colloquialisms and other aspects.
Understanding the Translation Workflow
As technology improves, previously simple tasks become more complex and require experts to do them well. For example, in the old days when travel was by oxcart, anyone could fix the cart or feed the ox and get it moving again. But now in the 21st century, very few people are qualified to repair their own Tesla.
The same goes for translation. In the old days translation involved sitting at your desk with a source document, a dictionary, a candle, a quill, and a blank sheet. But now, technology has so transformed the industry, that using old methods is the translation equivalent of goading an ox rather revving your Tesla.
A language services consumer may risk wasting a fortune by not seeking the expert counsel of an experienced language services provider like IVANNOVATION. When we listen to the needs of our customers, we can help them develop efficient workflows to make translation easy and to improve the quality of the final product. Further, the technology that we use allows them to save with every sentence they have translated.
Learn More
We cover some of these techniques and technologies that improve translation efficiency in this article: 5 Reasons You Should Work With An LSP
So not only industry expertise, but also language expertise and translation technology expertise is required for effective translation services. If you want to have the best result for your translation project, you would do well not to work with novices.
(Updated: 09/23/2020)
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