With a lot of businesses going global and international with
their expansion, the need for translation services is very evident. While
English can be said as a universally spoken language, not everyone speaks or
understands English, usually in non-English countries. For example, if an
American company decides to set up a branch in Tokyo, then they cannot getaway
with writing and typing relevant documents in English; they will have to take the help of a professional document translation service provider to get them done
in Japanese, both for their own productivity and for ease of understanding by
the Japanese public in Tokyo.
If you are a business and want the services of a
professional translation agency, then you need to look at the scope of services
and the type of documents you need to be translated. Some translation agencies
work with every kind of document, whereas some agencies deal in only specific
type of document translation such as legal documents or webpage contents. Here
is a short guide to get you started on your decision:
The Language You Want to Translate to
The first thing you need to look at what languages you need
translation for. If you are expanding to multiple markets at once and require
multiple language translations for documents, you need to pick an agency that
can do these languages altogether, for it will be both economical and
time-saving to get it all done via a single translation agency.
The Type of Documents to be Translated
The second thing to consider is the type of documents that
you want to be translated. Are they legal documents? Technical documents?
Website content? Do you want the translation of every official document into that
language? Depending on the type of documents you want to be translated, you can
either pick a specialized translation agency for a singular kind of documents
or a universal translation agency for multiple kinds of documents and written
texts.
Translation Company or Freelancers?
A major roadblock when deciding on translation services is
whether to go with a translation agency or a freelancer. Both have their own
pros and cons, but it mainly depends on your budget and the amount of work to
be done. If it is for a few documents in a single language translation, a
freelancer would arguably be the best option. But if you want heavy-duty
translation or translations to multiple languages or both, then going with a
translation agency would be the best bet. Translation agencies have a number of
experienced translators spread out around the world, so you are guaranteed to
get a native-speaking professional for the language you want to translate your
documents into.
Translating written text into a different language is not as
easy as just picking up words and translating them; the translator needs to
read the sentence, understand it, and translate the sentence into the language
in a way that makes sense in the translated language. Machine translation also
exists where AI is used for translation, but they are best left for personal
translations as they are rarely accurate and are a very long way from beating a
real human at the translation game.
