Guide for Document Translation Services: How to Determine the Services You Need from a Translation Agency

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.