Professional translation is not a service reserved for corporations operating across multiple continents. The scope of businesses, organizations, and individuals whose activities, reputations, or legal status rely on accurate and effective linguistic translation is much broader than most people think, which is why professional translation companies like Alpha CRC work with clients across the spectrum. The need for professional translation exists wherever there is a language barrier, and a low-quality or rushed translation can significantly impact your reputation.
The Businesses That Know They Need It
At one end of the spectrum are organizations in which professional translation is a core part of the business, including pharmaceutical firms that need to translate clinical trial documentation for regulatory submissions, law firms that need to translate contracts and litigation materials for peers across borders, and manufacturers that need to translate technical documentation for international markets. These organizations usually have established translation connections and an understanding of the required standard. They are a small percentage of the businesses that could benefit from professional language assistance.
The Businesses That Do Not Realise They Need It
Many more companies have content that spans multiple languages, but don’t consider cross-language work a professional language task. For a non-English-speaking customer base, marketing materials are adapted by a bilingual employee, or website content is translated automatically without human proofreading. A distributor’s product documentation did not contain quality assurance. Customer communications written by a team member whose second-language skills are adequate for the task but not for the register and precision required by the content. In each of these instances, the content gets the message to the audience, but not as effectively as it would if it were professionally created.
The Professional Services Dimension
Many law firms, accountancy practices, consultancies and other professional services firms regularly engage with clients, counterparties or documentation in languages other than English. In situations like these, where a misinterpreted contractual clause, a regulatory submission, or a client message can have professional and legal implications, it is the precision that professional translation provides and that informal versions cannot ensure. In a professional services context, the stakes are high of getting it wrong, investing in getting it right is an easy decision.
The Public Sector and Third Sector
Communities with members who speak languages other than English are served by public bodies, charities and not-for-profit organizations, which have an ethical and, in many cases, a legal obligation to communicate with these communities in an accessible way. The organizations that fulfil these obligations by employing professional translation and interpreting services, rather than ad hoc solutions, can create communications that are more effective for their audiences and minimize the risk of miscommunication in high-stakes situations.
The Threshold Is Lower Than Most Businesses Think
The moment to hire a professional translator is not when a company is already international, it’s when it’s trying to communicate with an audience in a language other than the one in which it was written. The quality of the communication is critical to the results it is intended to achieve. In fact, the bar for professional translation involvement is set much lower than most businesses have, and the cost of raising the bar from informal to professional is usually low compared with the cost of the content failure it avoids.
