Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Why Good Translation Services are a Necessity



In this day of globalization, entrepreneurs and their companies increasingly require document translation services to better serve their increasingly international pool of clients and create a more global platform. However, translation itself is a skill under-appreciated by many in its complexity and difficulty. Regardless of what languages you are working with or whether your needs are for personal or business use, translation always requires the use of an actual human being.

While errors in website translation for personal use is a bit more forgivable (save for students' homework, perhaps), errors in business translations come across as simply unprofessional, sloppy, and potentially embarrassing. Consider that your company's literature is received by others as a representation of the company itself, as well as its country of origin. That said, foreign clientele reading your company's literature will tend to form an opinion -- a positive or negative one -- of the brand as a whole and as a result, gain or lose respect for it.

If you would like to depend entirely on free translation tools to meet your business translation needs, you will surely regret this decision. Translation is a task that insists on real live people due to its inevitable nuances and demand for intuitive understanding. Technology absolutely does not possess the ability of the human mind to comprehend and produce languages, partly because of its severe limitations built on syntax and algorithmic functions that do not allow for artistic license. Intrinsically, language often comes with slightly artistic elements such as metaphor, sociological implications, subtext, and idiomatic phrasing.

Besides these, there are also regional tendencies, tone, dialects, and varying demands on formality to deal with. In the same way that the written word in general may not be machine-produced, translators must keep in mind all of the above -- and more -- while carrying out their task of communicating a thought into a whole other language. Translations produced by machine almost always wind up garbled and filled with errors.

Even in a not-too-accurate translation, one that was created by a person will almost always communicate a distinctly human quality that cannot be overlooked. A translation professional will first and foremost keep in mind the essence of the sentences at hand and do his best to stay loyal to it in his translation. Machines simply do not possess the capability of this human touch, nor can they consider factors such as societal or cultural context or the different connotation of certain vocabulary.

However, it is important to understand that an experienced, quality translator like the translators in technovate translations is not in just anyone. There are people who are well versed in many languages but not fully educated in the technicalities of good writing, so you should investigate the background of the translators you are considering. Given that fields requiring translation services are tremendously diverse, from the rigidity of legal and technical writing to the flexibility of artistic and informal marketing lingo, you may like to hire somebody specializing in the type of writing that you specifically require.


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