Trusting your document to be translated can be difficult, especially when you don’t speak that language you are targeting with the translation. There are so many language translation services and if you are not careful you could end up hiring a translation agency that does not do justice to your document. Whether you are looking for medical, technical, financial or legal translation, you deserve professional translation services and a few tips can help you ensure that you get nothing short of quality and professionalism with the services.
1. Check out important company details
Automated translation services are not reliable enough and you want to ensure that you actually will have humans decoding the document. When hiring a translation company, therefore, ensure that you verify the agency has certified translators who have expertise in the field associated with the translation needs that you have. A good company should offer you the assistance of native speakers of the targeted language. Some of the other company factors that you should take into consideration to get the best include:
· Experience
· Availability
· Cultural understanding
· Size of company
· Legal and ethical obligation of service company
· Network connections
· Rates and services offered
· Past work reviews
2. Start early hiring procedures
Considering that a quality translation calls for constant feedback and also proper communication between you and the translator, you should find the professional as soon as you have a need to have a document translated. This is the only way you will manage to enjoy a constant and productive process that is well executed in the end. When you have enough time for the document to be done, you will also have enough time to have it proofread. You and your editor should actually start by proofreading before hiring a translator so you are sure of the translation specifications. Important to remember is that some files and languages take longer to interpret hence the earlier you start the better.
3. Designate the process to one contact person
As a service buyer, you should intend to make the work of the translator as easy as you possibly can. One of the ways that you can do this is by ensuring that the translator knows who to contact and only have one contact person to keep tabs with. This is the simplest way of keeping confusion during the process at bay. The person you assign the translation should be accessible, promptly answer translator questions, provides the translator with context of a document, define the target audience for the translator, and delegate team meetings when necessary, safeguard formatting and work towards quality translation from the word go.
4. Perfect the original document
If you start the translation process with a disordered document, then all you will get is a translation that is also disordered. To get quality services therefore, you must start by ensuring that your document is top quality in terms of spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity and word choice. You should also pay attention to consistency, tone, correct citations, proper nouns and names as well as format.