If you quizzed a cross section of senior business people about their method of selecting their solicitors or accountants, they would certainly tell you that they had based their choice on a combination of relevant experience, depth of knowledge, resources and personal chemistry.
Larger multinationals in particular are now starting to select their translators with as much care as other professionals. However very few companies could actually claim to have a well-defined and documented translation policy.
Sadly there is still a school of people who think of translators as talking-typing-dictionaries on legs. When they need something translated into a foreign language, they get their secretaries to grab hold of the Yellow Pages and find someone cheap, cheerful, and above all available to do a last-minute rush job.
Yet as industry and commerce grow increasingly international, multilingual documentation is becoming too important to be left to the mercy of this Ahit and miss@ approach. In cross-border trade, it is vital to ensure a consistency of terminology in different languages, as well as the use of vocabulary and phraseology that balances an overall international corporate style with local custom and practice.
The best translators are gradually becoming central figures in modern companies, either as in-house staff or external consultants. They are expected to take on an increasingly broader role in information gathering, multi-lingual technical writing and general copy writing and often to act as editors of sales material and manuals, adapting them for overseas markets where necessary.
Therefore translators nowadays come from a range of professional and technical backgrounds and do not necessarily have an academic background in languages. For many jobs, you will need to employ a translation firm that has a full range of languages at its disposal and the technical facilities to provide, for example, camera-ready artwork in a particular language (an essential requirement if you are producing printed material in several languages).
It is extremely difficult to assess the quality of a translator if you don’t speak or read the language yourself. We have all laughed at the extraordinary pidgin English used in the instruction manuals that come with many foreign-made products and wonder how manufacturers could be so slipshod in their translations. What many UK companies do not realise is that their own foreign language texts can seem equally bizarre to customers overseas.
This is all the stranger because many companies now consider the written word as an essential part of their corporate identity. Clearly a comprehensive style book is a vital tool for your translator. This should contain accepted terminology, permitted and forbidden jargon, and phrases to be avoided in specific contexts because they give politically incorrect signals (eg some UK companies persist in making a distinction between the UK and “Continental Europe” which makes other European countries seem to be peculiar places at the very margins of the universe!)
The secret of a good approach to meeting your translation requirements is to plan ahead, even if it may not always be possible to predict when you might need a translator’s services. If you are likely to have extensive requirements in a particular language, you might also consider employing someone in-house.
As a starting point, you have to decide what languages you may need to work into and out of and the likely level of technical complexity. Thus, for example, if you are a manufacturer of computer software, you should locate a translator who is constantly immersed in an IT environment in your target language. Similarly, translation of legal documentation needs specialised knowledge and someone who normally translates literature for a living may not be your best bet for this purpose.
Many companies still engage translators for vital jobs without checking whether they are really up to it. In a sense it is a bit like taking your car into an unknown garage when you don’t know one end of an engine from the other – you then have no choice but to rely on the integrity and skill of the mechanic.
Don’t confuse translators and interpreters. Interpreters are experts in simultaneous or consecutive oral translation, while translators specialise in the written word. These are different skills and are by no means always interchangeable. Professional translators normally translate only into their mother tongue. Thus, for instance, your text into German should be translated by a native German, while texts out of Russian and French into English should be handled by someone who was born or at least educated in the United Kingdom or an English-speaking country.
You are also strongly advised to conduct a systematic search for the right translators based on the following step-by-step guidelines:
1. Contact the Institute of Translation and Interpreting, which maintains a database and publishes a directory of members, subdivided into language and subject specialities. The ITI is the principal body in the UK representing professional translators and interpreters. It has individual members all over the world and many corporate members including some of the major industrial and manufacturing firms and financial institutions. It promotes high standards of professionalism through training, conferences, seminars and publications, and operates a rigorous code of professional conduct.
2. If you are a small or medium-sized business, you may be eligible for a language consultancy grant under the DTI’s recently launched National Language for Export Campaign (LEXUS). The Government will pay for up to three and a half days’ professional language advice from an approved list of language experts.
3. Decide whether you need a translation for information purposes only or for publication, and allocate your budget accordingly. Generally speaking, “communicative” translations, where the original author’s words are adapted, say, to meet the needs of a promotional brochure for a given overseas readership, are more expensive than “semantic translations” which should be as close to the original, as possible – as, for example with a legal document. Remember, however, that appropriate expertise should be more important than cost. For example, in the high powered world of mergers and acquisitions, strictly confidential documents often need to be translated at the last minute. Unless the translator is thoroughly au fait with this type of work, it may be necessary to assign key negotiators to polish up the translated document, which can be both time consuming and very expensive.
4. Ask potential translators, whether freelance, translation companies or possible in-house employees, for references and ask for samples of the work they have already done – supplying both source and target texts. Get your potential translator to do a half-page sample text for which you should offer to pay. Again, show the work to a native-speaking colleague, client or contact who is as “language sensitive” as possible – ie, if your contact is barely literate in his own language or not a good writer, his opinion won’t be worth a great deal!
5. Ask your overseas offices to look out for good examples of translations in a relevant field and track down the translator if possible.
6. Start to prepare a corporate style book and glossary of terms, departments and job titles in English, and seek foreign-language equivalents. Ensure that your technical department thoroughly vets the glossary and that the foreign-language equivalents agreed are not just word-for-word translations but actually have the same meaning. Also make sure your product name doesn’t have an entirely unintended meaning in another language – for example the now defunct brand of French orangeade called Pschitt!
7. Remember it is horses for courses. Sometimes a freelancer will serve your purposes best. At other times, you will need the range of facilities only a company can provide. However if you use a translation company, try to get a written undertaking that the same translator who did the trial exercise will be used for future work.
8. Be prepared to liaise with your translator and provide background documents in both source and target languages and make sure he or she is given as much background briefing material as possible, including drawings and photographs where relevant. Keep in regular contact through the use of fax and e-mail to ensure a good result and, if necessary, ask for a meeting if the job is of a substantial or complicated nature. Always run proofs past the translator before going to press. This is a safety net that takes little time and can avoid expensive mistakes. If you are producing annual reports, offer documents or other high profile publications, several meetings may be necessary because on the ball translators will inevitably have questions about intended nuances and they may well identify weak points in the source text and identify cross-cultural pitfalls. For example, if you are producing a document for use in Spain, it may be wise to refer to “autonomous communities” rather than “regions” so as not to injure the sensibilities of the Catalans or Basques.
Perhaps the self-effacing nature of most translators has kept them generally out of the limelight. But in a world where trade barriers are disappearing, while people tenaciously cling on to a myriad of different tongues, a good translator is vital if the wheels of commerce are to keep turning.
