5 Myths Concerning Quality Translations

1.Bilingual employees do not offer useful feedback

Of course a bilingual employee who knows a lot about the company they work for can offer some valuable feedback. They may have some good ideas regarding terminology and word choice when it comes to company products. In the end though getting a NAATI translation is your best option as the quality can be guaranteed.

2.Quality Translations Depend  on client and translator agreeing 

Sometimes clients try to intervene and offer word choices that are not really suitable and translation services Australia has to tell them why certain words are simply not correct. However, it is important that both the client and the translation vendor work alongside each other to ensure that the best translation services Australia is offered. Even though the document translation services put much effort into providing quality translations, the client has to be pleased with the outcome too..

3.Short translation projects are the easiest to do

It does seem that having to translate less words will mean the translation job is easier but because it is shorter it is easier to spot smaller errors. Translation services in Australia scrutinise all translation jobs in exactly the same way and even the shortest translation project will start with the translator followed by the editor and ending in an internal review.

4.Larger translation companies may offer better results

Larger translation companies may have access to translators in a wider variety of languages so if you want product information translated into some less common languages, you may get a better service from a larger translation company.

If you require a translation for only a single language, or for a very specialised industry, a smaller translation agency may reap better results for you once you have located one that has particular expertise in your preferred language and your industry.

5.A translation may not be finished overnight

Time is often important to people when they want a job done but a translation is not quite the same as the translator allocated to the job needs time to ensure that the product quality is good and acceptable by the client. If a translation is required in a number of languages the right translators have to be found to complete the job. Some languages are in higher demand than others so the non-availability of suitable translators may mean a translation cannot necessarily be completed overnight.

An International Reputation for Your Business is Important

The internet and the growth in international trade has made the world smaller in some ways but from a business perspective it has increased competition because if a business doesn’t open its products to the international market it’s likely to lose its grip in terms of price and economic gain as well as its potential to grow. 

Ebay and other international marketplaces, such as China’s Alibaba enable businesses to market and sell their products to a global market. These sorts of marketin

g campaigns are far cheaper for the results they bring on a grand scale than any other marketing possibilities.

How can you help your international reputation?

First impressions of a business are important and one way you can make a great impression is by translating your website and product information into a variety of different languages. You will for sure be able to win a whole host of new customers if you are able to provide much needed information about your product in potential customers own language.  

You don’t need to translate your complete website but only vital product information which may drive visitors to your site. Chinese sellers that are frequently found on Ebay can claim success in their marketing campaigns because they have bothered to translate Chinese product descriptions into English from their source language which is likely to be Mandarin. 

If you have products that you think the Chinese population would like go ahead and use the Alibaba online advertiser to market your products but don’t forget to get your product descriptions translated by a reputable NAATI translator who will provide the most appropriate translation for your desired market and in Mandarin the preferred language used in mainland China. This sort of translation will boost your reputation as it shows that you are seeking to market your high quality product and you have faith in the Chinese as potential customers.

If you are seeking a good translation for your products in Mandarin seek help from translation services in Brisbane who have English Mandarin translators available on daily basis and can provide a service that is as good as immigration translation services which have to be perfect.

What is the Explanation for the Rapid Expansion of the Translation Industry?

This question needs no answering if you are already in the industry yourself, but those who are not aware of the reasons why translation services in Australia and elsewhere in the world are in such hot demand may be wondering what is going on.

There are two essential reasons why this is happening. One of them relates to the trend towards greater immigration and emigration and the growing diversity within a single nation and national market. The other relates to the onward march of globalisation. Love it or hate it there seems to be little that can be done to stem the effects of globalisation and its insatiable appetite for language translation services of all types.

Diversity on the inside

There are many socio-economic reasons why people get up and leave their country of birth and seek work and home in another country. Part of it is due to the wide differences in standard of living, sometime between two geographical neighbours such as Australia and Indonesia or the U.S.A and Mexico. It is inevitable that there will be a push for those in the poorer nation to want to migrate, legally or illegally into the richer one. That happens on a global scale, even between relatively affluent nations such as Britain and Australia or Canada and the U.S.

Then there are the many other “push” factors that drive people to leave, or even flee their native homes. War, religious intolerance and oppression can result in the movement, sometime in massive numbers, from one unfortunate part of the world to one that is more stable.

These two dynamic realities mean that a single economic market within a single nation now has to cope with many more people speaking different languages. Hence the need for better and more translation services to mediate communication.

Diversity on the outside

Many companies that used to only sell their goods within their own country are now expanding their business overseas aided by the Internet and translation services worldwide. Their products are being sold, sometimes from new bases in those new countries, but also online and the only way to do this competitively is to be able to ensure that the new markets understand what is on offer.

Globalisation doesn’t just mean the economy. Closer ties between different countries are at many levels. Greater communication and effective cooperation depends on understanding and here again translation service providers, whether they are NAATI translators in Australia or document translation service businesses anywhere in the world are at the centre of the trend towards a new and smaller world where people are forced to communicate and get on to solve what have become truly global issues and problems.

Accuracy is Vital in Medical Document Translation

It doesn’t take too much imagination to appreciate what could happen if medical documents or information is not translated correctly. The potential for this to happen is because we all live in an increasingly globalised world where people are moving from one country to another to travel, live and work more than ever. Not only that, but many pharmaceuticals and drugs are manufactured in one country and distributed all over the world. Medical instruments are bought and used wherever clinics and hospitals exist and very often these can only be used properly as long as instructions are translated accurately. The list of reasons why accuracy is so vital in medical document translation goes on and on.

It is always important to choose a translation service provider carefully and make sure that they have experience in the type of translation work that you want completed. However, there are a lot of generalist translation companies that may not have the expertise to translate medical documents or legal documents accurately. Both legal document translation services and medical document translation services need to be provided by experts in both the linguistic field as well as the legal or medical field as well. 

Medical document translators are specialised as they will need to be fluent in at least one other language other than English as well as have sufficient medical knowledge or knowledge of medical terminology in order to not make mistakes when translating what is required. The professional medical translator is likely to be in high demand and it is an exacting job as the translator will probably have to spend considerable time researching the subject matter, especially if it is a medical manual or instructions for a specific medical technique.

When choosing a suitable translation service provider it would be best to check out the larger companies first as they are more likely to employ a team of specialised translators, whereas an individual freelance is more likely to be a generalist. This is fine for relatively simple documents like birth and marriage certificate translations, but is not sufficient for medical document translations here accuracy and in depth knowledge is so much more critical.

Does Your New Business Need Professional Translation Services?

Many individuals, couples and partners seek to start up a small business of their own, often because they have grown out of working as an employee, or they think they have just the right business ideas and think it is a way to make a decent living. There are so many aspects that a new business has to grapple with that some things tend to take second stage. One of these things is the need to translate key items of communication in their business into another language.

This sounds perfectly obvious to anyone considering expanding overseas, but this is rarely something that a new business actually contemplates doing as soon as they start up. But how about potential customers and clients who live all around you, in small or large communities where English is not necessarily the main language used? In fact, there are few western cities these days where a cosmopolitan cocktail of languages is not spoken.

Ex colonial countries such as France and Britain have attracted many of their former colonial nations’ population to study, work and take up residence. Then there are large migrant communities in places like Germany, Norway, Canada, the U.S. and Australia. What attracts migrants to these nations is the economic opportunities in their new home or simply because they have fled oppression and war.

Just who are going to be your customers when you start your new business? If you leave these naturally non English speakers out then you may be denying yourself a large percentage of the business pie which could go instead to a rival business which might just take advantage of your naivety.

If you are indeed going to benefit from any amount of translation, it could range from simple things like notices on your door or window, information on your website, a menu if you run a restaurant and so the list is endless. Of course, if you are going to start up an Indian restaurant and specialise in North Indian cuisine, having a menu available in Hindi or Bengali makes more sense than having one in Cantonese or Thai!

There is an obvious limit to how much money you spend on translation tasks if you are just starting up but that should have been part of your business plan before you started and if you live in a multicultural and multilingual social milieu then hoping that you can get away with English alone doesn’t make financial sense in the long run.

Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to take short cuts on translation quality. If you do have a potentially large market which speaks a particular language, engaging a professional translator who has the expertise in that language is important. If you are looking for translation services in Australia then make sure he or she has NAATI translation credentials and in other countries there are comparable bodies that you can trust.

The Pros and Cons of Translation Crowdsourcing

Individuals and businesses are always trying to find ways to cut the cost of translation and wondering whether there is an easier way of getting their translations done effectively enough. When professional translation services seem too expensive and cheaper methods like machine translation do not provide the quality that is needed, then a middle ground translation method like crowdsourcing may be worth considering. So what are the pros and cons of crowdsourcing and why has it become such a popular translation choice over the last few years?

To deal with the negative factors first, these are the types of situation for which crowdsourcing is not good enough:

•  Document translation for official purposes, like immigration, citizenship, employment, education applications. In Australia, most of this sort of translation makes it mandatory to use a NAATI translation service. In fact, most professional translation services in Sydney or any other large Australian city are NAATI accredited, so there is no difficulty in finding an appropriate translator.

•  Where the translation may not be in the category above, but may be technical in nature such as a medical or scientific document or be full of legal terms. For this sort of translation service, you need to pay for professional translation services, preferably with translators who have specific experience with the sort of technical translation you need.

• When consistency or accuracy of translation is particularly important. This is when it makes sense to pay out for professional translation services, perhaps one that uses a computer aided translation (CAT) tool which “remembers” particular words and phrases and ensures that the same words are translated the same way.

Crowdsourcing definitely has some advantages, too. Here are some of them:

• a) It beats using a professional translator cost wise significantly, so for any translation work you want doing which doesn’t fit into one of the categories just mentioned above, then crowdsourcing may be a suitable option.

•  When content has been created by the user, like product reviews or social media content. Crowdsourcing uses real human translation so is infinitely better than machine translation at colloquial expressions and idiomatic speech. At the same time, the benefits of translation may not justify the expense of professional translation.

• For short jobs where translation consistency is not so important, crowdsourcing can provide a translator at short notice and at a very reasonable cost.

Indigenous Communities Disadvantaged by Legal Translation Deficiency

A project initiated by a researcher at Darwin’s Charles Darwin University is intended to try and reduce the amount of incarceration experienced by the indigenous community in Northern Australia. The researcher, Dr Samantha Disbray, has identified deficiencies in the translation of legal language as being one of the contributors to misunderstanding between law enforcers and Aboriginal communities.

The linguist’s project is the Language and Law Project and is being funded to the tune of $A28,000 by the Law Society Public Purposes Trust and hopes to focus on three communities in particular in Central Australia and help them to understand legal terms in English as well as translate them better in their own languages. The project may help NAATI translators cope with the all important translation of interactions within the communities, police stations and courtrooms that can end up in tragedy when translations get lost in misunderstanding.

Examples of the way legal terms can lead to misunderstanding include the way the word “guilty” is translated into Warumungu and Wumpurrarni, just to take two indigenous languages in the target area. When the word is translated it may simply mean “remorse” when the legal meaning in its English sense implies culpability for a crime. The project will attempt to explain what terms like these mean even if there is no exact word for them in the communities’ own languages.

Another word that often confuses indigenous people who are not fully bilingual themselves is the word “kill”. There is no confusion amongst native English speakers themselves, but when translated, indigenous people may believe that it means “hit” or beat” instead – vastly different meanings. It also means that when Aboriginal people communicate with police or lawyers and use the word “kill”, they may actually mean “using violence of some sort”.

It is easy to see how when translation service providers in Adelaide or other city in a state or territory where there is a significant indigenous community do not appreciate the way translation has become “lost” that individuals can end up being incarcerated needlessly, a situation which has all too often in the past led to tragedies such as suicide.

Because of the specificity of the different Aboriginal languages other linguists have been engaged by the project to look into legal translation in Pitjantjatjara and Alyawarra, two more languages widely spoken in the Central Australian region.