The nations of yesterday could have only dreamed about the degree of interconnectedness that we experience today. Sure, the distances between the continents might have stayed largely the same, but the means of transport have evolved, and now it will take you mere hours to get from Berlin to Tokyo, instead of months. This combined with how the web lets us expand our business globally means that have trusted document translation services available is more critical today than ever before.
We don’t even have to leave our homes to talk with people who live thousands of miles away – all you have to do is to reach your pocket and start typing on your smartphone. It is nothing unusual to work with people located in several time zones and with different mother tongues.
However, even though you might not encounter any issues conversing freely with your work colleagues from other countries, it doesn’t mean that your business wouldn’t benefit from professional translation services. In this post, you’ll find out why hiring professionals who would take care of document translation for you is a good idea.
Your Brand’s Image
Most business owners are aware that in 2020, what customers think about your company is extremely important. It’s not that previously it didn’t have any impact on sales, but in the 19th century, unhappy customers could not leave angry comments on Yelp or write a scorching review of your business on Google. It took much more time to form a public consensus on products or companies. Now, customers are free to type “the name of the business + reviews” into a search engine and spend the next hours reading terrifying stories.
How is that connected with corporate document translations? If your business operates in other countries, you need to translate all types of documents meant for customers from one language into another. Oftentimes, the responsibility of doing this work is delegated to other employees who are familiar with the target language, even if they don’t have any experience with professional language translation.
It seems like the easiest option – with the help of free translation tools, such as Google Translate, it should be a walk in the park, right? Unfortunately, even though decent language skills and useful software will be enough in most cases, making sure that your documents are translated perfectly is of utmost importance. That’s not just a matter of customers having a problem understanding e.g., what the products’ descriptions are meant to convey. The general sense of the message you are trying to convey might still be there, though the phrasing might sound awkward.
In today’s world, it doesn’t take a lot of effort to find a similar business that would do the same job, just a little bit better. It’s impossible to achieve perfection every time, but if your marketing materials contain mistakes regularly, your customers will take notice. Mistakes in translations will hurt your company’s brand image, with an adverse effect on revenue and sales. That’s why we think it’s better to let professional translators do the work. Sure, document translation services aren’t cheap, but the documents will be translated into different languages in a professional manner, and there won’t be any mistakes.
However, it’s not even about outright document translation errors. If, instead of relying on language translation services to create a faithful document translation, you’ll choose to do the job by yourself, as your language skills are more than decent, it still might not be enough. Why? That’s because to create a faithful translation, apart from the pure language knowledge, you’ll also need to understand the culture of a particular country. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as translating the text into another language; the translation process won’t bring the expected results unless the cultural differences are accounted for.
When it comes to the translation of legal documents, or having other languages available on your website, the likelihood that an employee without extensive translation experience will do the job perfectly is even slimmer. That’s because sometimes even native speakers have trouble understanding the intended meaning of legal documents.
Apart from the knowledge of the law, let’s not forget that the regulations might differ in 2 countries. Because of that, the safest bet would be to hire a company providing language translation services. This way, you would be able to rest assured, knowing that the documents would be translated in a professional manner.
Conclusion
Efficient communication is essential if you want your clients to perceive your business as reliable and trustworthy. Unfortunately, even if you know the basics of another language, it doesn’t mean that you’ll be capable of translating business documents even with the help of software.
If we take into consideration the potential repercussions of poor translation of the marketing materials or legal documents, choosing professional document translation services is a no brainer. The opinions of customers can make or break businesses, which is why cutting corners is not really a viable option if you want to keep your company thriving.
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