How to choose a translator…

In an online world it’s almost impossible to know if you’re talking to a professional, a robot or another fly by night company. The world is a very small place now and you can connect with people in every corner of the globe in seconds. Visit any freelance site nowadays and you’ll see translators available for every language under the sun.  There are thousands of translation agencies in the world. The choice is limitless.

Who do you trust with your translation?
If you don’t speak the language yourself it is hard to tell if a translation company really is any good.  How do you know the manual you recently had translated is technically accurate, or indeed represents your company well. We’ve all seen badly translated English documents. We just never get to see the badly translate foreign documents as we can’t speak all those languages. However you can guarantee they are out there.

Even if you don’t speak a language you can still get an idea of how good the company is from a few simple steps. When you’re talking to the sales team – listen to the types of questions they ask you. Are they really interested in what your product does? or are they just trying to get you to close the sale today.

Good translation companies ask questions. Context is important for translation. When I speak about a “Row”. Is that a row of chairs, have a “Row:fight” with someone or are you “Rowing” a boat – taking a row.

If you are asked for a language such as “Spanish” – then you might be asked if you need Spanish for Spain, or Spanish for Latin America. There is a difference in the language.

Chinese is the same. There are different versions of Chinese depending on the region.

Get our Free Guide

If you’d like to learn more we’ve developed our buyers guide to translation that you can download for free here:

Damian Scattergood