How can I get the best translation services?

Whether your boss has tasked you with managing the company’s translation project or you’re running your own business and in need of some foreign language support, no doubt you’ll be looking to get the best translation services possible. As such, we’ve pulled together five quick and easy tips to help you get the best translations without them costing the Earth. 

Avoid machine translation

If you’ve toyed with machine translation, you’ve probably discovered that it can be a useful tool for translating the odd word or phrase. For longer documents, it can also help to give you the gist of what is being said if the document is in a foreign language. However, that’s as far as it goes. Machine translation is a long way from being reliable and accurate enough to use to translate a professional document. Whether you need a legal translation, a marketing translation, an environmental translation or anything else, the use of skilled human translators is a must. 

Many companies try to use machine translation in order to keep their costs down. After all, what business doesn’t want to save money where it can? Sadly, machine translation is not something that can be trusted, no matter how tempting the saving. Presenting documents to your professional contacts in clumsy, grammatically incorrect language is just not acceptable in the business world. That’s why translation companies like Tomedes are seeing such a notable rise in demand for post editing machine translation services, as businesses call in the professionals to mop up the mess left by the machines! 

Read reviews

One of the wonderful things about the internet is the speed with which people can critique a service. As such, if you want the best 2019 translation agency, it’s time to read some reviews. In addition to searching for general reviews of the agency or agencies that you are considering using, be sure to search for specific reviews too. For example, if you have a financial translation that needs to be converted from English to Spanish, search for “Tomedes financial translation review” or “Tomedes Spanish translation review.”

Communicate

If you want to get the best translation, talk to your translation agency! Don’t just send them your document, but share details of its intended purpose, who’s going to read it and why, what your company’s ethos is, why you’ve chosen the target language(s) you have and so on. By sharing all of this information, you’re giving the translator much more to work with. They can then translate your document with its intended use and audience firmly in mind, which can help to ensure that the translation is perfectly suited to them. 

Look for localization 

Be sure to find a translation agency that provides localization services as well as translation services. Translation converts one language to another, while localization goes a step further. It identifies any parts of the document that are unsuited to the intended audience. This can be anything from popular culture references that wouldn’t be understood to images that would be deemed offensive for religious reasons. 

Localization is a valuable service that has saved many a company from embarrassing mistakes and awkward situations that they might otherwise have landed themselves in. As such, if you’re looking for the best translation service in 2019, grill the agency on their localization credentials before appointing them. 

Don’t be afraid to barter

It’s always worth asking for a discount! You might not get one, but if you don’t ask, you don’t get, as the saying goes. You’re more likely to get a discount for a substantial amount of work, so if you have future translation needs coming up, speak to the agency about all of them at once. You are then in a stronger position to ask whether there’s any room for manoeuvre in terms of the price. 

Final thoughts

Your business deserves the best translation service. With these quick and easy to implement solutions, that is precisely what it can have. And on the subject of your business deserving the best, why not take a minute to check out the Tomedes Text Summarizer Tool – we think you’ll be glad you did!