Business Translation

Business Translation

International companies rely heavily on language translation to get their information about products, services, transactions, and management methods across cultures to users of the target countries. Without language translation, global business cannot exist. Thus, translation is seen as the basis for global business and an important guarantee for its success. People that own an international business invest a lot of money in translation and expect impeccable services, this article focuses on the challenges that one might encounter in this field of translation and proposes a few techniques that could help you avoid mistakes and misunderstandings.

1. Attention is essential

The success of international companies in not owed only to clever industrial strategies. Effective cross-cultural communication is a must and here is where translators intervene. To emphasise how important translation is and how can a common mistake affect a business, I will give you an example. Mr L. , a mineral developer, received a report on mining from Pakistan. He trusted a company in China with the translation work. In half a month’s time, Mr. L soon received the translation that showed that a mine he was really interested in had a gold content of 0.2%. Excited as he was, he went straight away to Pakistan ready to invest. The trip cost him a lot of money and when he arrived there he found out that the mine had 0.2% silver content, not gold. The translator made confusion between two words, which cost Mr L. a lot of time and money. He even filed a lawsuit against the translation company. What I want to emphasise through this story is the importance of attention in the career of translator. This is the first quality that a business translator must have. The future of a business depends in some cases on the efficiency of the translator, so mistakes are not allowed.

2. Stay informed

To improve their skills, business translators must try as much as possible to develop their attention to details. There are several techniques that one might use to achieve this. First of all, reading books and academic journals about business translation is a good way to improve your skills. This way you learn from other people’s experience and mistakes, which helps you avoid similar situations. Reading business journals all the time gets your brain used with the terminology and the numbers, so your work will become much easier. It is important to focus on the terminology, but in the case of business translation one must not forget about the numbers. They are important and they must not be ignored in order to avoid mistakes. There is also literature available on common mistakes and techniques that help you achieve impeccable translations. These are great for those who haven’t got a lot of experience. Thus, we have all the reasons to say that a business translator must be an avid reader as well.

3. Experience matters

An ideal situation is when a business translator has experience in the field. Most of the companies will choose someone who has some past experience in the business sphere. This is why it is important for translators to specialise on a particular subject. This will increase their chances of getting a good job. Furthermore, business translation requires knowing a specific terminology that must be studies thoroughly by those who want to work in the field. This can be achieved by studying a business related degree or by working in the business sphere. A lot of people that studies business with foreign languages for instance will choose the career of business translator at the end of their degree.

4. Avoid association with your first language

Companies often need advertising campaigns, which of course need to be translated as well. Mistakes in the advertising industry are common and most of us have spotted at least one. Actually, a survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal showed that from the 513 people that were surveyed, 57% spotted mistakes in advertising. Bad translation makes clients wonder about the quality of the product, which can affect sales. The most common mistakes stem from the fact that translators tend to associate some words with the equivalent from their first language. For instance, many English translators tend to write the Spanish “un dolar” like the English “dollar”. If you look carefully, this type of errors exist on a lot of products and just show lack of professionalism from the translator. To avoid this, he must learn the differences between languages better. Proofreading and asking some other people`s opinion could be useful techniques as well.

5. Cultural awareness

Cultural awareness is also very important in the business industry especially when it comes to advertising. A translator must never forget that commercials use a lot of idioms, so translating them work by word will have an unwanted effect. You cannot argue that you know a language very good unless you know its culture as well. For example, a British company, HuntWesson, once marketed one of its products “Big John” in French speaking areas of Canada, but the name was translated as “Gros Jos” (“big breast”), so there was an impact on the sales. Another British company, Sweppes, translated its tonic water as “Sweppes Toilet Water”. These situations emphasise the translator’s ignorance regarding the cultural implications of the words used.
In conclusion, business in a field that needs translation in order to function properly, but we’ve seen that when mistakes are made translation can become a big issue. Mistakes must be avoided and translator must use all the techniques known to become more efficient. Professionalism can only be achieved through hard work, research, reading and practicing.