11
12
2018
traduction qualité

Why should we not skimp on the quality of translations?

Thanks to automatic translation, anyone can “translate” these days, but these translations lack the quality that a worthy translation agency can offer.

Today, thanks to available tools, anyone can “translate” a text. However, an automatic translation differs in many ways in terms of the translation quality: seriousness, accuracy, reliability… Three reasons, among others, to choose a translation agency worthy of the name.

A translation is like a business card

A translated text speaks for its translator, but it also speaks for its agent. Errors that arise in a translated document that was rushed or in amateur translations look bad. A serious company will hardly be able to hide behind excuses like “it is the translator’s fault”: the translation agency was the one that hired them. Also, the quality of their work is your responsibility. Therefore, whether it is an internal document or destined for a client, a supplier or any other third-party company, the translated text is your business card.

The risks of amateur or hurried translation

So that this “business card” is good publicity for you, you need a professional translator. The translator must not only have a perfect knowledge of both languages involved in the process, but also a minimum amount of time to complete the task. Lack of knowledge or time leads to spelling and grammar mistakes, errors in syntactical expressions specific to the original language, semantic approximations, traces of automatic translation… However, everyone knows that a poorly drafted text can be unreadable. Even a lack of punctuation makes reading an email difficult, long, tedious, and even misleading causes a loss of time, money, meaning and energy to the reader. In the professional field, it is similar to a commercial mistake. The same thing applies, all the more so, for a translation.

The importance of quality translation in the field of expertise

A quality translation is not limited to transcribing the text of a document. The translator must be versed in the specific field of the text to be translated. This knowledge will also allow them to capture the spirit of the text. For example, for a financial translation, in Paris like elsewhere, a certain degree of expertise in this area is necessary. This allows:

  • the translator to reproduce, beyond word for word from a specialized dictionary, the feel of the original text – precisely and fully.
  • another danger to be avoided – perhaps more obvious, but no less serious – would be inferior translation: the error of translation.

When the translation error means that the document loses its meaning, or even changes its meaning, it can even become, in some cases, dangerous. If it is a medical translation, it is of upmost importance that the instructions for medical equipment are translated correctly. The same for legal translation: you don’t want your contract to be roughly translated. This also includes the translations of financial reports, lists of ingredients, technical specifications…

For all these reasons, the services of a quality, professional, serious translation agency, in the globalized world in which we live, are indispensable.

Translation into English: Chloe Findlay

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This article has been written by Mathieu

Mathieu was born in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. After studying Literature and Linguistic Research, he moved to Argentina where he is currently a translator and a web editor.