Unless you and your employees are fluently bilingual, or you place far too much trust in Google Translate, expanding your business into a foreign language-speaking territory will require the help of professional translators.
But it’s not as simple as Googling ‘French translators’ and choosing the first ‘translator’ you come across. All professional translators will have a solid grasp of your desired language, but language nous alone will not take your business the extra mile in your new territory.
For a truly comprehensive translation service, you need your translators to have a working knowledge of the kind of business you run, and of the sector your business operates in. Luckily, there are specialist translations services with experience in all kinds of industries. You just have to know where to look.
Financial Translation
The financial sector is one of the most complicated sectors in business. Assets, bonds, brokerage, stagflation—the world of finance is stock full of uniquely dense terminology and jargon.
Needless to say, a translator working for a company in this area will have to have a working knowledge of finance; knowing the foreign-language equivalent of all financial terms, and preferably with more than just a grasp of the kinds of things working in the financial sector entails.
The financial translation wizkids at London Translations, for example, boast the capability to translate everything from investment portfolios to floatation collateral, meaning your translators can be just as aware of what is going on as you are, and help you operate better within a foreign financial industry.
Patent Translation
Filing a patent is integral to many businesses, especially those who sell unique products, or whose business model hinges on unique use of an innovative technology.
If your business falls under this category, it is a given that you will have at least applied for a UK patent to save your business from imitation, and though that patent will keep your technology or product safe in your home country, it will do nothing to help you once you move or expand your business into other countries.
If you are moving to Europe, the European Patent Office has worked with Google to bring you a patent translation machine that will translate patents from one European language to another. You can use this to read other patents that you think might be similar to yours to make sure your invention is still patentable in your business’s new location. There are no reports on how successful this machine is yet, but based on feedback for Google’s Japanese patent machine, it might be best to stick with human translators over their mechanical counterparts for now.
If you decide to patent your invention in a new country, there are two ways to do it. Either you can apply directly to a country’s patent office with the help of a patent translation service like the one offered by Intonation Translations, or you can apply for a patent in multiple countries using the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), an international agreement that makes applying for multiple national patents easier.
Technical Translation
If you need something technical translated, you can only trust translators who have a good understanding of technical language or, even better, technology in general. Otherwise, key technological details could be lost due to a misunderstanding of what a certain word means in a technical context.
Technical translators specialise in working on user guides and manuals; keeping instructions intact and all communication clear. They also work on other highly specialised material such as medical or industrial documents.
Government contractors Capita boast the ability to translate manufacturing and engineering content into 180 languages, working on documents such as manuals, data sheets, and even in-car entertainment interfaces.
Legal Translation
Legal documents are notoriously complex. Often spanning hundreds of pages, a properly translated court document could be make or break for your case. Though of course you will hope that your business avoids legal trouble as it expands overseas, a thorough legal translation will be imperative should any legal issues come up.
The translation team at City Legal, for example, work with top law firms to translate court documents, legal certificates (such as marriage or birth certificates), wills and contracts, factoring in a comprehensive knowledge of international laws to make sure they get such important translations right.