Language has the power to influence people’s perception and understanding of the world around them. It bridges the gaps created by geographical, religious, cultural, and educational differences found all around the world.
That’s why language translation has become a vital component in today’s globalized economy. It enables people from different parts of the globe to mingle and share information. Whether you’re an entrepreneur targeting a new section of the global marketplace for expansion, or a traveler aboard in a foreign country, having a language translator is vital for communication.
Fortunately, you can now hire a translator online. Below are some of the advantages and disadvantages of working with a language translator, so you can be well prepared for what you’ll be getting into if you decide to hire one.
If you’re unsure of the average cost of translation services, you can click here to read more about them.
Advantages of Hiring a Language Translator
Bridging the Linguistic Barriers Between Countries
When you’re talking to people from another country whose language you don’t understand, it helps to have someone on one hand who can act as an interpreter. Language translators are trained to speak and translate from one language to another fluently, and with ease. If they’re well-qualified, you can be assured that your messages will be properly interpreted and won’t suffer from any accidental mis-communications.
Professional translators have become an integral part of modern businesses because they help individuals and companies to expand their reach into new markets, by allowing them to speak to a particular target audience in their own dialect.
Improved Communication and Exchange of Ideas
Language translation services provide different parties with the ability to communicate and share ideas without a language barrier. Through translation, you can easily explain complex subject matters to another person in their native tongue.
Professional translators are able to maintain an extremely high level of accuracy in their work, quickly conveying messages correctly, without altering the meaning, or forgetting the small details.
Building Strong Relationships
The study of language translation teaches how people make meaning from the things they read or hear. As an entrepreneur, you need to build relationships with your global clients by personalizing your messages for each of them, in a way that feels personally relevant to their life and culture.
Personalized content is crucial for building trust between your business and its target customers. Language translation helps in understanding the cultures and attitudes of different people around the world. Businesses don’t exist in a vacuum, and you cannot build a relationship with your customers without understanding their traditions and value systems.
Disadvantages of a Language Translator
Inconsistency in the Level of Accuracy
If you had a complex project that required multiple languages, you’d need to hire numerous professional native-speaking translators. While this enables you to reach a much broader customer base, it lowers the level of accuracy and can easily distort the true meaning of your message.
Having multiple translators interpret your messages opens the door to the translator’s nemesis: inconsistency. For example, the word “expression” may be repeated throughout the source text, but could end up being translated differently by various translators, leading to varied interpretations and inconsistencies. The lack of uniformity becomes even riskier when you’re dealing with a multilingual project.
Costly Mistakes
Since nobody’s perfect, your translator is likely to make mistakes at times, like giving you faulty translations or accidently altering the final message in minor ways. Such errors can be very costly, especially if you rely on the translation to make serious decisions. And because you probably don’t understand the target language, you’ll only realize the mistakes when the damage is already done.
Remember that language translation involves reproducing the actual meaning of a message in the source language, as accurately as possible. This is a delicate exercise because you must be sure that the words in the translation are the most acceptable rendition of the original text.
In Conclusion
A professional language translator helps eliminate the barriers imposed by unfamiliar languages and allows you to communicate directly with your foreign audience without the fear of distorting the original message’s meaning. But even as you hire a language translator, you need to keep in mind that they are human beings, and they are likely to make mistakes, some of which may prove to be costly, so it can be wise to always have a second pair of eyes on any important documents that you have translated. From language translators to expert advisor programmers, find the expert you need on Guru.
