Find Highly Skilled Remote Document Translators on Guru
If you’re not investing in document translation, you’re missing out on 50% of potential sales opportunities. How? Two out of five online shoppers make a cross-border purchase every three months. Moreover, about 40% of internet users say they will not purchase from a business or website that doesn’t communicate with them in their native language.
This means that if your product descriptions, product reviews, technical manuals, and other informational documents are not readable to buyers (or potential partners), there’s a gap between you and valuable business prospects.
A document translator can help bridge this gap and ensure seamless growth and expansion of your business. Hiring professional translation services to translate your website or documents into another language could be a valuable investment of resources.
What Does a Document Translator Do?
Once a skilled translator is hired to translate your content, they act as a linguistic bridge between your business and customers who speak another language. Translators ensure that the essence, context, and meaning of the original content are conveyed accurately in the target language. Professional translation services can take any creative or technical content and produce quality translations.
Translator and interpreter responsibilities include:
Source-to-Target Language Translator Conversion
A document translator translates content from the source language into the desired target language–all while ensuring correct grammar, syntax, and coherence of the documents. The translation process requires not only a literal understanding of both languages but also their tones, cultural references, idioms, and other writing nuances. The goal of the translation is to reproduce the source text as close as possible to how it comes across in the target language. You can ask an interpreter to report on how well the translation was done and if the content kept its original meeting.
Incorporate Specialized Terminology During Translation
Every industry has its own jargon. An expert document translator possesses in-depth knowledge of these terms, especially if they are a niche-specific or specialist document translator. Using this knowledge, translators efficiently and accurately translate the information in the source text, whether it’s legal documents, medical reports, technical manuals, or marketing materials. Freelance translators can also help with email, content, and other translations.
Cultural Adaptation
Apart from literal translation, a document translator ensures that the translated content resonates with the cultural beliefs, practices, and norms of the target audience. This involves making adjustments to idioms, metaphors, humor, or even visual elements in order to ensure cultural relevance and eliminate any parts of the content that may come off as confusing or offensive. A certified translation ensures that the writing is translated correctly as well as the meaning and cultural significance.
Maintain Author’s Voice Throughout the Document
A remote translator also ensures that the translated text retains the original author’s personality and tone of voice. The translator will read and translate the content through the lens of the author to ensure this accuracy.
Say you need to get an English marketing message translated for a Chinese audience. A translator will work with writers or content developers to ensure that the translated text evokes the same emotion and carries the same voice and style as the original writing–something that’s impossible to achieve with a technical translation tool.
Proofreading and Quality Assurance of the Translation
One bonus benefit that freelance document translators offer to business owners is another round of proofreading before the content gets posted. Translators conduct thorough proofreading and quality checks to ensure that the document is free of any factual, technical, or grammatical errors. Translators have a high standard of quality control. Translators also read and edit the document for a consistent flow and deliver a polished and professional final product.
Types of Documents that a Document Translator will Translate
The most common types of documents that undergo document translations include:
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Medical and healthcare documents
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Business marketing materials (such as advertisements, brochures, and email campaigns)
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Legal documents (such as contracts and patents)
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Technical manuals and guides
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Financial and banking documents
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Academic and e-learning educational material
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Immigration and visa documents
Why Hire a Freelance Document Translator or Interpreter for English Translation?
There are countless benefits to hiring quality translators and interpreters for your content. To get the most benefits from your freelance translator, it is best to hire specialists that have the experience and skills necessary to do quality translations.
Unlock Global Opportunities
As mentioned above, document translation can open doors to international markets by making your document accessible to a diverse audience. For e-commerce store owners and global service providers, this means there’s massive potential for business expansion and growth with document translation.
Another fact worth noting is that there are 980 million internet users in China (while the US has only 300 million). So, if you translate your website and business documents into Chinese, you could potentially increase your revenue by three times–or more.
Ensure Professionalism and Accuracy
Companies that hire professional translation services have a higher likelihood of achieving their cross-border goals and maintaining a competitive edge. Translation helps you stay ahead of the curve. Plus, accurate translations not only convey the right information but also showcase your commitment to professionalism and attention to detail. Hiring a remote translator with quality translation skills and technical experience can help you stay ahead of the competition.
Time and Resource Efficiency of Each Translation
In-house translation can strain resources–it can take up to three times as long as planned if done in-house. So, outsourcing the task to a freelance document translator saves time, freeing up your team for more meaningful tasks. A remote translation will do a quality job and ensure that your documents meet technical standards.
What Skills Should a Document Translator Have Before Hiring Them?
When hiring a document translator, there are three important skills that you must look out for. These translation skills are:
Translator Linguistic Proficiency
Ideally, a translator should have native-level proficiency in the target language and should be certified in translation skills. If they do not have ample experience in handling translation projects, check out their academic qualification and relevant certifications to estimate their proficiency level. You can also start with a paid test project to clear any doubts about the freelance translator.
Understanding of Confidentiality
Document translators often handle sensitive and proprietary information. So, make sure your translator has a strong commitment to ethical principles. You can ask them to sign an official NDA or set up terms and conditions regarding data handling while working on your translation projects.
Technological Proficiency
A skilled document translator should have a command of the basic digital tools that are required to execute the translation job successfully. These skills include:
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Word processing software (as many jobs require the freelancer to manually translate documents)
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Project management tools
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Grammar and quality checkers
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Cloud-based drives
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File sharing tools
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Computer-assisted translation tools (which often use AI to supplement the translator's skills)
How Much Does Document Translation Cost?
Document translators can charge per word, page, document, or project. Salaries will vary translator to translator. You can negotiate and settle on translator salaries that is the most economical for your needs.
As an idea, you can expect to pay between $10 and $100 per page or between $0.04 and $0.12 per word for translation jobs. Note that this is an average range for translation services, and expert document translators who freelance may charge more.
Of course, Guru has you covered with skilled freelance document translators to meet your needs, regardless of your budget or project. Check out our catalog of experienced remote document translators or post a free job listing today!