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Translation of technical documents

Let us imagine a situation when you suddenly receive a large volume of technical documents to be translated in high quality and with attention to all technical peculiarities in your field of activity, and you do not have a translator on your staff.

What can be done in such situation?

  1. Entrust the translation to your English-speaking staff members (technical specialists, managers from the foreign economic activities department, managers from the sales department, office managers, etc.).

  2. Send the documents for translation to several agencies at once and hold a tender.

  3. Find a freelance translator.

4. Seek the services of a translator-implant.

5. Turn to professional translators in the field and choose the solution for your sector.

Let us examine each option in detail.

The first option seems to be right choice on the surface, and that is why one is tempted to select this one. Nevertheless, things are more complicated than they seem at first sight.

In the first place, even if your specialist has a high proficiency in a foreign language, he is not always capable of delivering a high-quality translation of technical documents:

- if he is a technical specialist with an excellent knowledge of a foreign language and all branch-specific terms, he may still make errors in style and wording (often one may come across descriptive fragments, various clichés, and parts of marketing product descriptions in what are supposed to be purely technical documents);

- if he is a manager from the foreign economic activities department or a marketing specialist, he will cope with the marketing part without problems, but will make mistakes in technical terms or technical description of the production processes.

Another important aspect is the speed of translation. Most professional translators work at the rate of eight pages per day, however, using Trados this speed of translation can be increased several times. In real life, few specialists with knowledge of a foreign language can translate at a comparable speed.

In the second place, loading a specialist, who is not a professional translator, with translation assignments during his working time is very expensive for any organization, as this person will not remain productive in his regular tasks, because of spending too much time on the translation. In addition, the cumulative cost of labor of your staff specialist is higher than the cost of outsourcing the translation.

As a result, the translation process takes longer to complete, and most likely, you will need additional time to refine the materials you finally receive.

Send the documents for translation to several agencies at once and hold a tender.

This second option is even more adventurous. When customers try to save money by holding a tender to find a service supplier, translation agencies are anxious to secure a large contract, and often practice dumping. As a rule, this all ends up with agencies working at marginal or no profit, and often they are not even capable of performing the contract work in the proper quality. The result is a translation that requires additional work on the part of the customer (which means additional expenses), in spite of savings on the initial cost of translation. This option is chosen by many companies when they have sufficient time for their technical specialists to refine the text obtained after translation by an agency.

Find a freelance translator.

The third option is the most extreme. On the one hand, there are a number of websites on the Internet where you can select a freelance translator to suit your needs. Yet often freelancers tend to disappear, waste your nerves in arguments, or fail to keep deadlines. By choosing this option, you can either save a considerable sum of money, or fail completely and waste your money. Yet things are not always that bad, as sometimes you can come across a very responsible freelancer. Therefore, if you have enough time to search and analyze prospective candidates, this may be a good option for you.

Seek the services of a translator-implant.

The fourth option is the most innovative. You can contact us and we will select and test a translator in accordance with your requirements. He will work in your office just like a member of your staff and will work only with your documents. Your advantage comes from the fact that you will be able to cooperate with him directly and consult with him at any time. Another – and the ever-present – advantage is that this is project work and it is up to you to determine how long it will last. At the same time, all formalities will be taken care of through our company, so that you require no employee paperwork. The cost of this service is commensurate with the salary of a good translator in your sector, and settlements are performed based on a contract with our company. In addition, we will motivate the employee so that he remains interested in completing his work quickly and in high quality, as settlements may be made before the specified time (initially, we base our calculations on an average translator’s performance). The only disadvantage here is the longer completion times, as no one specialist will ever be able to quickly translate a heap of technical documents.

Turn to professional translators in the field and choose the solution for your sector.

Finally, the last option is our sector-specific solutions for translations in the following fields:

This option is ideal for large volumes of documents that need to be translated on a tight schedule, with guaranteed quality, and at a reasonable price.

For this purpose, our company has created nine divisions, each of them specializing in a certain sector.

Your documents will be processed by a sector-specific division including engineers with knowledge of foreign languages, translators, scientific and technical editors, proofreaders, and layout professionals.

Our engineers, with their knowledge of foreign languages, always keep an eye open for technical accuracy of each translation, and we employ native speakers for editing texts on the lexical and syntactic level to ensure high-quality translation into a foreign language.

Our translations always meet the following criteria:

- Technical accuracy of the translation. The translation must accurately reflect the technical sense of the original documents. The translation must correctly present the sequence and progress of operations described in the documentation, the meanings of terms, limitations and technical requirements provided in the documentation.

- Clarity of the translation. The translation must exclude the possibility of ambiguous reading and different interpretations of sentences. The target language translation must ensure ease of understanding and sense of the document.

- Faithfulness of the translation. The translation must preserve the headings of the source documentation (division into parts, sections, paragraphs and sub-paragraphs.) The translation must preserve the original layout and design tables, drawings, diagrams, graphs, charts, drawings and sketches. The translation must fully preserve all numbers, the degree of units of measurement, and other technical data (names of varieties, brands, types, materials, and equipment) to be included in the documentation.

By providing sector-specific translation solutions, we can perform the tasks of a “staff translator” for your company, thus ensuring real-time interaction with foreign partners.

For more information about this service, please consult with our managers 24/7 by phone at: +7 (499) 686-0390, or send a request using the order form on our website