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The Importance of Accurate Legal and Technical Translations
by Terralíngua      Posted in  June 21, 2013
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Importance of Accurate Legal and Technical TranslationsTechnology has improved leaps and bounds through the years. Innovative ideas are constantly being shared worldwide with enhancements and innovation in lots of technical fields. A key element to the advancements has been the ability to accurately and quickly share information related to any technology. With greater control over sharing, responding, and understanding information in real time, it has become possible to avoid many pitfalls of the past.

Accurate Technical Translations

Accurate technical translations have been an important factor in the various technological advancements through the years. Scientific languages can be very specific and complex. Most of the technical terms in such a field are fairly uncommon in general language use. Therefore, interpreting such words can be a very challenging task. Technical translations also have to be very accurate in terms of specific terminologies. Errors in the technical translation can lead to dangerous situations, issues, failure, and setbacks to the project.

Technical translations, when left to automated/machine translation software, are bound to cause many errors to come up in the translated file. While such software can be quite useful in case of translating general conversational languages, technical translations are usually beyond the scope of the software. Human translators with sufficient level of proficiency in both of the languages as well as the concerned technical field can guarantee a very high degree of accuracy in the translation projects.

Technical data available in safety manuals, operations manuals, technical proposals, websites, science journals, and patents have to be accurately and professionally worked upon for translation projects. Some of the terminologies in technical translations need to be changed for the benefit of the public. Interpreting technical terms to a form which is easily understandable for the people not informed about the concerned technical field requires the services of a professional translation company with skilled translators and sufficient background in the technical field. This is translating the data twice, once with the proper translation, and again with the easily understandable terms in the foreign language. This type of translation service is far beyond what any translational software can achieve.

The point here is that, when looking for a translational service provider for your technical translation needs, you should go for service providers with strong background in both the languages as well as the technical field of the project.

Tips on Choosing a Legal Foreign Language Translation Company

Legal and technical translations have to be very accurate or else they can cause huge complications in proceedings. Wrongly translated documents can be the difference between winning and losing a case. The following tips will help you in choosing the right legal translation company for your translation needs:

– Avoid hiring a translation company whose technical translators are not native speakers of the foreign language in consideration. Below par court interpretations and badly translated documents can change the course of a case, affect a firm’s global reputation, and can even attract new lawsuits. The translated document literally has the reputation of a firm at stake.
– Foreign language translation should not be compared with simply typing in a different language. Specific languages have different language and word twists that need to be taken into consideration while translating a document.
– Avoid hiring companies that offer “universal translator” for your translational needs, as well as using software or other devices for legal translations. These can have disastrous results on your project. The reputation of a language service provider can see serious harm if the provider puts up some wrong legal or technical translation for the world to see.
– Fast and cheap legal translation should not be chosen just because of what they claim to offer. Cheap translations can potentially harm your firm in the long run, and so should be avoided.

The bottom line here is to extensively survey the options available before deciding on a technical translation service vendor.

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