Your Spanish Translation Quote – Tips and Advice

Choosing the correct translation services is often a very difficult and time consuming. These days there are thousands of freelancers, agencies, directories, software and methodologies. To add to this, the difference in the Spanish translation quotes from agency to agency can vary greatly. This mish-mash of decisions make it very difficult for a person to be happy with the choice they have made and may make them always wonder what they may be missing.
The aim of this article is to aid the reader to make informed decisions when purchasing translation services. The article touches many translation issues and hopefully some will be applicable to you the reader when making a safe decision.

The core resource of translation is course the translator. Let’s take a scenario where we have a friend who is bi-lingual in Spanish and English and a medical patent to translate from English to Spanish. Easy, he’s a friend and he’s cheap although he has no translation experience. Wrong, the consequences of choosing this resource, although cheap, could be disastrous. Every particular field of translation requires particular skills. In this case where we have a medical patent translation the translator needs to have grounding in medical science and be up to date with the latest medical terminology. In addition, they must also be experienced in writing in the particular style of medical patents, something which is learned over years of practice. At One Stop Shop we have medical patent translators with PHDs in fields such as chemistry, biology and biotechnology and years of experience translating in these particular fields. Even within the Medical or life Sciences field a translator with education and experience in chemistry would be a much better choice, than for instance a translator with a background in Biology, for the translation of a drug patent. It must also be emphasized that your translations should be handled by professionals. A good translator is a linguist, they have studied the art of translation, specialized in the language combination and fields they are most suited to and built up years of knowledge and experience. A linguist also has to mold the Spanish translation for an international audience meaning that the language must be neutral and not have any slang or regionalisms.

Some people may query the importance of being so selective when choosing a translator, after all, it’s only translation but take the example of the drug patent which is written by a chemist. To the average lay person the patent is double Dutch. The patent will only be understood by peers in the industry. This is why peers in the Spanish speaking drug patent field deserve to receive a high quality translation from a translator with grounding and experience translating drug patents regardless of the translation price.
The image of the company depends on it. A poor quality translation will cause untold damage within your industry and affect your standing within this industry.

Some clients may say that they have this great software that translates automatically. One thing to bear in mind that machine translation is only approximately 60-70% accurate, the rest of the fine tuning needs human intervention. While machine translation is good for informal translations and getting the general gist of something, professional translation that represents the image of the company requires a human. Then a client may say to edit the machine translation thus saving up to 70% of the costs. The reality is that a professional translation agency or translator will probably refuse to do this as editing a machine translation involves re-writing the whole translation and may involve more work than starting the translation from scratch.

The next question is whether to use a freelancer or a translation agency? The main question is what the difference is. With an agency the text is revised which is why the translation quote tends to be more expensive. The main advantage to having the text revised is that it is better to have a “second eye”. No matter how good the translator they are bound to make errors from time to time and in this respect, the revision cycle is like an extra safety net to eradicate these simple errors providing a higher quality translation.

To summarize, here are a few questions to ask oneself, before deciding on the translation service to use:
• Is the translator experienced and qualified in this particular field. Ask for a profile of the translator or better still ask for a sample of profiles and decide on the best fit
• Why is the translation so cheap from this agency? In some cases the translation rate may not include revision, hence the reduced fee. The translator may not be fully qualified either and cheaper to sub-contract.
• Does the Translation Agency use the latest Translation memory technology? This is very useful in the case of updates. The previous translation is re-used and hence reduces costs and ensures consistency.

Expansion of German Translation Services Department - One Stop Shop Translations

One Stop Shop Translations has just announced the expansion of its internal German translation services department with the recruitment of an additional German translator. The recent recruitment of the German translator coincides with the expansion of the Spanish translation department showing the growth of One Stop Shop Translations over the past two months. The company operates a strict translation and revision policy where text is translated externally and revised in-house. The internal German translation team has now risen from one to two staff, solely dedicated to revision.

One Stop Shop Translation’s CEO, Mark Kieran says, “The expansion of the German and Spanish translation departments shows the growth and confidence of the company despite the current economic conditions. With further ambitious plans to expand the French translation department and employ a Chinese translator in-house we are looking forward to slashing costs while maintaining our high quality standards. All these developments are indeed very exciting and encouraging”

Now the company covers all German translation sectors such as Medicine, tourism, journalism, finance, real estate, marketing to name but a few..

Expansion of Spanish Translation Services Department - One Stop Shop Translations

One Stop Shop Translations has just announced the expansion of its internal Spanish translation services department. The company operates a strict translation and revision policy where text is translated externally and revised in-house. The internal Spanish translation team has now risen from two to four staff, solely dedicated to revision.

One Stop Shop Translation’s CEO, Mark Kieran says, “With the recent surge in the English Spanish translation demand we had no choice but to expand our internal Spanish translation team to maintain our quality standards. It’s a really encouraging sign of the growth of One Stop Shop Translations over the past two years.”

Now the company covers all Spanish translation sectors such as Banking, finance, eLearning, Information technology, medical translation, business, legal and many others.

Medical Translation Services

Medicine is an ever changing field due to scientific and technological developments. Consequently, there is always new terms being added to the medical dictionary. Due to the nature of medicine, medical professionals tend to use the original source term in the target language. This results in a lot of English terms being used in the medical lexicon, similar to all the English terms used in the information technology sector.

When these terms appear for medical translation later we are left with heterogeneous translations across publications. In some cases the medical students translation lacks sufficient knowledge of the target and source language while the professional translator’s translation lacks in-depth knowledge of the subject matter.

This goes a long way to explaining a doctor’s reluctance to adopt new translated terms into the medical lexicon. The next question is of course how can we navigate these difficulties. Firstly it is important that the amateur translator with a strong background in the specialist field have strong relations with a professional translator. Visa versa, it is important the professional translator have reliable contacts in the subject fields he/she is translating. In the perfect scenario we are hoping for a professional translator qualified and experienced in the specialist field he/she is translating.

Finding the perfect scenario is in reality a very tall order. This is mainly due to the fact that most medical fields are better paid than professional translation.
Extensive bibliographical research should always be done on previously published terms, making an effort to stick with the original choice made by the first translator (provided it makes sense). Consistent translations make the text easier to understand and facilitate the incorporation of new words into the terminology. Finally, if publishers and translation companies are committed to the services they provide, they will pay their professionals well. Poorly paid work leads to poor quality work. These measures will help improve the quality of medical translations, whether the terms are left translated or not.

Legal Translation Services

Legal translation is extremely complex and should never be done by someone who is not qualified to translate legal documents accurately to the target language. A legal translator not only translates from one language into another but also from one legal system to another. The translator must understand local culture and have detailed knowledge of the legal system in the country for which the translation is intended.

The legal translator should also be a native speaker of the target language and have a fundamental understanding of the source language. Legal Mistranslations can have devastating consequences and even result in legal action against the company or person involved. A slight paraphrase can change the legal meaning of a document
On 13 November 2007, during the long-running media pursuit of the case of the missing English girl in Portugal, reporter Fiona Govan filed a report on ‘Madeleine McCann: Possible translation errors’ in the UK Telegraph.

“Inconsistencies in the statements given by the McCanns and the group of friends who were dining with them at the time of Madeleine’s disappearance may have been caused by errors in translation, it emerged today. Portuguese detectives investigating the case of the missing four-year-old have admitted that they are reassessing the original witness statements to look for inaccuracies in their translation.”

Terminology plays a key role and the legal translator should have a full understanding in this area and be able to adapt the text from the source language to the target language without losing anything in translation. This requires expertise and experience. Legal matters are constantly changing throughout the world and the legal translator must keep abreast with these changes.

When sourcing legal translators it is important that they fulfil the following criteria:
Familiarity with the relevant legal terminology

Knowledge of the legal systems, both of the source and target languages;

Confidentiality

Timely delivery of your translated documents.

Accuracy and attention to detail

Accurate legal translations can be delivered only by highly specialised translators who have a comprehensive working knowledge and experience in the legal industry.
A good legal translator should also be a specialist in a particular legal area, such as:
International law
Civil law
Corporate law
Property law
Tax and accounting law
Insurance law
Patent law and etc.