Document Translation Service

There might be no absolute answer to the question about what makes a translation good or bad. However, an acceptable translation piece has to fulfil the intended communication purpose within the budget available for doing such work. Quality of text is one of the most critical factors in establishing the standard of a given translation output. In general, intelligible text that is written well and devoid of ambiguity should enable you to channel your intended message in accurate manner. A technical document translation service should look out for several elements when evaluating the quality of documents it produces in English. Good translators ought to factor in these aspects into their final translated copies. Certain points here might very well apply to translations done into other languages.

 

First is to consider whether the translation over-utilizes vocabulary which appears formal or sounds scientific. Words which sound overly scientific in English may oftentimes be transliterations of words in different languages which sound plainer. The word ‘anomaly’ is such an example, which can be replaced with ‘fault’ if this sounds more natural within a particular context. Another instance of this is of ‘lung disease’ replacing ‘pulmonary disease’. These situations are rampant when translating from Spanish and French, whereby the ‘Latinate’ word is derived naturally and sounds normal in these root languages. However, translated into English, these words adopt a scientific tone, understood only by an audience with specialist skills.

 

As well, the document translation service should check if the work it produces employs easily understandable words. It is crucial assessing for instance whether the text refers to ‘social insertion’ when perhaps ‘social integration’ is more natural-sounding. This should apply to the term ‘eventual problems’ as opposed to ‘potential issues’ and ‘administrative situation’ instead of ‘administrative status’.

 

Moving on, scrutinize if descriptive phrases or adjectives are employed where Standard English language would apply a compound word. A great example here is of ‘remotely-accessible gadget, which is acceptable in English. Other languages might require using a phrase which literally implies ‘gadget which is accessible remotely’ or a ‘gadget that allows remote accessibility’.

Phrases which also apply in this context include those with ‘for’ or ‘of’ that get over-used in circumstances where English would employ a compound term. Overuse of phrases like ‘strategy for/of sales’ in place of ‘sales strategy’ usually signify that a document translation service sourced content from diverse languages.

 

Consideration needs to be given to determiners such as ‘the’, ‘your’ and ‘a’ to ensure they are applied in idiomatic fashion. Phrases like ‘saw a decreased productivity’ instead of simply ‘saw decreased productivity’ show an overly literal translation context. Inappropriate translation of ‘the’ like in the cities and the towns’ rather than ‘the cities and towns’ indicates the source language does not allow for sharing of same word for ‘the’ by two nouns. French is a great example of this incidence, since it allows for repetitive usage of ‘the’ in that language.